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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/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         27th October 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>The
  32 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
  33 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
  34 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
  35 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
  36 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
  37 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
  38 of a plan to simplify the build system for the FreedomBox project.
  39 The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for the virtualbox
  40 images, but its current build system made multistrap based system for
  41 Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for Raspberry Pi.</p>
  42
  43 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
  44 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
  45 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
  46 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
  47 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
  48 <a href=http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html"">Debian
  49 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
  50 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
  51 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
  52 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
  53 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
  54 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
  55 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
  56 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
  57 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
  58 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
  59 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
  60 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
  61 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
  62 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
  63 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
  64 available from
  65 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
  66 upstream project page</a>.</p>
  67
  68 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
  69 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
  70 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
  71 list:</p>
  72
  73 <p><pre>
  74 #!/bin/sh
  75 set -e # Exit on first error
  76 rootdir="$1"
  77 cd "$rootdir"
  78 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
  79 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
  80 EOF
  81 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
  82 # install a kernel somewhere too.
  83 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
  84     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
  85 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
  86 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
  87 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
  88 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
  89 </pre></p>
  90
  91 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
  92 to build the image:</p>
  93
  94 <pre>
  95 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
  96     --variant minbase \
  97     --arch armel \
  98     --distribution jessie \
  99     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
 100     --image test.img \
 101     --size 600M \
 102     --bootsize 64M \
 103     --boottype vfat \
 104     --log-level debug \
 105     --verbose \
 106     --no-kernel \
 107     --no-extlinux \
 108     --root-password raspberry \
 109     --hostname raspberrypi \
 110     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
 111     --customize `pwd`/customize \
 112     --package netbase \
 113     --package git-core \
 114     --package binutils \
 115     --package ca-certificates \
 116     --package wget \
 117     --package kmod
 118 </pre></p>
 119
 120 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
 121 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
 122 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
 123 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
 124 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
 125 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
 126 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
 127
 128 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
 129 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
 130 build dependency list.</p>
 131
 132 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
 133 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
 134 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
 135 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
 136
 137       </div>
 138       <div class="tags">
 139
 140
 141         Tags: <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>.
 142
 143
 144       </div>
 145     </div>
 146     <div class="padding"></div>
 147
 148     <div class="entry">
 149       <div class="title">
 150         <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>
 151       </div>
 152       <div class="date">
 153         21st October 2013
 154       </div>
 155       <div class="body">
 156         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
 157 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
 158 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
 159 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
 160 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
 161 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
 162 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
 163 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
 164
 165 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
 166 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
 167 instead, I started playing with a
 168 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
 169 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
 170 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
 171 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
 172 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
 173 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
 174 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
 175 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
 176 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
 177 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
 178 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
 179 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
 180 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
 181 every client on the local network.</p>
 182
 183 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
 184 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
 185 and a script
 186 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
 187 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
 188 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
 189 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
 190 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
 191 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
 192 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
 193 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
 194 support.</p>
 195
 196 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
 197 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
 198
 199 <p><pre>
 200 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
 201     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
 202 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
 203 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
 204 %
 205 </pre></p>
 206
 207 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
 208 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
 209 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
 210 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
 211 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
 212 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
 213
 214 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
 215 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
 216 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
 217
 218 <p><table>
 219
 220 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
 221 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
 222 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
 223 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
 224 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
 225 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
 226
 227 </table></p>
 228
 229 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
 230 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
 231 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
 232 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
 233 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
 234 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
 235 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
 236
 237       </div>
 238       <div class="tags">
 239
 240
 241         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>.
 242
 243
 244       </div>
 245     </div>
 246     <div class="padding"></div>
 247
 248     <div class="entry">
 249       <div class="title">
 250         <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>
 251       </div>
 252       <div class="date">
 253         19th October 2013
 254       </div>
 255       <div class="body">
 256         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
 257 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
 258 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
 259 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
 260 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
 261 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
 262 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
 263 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
 264
 265       </div>
 266       <div class="tags">
 267
 268
 269         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>.
 270
 271
 272       </div>
 273     </div>
 274     <div class="padding"></div>
 275
 276     <div class="entry">
 277       <div class="title">
 278         <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>
 279       </div>
 280       <div class="date">
 281         15th October 2013
 282       </div>
 283       <div class="body">
 284         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
 285 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
 286 these. :)</p>
 287
 288 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
 289 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
 290 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
 291 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
 292 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
 293 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
 294 hope you will to. :)</p>
 295
 296 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
 297 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
 298 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
 299 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
 300 donated.  Are you next?</p>
 301
 302 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
 303 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
 304 statement under the heading
 305 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
 306 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
 307 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
 308 too.</p>
 309
 310       </div>
 311       <div class="tags">
 312
 313
 314         Tags: <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>.
 315
 316
 317       </div>
 318     </div>
 319     <div class="padding"></div>
 320
 321     <div class="entry">
 322       <div class="title">
 323         <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>
 324       </div>
 325       <div class="date">
 326         11th October 2013
 327       </div>
 328       <div class="body">
 329         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
 330 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
 331 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
 332 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
 333 successful examples like
 334 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
 335 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
 336 (see
 337 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
 338 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
 339 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
 340 can be seen from their
 341 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
 342 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
 343 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
 344 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
 345 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
 346
 347 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
 348 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
 349 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
 350 my recent involvement in
 351 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
 352 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
 353 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
 354 when possible, given that most communication between people are
 355 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
 356 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
 357 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
 358 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
 359 important over the years.</p>
 360
 361 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
 362 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
 363 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
 364 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
 365 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
 366 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
 367 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
 368 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
 369 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
 370 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
 371 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
 372 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
 373 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
 374 speakers about this talk (from
 375 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
 376
 377 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
 378
 379 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
 380 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
 381 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
 382 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
 383 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
 384 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
 385 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
 386 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
 387 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
 388 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
 389 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
 390 that project (from
 391 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
 392
 393 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
 394
 395 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
 396 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
 397 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
 398 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
 399 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
 400 based community mesh networks.</p>
 401
 402 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
 403 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
 404 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
 405 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
 406 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
 407 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
 408 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
 409 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
 410 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
 411
 412 <p><table>
 413 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
 414 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
 415 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
 416 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
 417 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
 418 </table></p>
 419
 420 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
 421 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
 422 VillageTelco about
 423 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
 424 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
 425 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
 426 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
 427 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
 428 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
 429
 430 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
 431 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
 432 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
 433 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
 434
 435 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
 436 us on IRC, either channel
 437 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
 438 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
 439 irc.freenode.net.</p>
 440
 441 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
 442 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
 443 and Innovation called
 444 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
 445 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
 446 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
 447 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
 448 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
 449 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
 450 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
 451 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
 452
 453 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
 454 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
 455 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
 456 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
 457 mesh system.</p>
 458
 459       </div>
 460       <div class="tags">
 461
 462
 463         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>.
 464
 465
 466       </div>
 467     </div>
 468     <div class="padding"></div>
 469
 470     <div class="entry">
 471       <div class="title">
 472         <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>
 473       </div>
 474       <div class="date">
 475          8th October 2013
 476       </div>
 477       <div class="body">
 478         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
 479 Salvador had published a
 480 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
 481 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
 482 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
 483 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
 484 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
 485 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
 486 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
 487 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
 488 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
 489 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
 490 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
 491 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
 492 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
 493 computers without hard drives by installing one central
 494 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
 495
 496 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
 497
 498 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 499
 500 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
 501 me know. :)</p>
 502
 503       </div>
 504       <div class="tags">
 505
 506
 507         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
 508
 509
 510       </div>
 511     </div>
 512     <div class="padding"></div>
 513
 514     <div class="entry">
 515       <div class="title">
 516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
 517       </div>
 518       <div class="date">
 519         29th September 2013
 520       </div>
 521       <div class="body">
 522         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
 523 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
 524 complete announcement text can be found at
 525 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
 526 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
 527
 528 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
 529 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
 530 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
 531 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
 532
 533       </div>
 534       <div class="tags">
 535
 536
 537         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</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/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
 547       </div>
 548       <div class="date">
 549         27th September 2013
 550       </div>
 551       <div class="body">
 552         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
 553 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
 554 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
 555 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
 556
 557 <ul>
 558
 559 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
 560 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
 561
 562 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
 563 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
 564
 565 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
 566 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
 567 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
 568 (Youtube)</li>
 569
 570 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
 571 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
 572
 573 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
 574 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
 575
 576 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
 577 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
 578 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
 579
 580 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
 581 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
 582 (Youtube)</li>
 583
 584 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
 585 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
 586
 587 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
 588 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
 589
 590 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
 591 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
 592 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
 593
 594 </ul>
 595
 596 <p>A larger list is available from
 597 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
 598 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
 599
 600 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
 601 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
 602 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
 603 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
 604 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
 605 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
 606 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
 607 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
 608 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
 609 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
 610 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
 611
 612       </div>
 613       <div class="tags">
 614
 615
 616         Tags: <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>.
 617
 618
 619       </div>
 620     </div>
 621     <div class="padding"></div>
 622
 623     <div class="entry">
 624       <div class="title">
 625         <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>
 626       </div>
 627       <div class="date">
 628         16th September 2013
 629       </div>
 630       <div class="body">
 631         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
 632 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
 633
 634 <blockquote>
 635 <p>Hi,</p>
 636
 637 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
 638 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
 639 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
 640
 641 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
 642 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
 643 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
 644 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
 645
 646 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
 647 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
 648
 649 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
 650 compared to beta1:</p>
 651
 652 <ul>
 653
 654 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
 655 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
 656 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
 657 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
 658 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
 659 main server.</li>
 660 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
 661 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
 662 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
 663 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
 664 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
 665
 666 </ul>
 667
 668 <p>Where to get it:</p>
 669
 670 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
 671
 672 <ul>
 673 <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>
 674 <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>
 675 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
 676 </ul>
 677
 678 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
 679
 680 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
 681 <ul>
 682 <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>
 683 <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>
 684 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
 685 </ul>
 686
 687 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
 688
 689 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
 690 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
 691 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
 692 as the other isos.</p>
 693
 694 <p>How to report bugs</p>
 695
 696 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
 697 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
 698
 699
 700 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
 701
 702 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
 703 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
 704 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
 705 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
 706 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
 707 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
 708 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
 709 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
 710 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
 711 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
 712 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
 713 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
 714 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
 715
 716 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
 717 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
 718 Squeeze release.</p>
 719
 720 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
 721
 722 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
 723 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
 724 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
 725 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
 726 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
 727 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
 728 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
 729 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
 730 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
 731 directory.</p>
 732
 733
 734 <p>cheers,
 735 <br>        Holger</p>
 736 </blockquote>
 737
 738       </div>
 739       <div class="tags">
 740
 741
 742         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 743
 744
 745       </div>
 746     </div>
 747     <div class="padding"></div>
 748
 749     <div class="entry">
 750       <div class="title">
 751         <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>
 752       </div>
 753       <div class="date">
 754         10th September 2013
 755       </div>
 756       <div class="body">
 757         <p>I was introduced to the
 758 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
 759 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
 760 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
 761 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
 762 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
 763 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
 764 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
 765 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
 766
 767 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
 768 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
 769 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
 770 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
 771 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
 772
 773 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
 774 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
 775 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
 776 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
 777 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
 778 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
 779 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
 780 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
 781 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
 782 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
 783 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
 784 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
 785 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
 786 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
 787 missing in Debian).</p>
 788
 789 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
 790 scripts
 791 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
 792 and a administrative web interface
 793 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
 794 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
 795 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
 796 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
 797 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
 798 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
 799 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
 800 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
 801 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
 802 this is really working yet, see
 803 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
 804 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
 805 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
 806 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
 807 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
 808 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
 809 with lots of half baked features.</p>
 810
 811 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
 812 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
 813 at.</p>
 814
 815 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
 816
 817 <ol>
 818
 819 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
 820 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
 821 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
 822 to the Debian installer:<p>
 823 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
 824
 825 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
 826 install on.</li>
 827
 828 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
 829 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
 830
 831 </ol>
 832
 833 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
 834
 835 <ol>
 836
 837 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
 838 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
 839 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
 840 <pre>
 841 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
 842 </pre></li>
 843 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
 844 <pre>
 845 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
 846    apt-key add -
 847 apt-get update
 848 apt-get install freedombox-setup
 849 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
 850 </pre></li>
 851 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
 852
 853 </ol>
 854
 855 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
 856 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
 857 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
 858 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
 859 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
 860
 861 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
 862 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
 863 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
 864 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
 865
 866 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
 867 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
 868 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
 869 irc.debian.org and the
 870 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
 871 mailing list</a>.</p>
 872
 873 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
 874 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
 875 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
 876 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
 877 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
 878 default password is 'secret'.</p>
 879
 880       </div>
 881       <div class="tags">
 882
 883
 884         Tags: <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>.
 885
 886
 887       </div>
 888     </div>
 889     <div class="padding"></div>
 890
 891     <div class="entry">
 892       <div class="title">
 893         <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>
 894       </div>
 895       <div class="date">
 896         22nd August 2013
 897       </div>
 898       <div class="body">
 899         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
 900 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
 901 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
 902
 903 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
 904
 905 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
 906 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
 907
 908 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
 909
 910 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
 911 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
 912 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
 913 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
 914 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
 915 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
 916 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
 917 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
 918 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
 919 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
 920 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
 921 desktop contains
 922 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
 923 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
 924 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
 925 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
 926
 927 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
 928 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
 929 release.</p>
 930
 931 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
 932 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
 933 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
 934 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
 935 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
 936 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
 937 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
 938 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
 939 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
 940 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
 941 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
 942
 943 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
 944
 945 <ul>
 946
 947 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
 948     work also without a attached tty.</li>
 949 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
 950     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
 951     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
 952     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
 953     required).</li>
 954
 955 </ul>
 956
 957 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
 958
 959 <ul>
 960
 961 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
 962 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
 963 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
 964 stick ISO image.</li>
 965 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
 966 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
 967 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
 968     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
 969     cope with this.</li>
 970 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
 971 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
 972     empty password hashes.</li>
 973 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
 974     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
 975     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
 976
 977 </ul>
 978
 979 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
 980
 981 <ul>
 982
 983 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
 984     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
 985 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
 986     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
 987
 988 </ul>
 989
 990 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
 991
 992 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
 993
 994 <ul>
 995
 996 <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>
 997
 998 <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>
 999
1000 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
1001
1002 </ul>
1003
1004 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
1005 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
1006
1007 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
1008
1009 <ul>
1010
1011 <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>
1012 <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>
1013 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
1014
1015 </ul>
1016
1017 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
1018 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
1019
1020
1021 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
1022
1023 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
1024
1025       </div>
1026       <div class="tags">
1027
1028
1029         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1030
1031
1032       </div>
1033     </div>
1034     <div class="padding"></div>
1035
1036     <div class="entry">
1037       <div class="title">
1038         <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>
1039       </div>
1040       <div class="date">
1041         18th August 2013
1042       </div>
1043       <div class="body">
1044         <p>Earlier, I reported about
1045 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
1046 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
1047 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
1048 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
1049 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
1050 currently on the disk.</p>
1051
1052 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
1053 <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>
1054 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
1055 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
1056 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
1057 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
1058 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
1059 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
1060 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
1061 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
1062 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
1063 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
1064 the broken disks.</p>
1065
1066       </div>
1067       <div class="tags">
1068
1069
1070         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1071
1072
1073       </div>
1074     </div>
1075     <div class="padding"></div>
1076
1077     <div class="entry">
1078       <div class="title">
1079         <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>
1080       </div>
1081       <div class="date">
1082          2nd August 2013
1083       </div>
1084       <div class="body">
1085         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
1086 have worked on a Norwegian
1087 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1088 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1089 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
1090 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
1091 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
1092 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
1093 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
1094 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
1095 progress of the translation:</p>
1096
1097 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
1098
1099 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
1100 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
1101 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
1102 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
1103 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
1104 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
1105 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
1106 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
1107 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
1108 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
1109 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
1110
1111 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
1112 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
1113 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
1114 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
1115 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
1116 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
1117 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
1118 project files currently available from
1119 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
1120
1121 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1122 the updated
1123 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
1124 and
1125 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1126 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
1127 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1128 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
1129
1130       </div>
1131       <div class="tags">
1132
1133
1134         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>.
1135
1136
1137       </div>
1138     </div>
1139     <div class="padding"></div>
1140
1141     <div class="entry">
1142       <div class="title">
1143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
1144       </div>
1145       <div class="date">
1146         27th July 2013
1147       </div>
1148       <div class="body">
1149         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1150 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
1151
1152 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
1153 2013-07-27</strong></p>
1154
1155 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1156 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
1157
1158 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
1159
1160 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1161 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1162 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1163 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1164 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1165 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1166 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1167 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
1168 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1169 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1170 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1171 desktop contains
1172 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1173 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
1174 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1175 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1176
1177 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1178 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1179 Squeeze release.</p>
1180
1181 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
1182 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
1183 release.</p>
1184
1185 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
1186
1187 <ul>
1188
1189 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
1190    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
1191 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
1192    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
1193    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
1194    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
1195    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
1196 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
1197 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
1198 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
1199    crash bugs.</li>
1200
1201 </ul>
1202
1203 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
1204
1205 <ul>
1206
1207 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
1208    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
1209 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
1210    netinst CD.</li>
1211 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
1212    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
1213 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
1214    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
1215    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
1216 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
1217    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
1218    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
1219 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
1220    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
1221    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
1222 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
1223    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
1224 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
1225
1226 </ul>
1227
1228 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
1229
1230 <ul>
1231
1232 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
1233 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
1234     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
1235 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
1236
1237 </ul>
1238
1239 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
1240
1241 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1242
1243 <ul>
1244
1245 <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>
1246
1247 <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>
1248
1249 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
1250
1251 </ul>
1252
1253 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
1254 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
1255
1256 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
1257
1258 <ul>
1259
1260 <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>
1261 <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>
1262 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
1263
1264 </ul>
1265
1266 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
1267 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
1268
1269
1270 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
1271
1272 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
1273
1274       </div>
1275       <div class="tags">
1276
1277
1278         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1279
1280
1281       </div>
1282     </div>
1283     <div class="padding"></div>
1284
1285     <div class="entry">
1286       <div class="title">
1287         <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>
1288       </div>
1289       <div class="date">
1290         17th July 2013
1291       </div>
1292       <div class="body">
1293         <p>Today I switched to
1294 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
1295 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
1296 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
1297 <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
1298 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
1299 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
1300 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
1301 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
1302 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
1303 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
1304 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
1305 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
1306 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
1307 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
1308 station from now on.</p>
1309
1310 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
1311 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
1312 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
1313 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
1314 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
1315 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
1316 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
1317 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
1318 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
1319 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
1320 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
1321 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
1322
1323 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
1324 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
1325 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
1326 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
1327 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
1328 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
1329 parameters are tuned:</p>
1330
1331 <ul>
1332
1333 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
1334     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
1335
1336 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
1337     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
1338     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
1339
1340 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
1341     systems.</li>
1342
1343 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
1344     /etc/fstab.</li>
1345
1346 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
1347
1348 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
1349     cron.daily).</li>
1350
1351 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
1352     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
1353
1354 </ul>
1355
1356 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
1357 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
1358 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
1359 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
1360 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
1361 from getting the data on the disk (see
1362 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
1363 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
1364 right thing to do.</p>
1365
1366 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
1367 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
1368 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
1369
1370 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
1371 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
1372 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
1373 instead of during my work.</p>
1374
1375 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
1376 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
1377
1378 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
1379 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
1380 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
1381
1382 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
1383 there.</p>
1384
1385 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
1386 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
1387 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
1388 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
1389 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
1390 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
1391 back.</p>
1392
1393       </div>
1394       <div class="tags">
1395
1396
1397         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1398
1399
1400       </div>
1401     </div>
1402     <div class="padding"></div>
1403
1404     <div class="entry">
1405       <div class="title">
1406         <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>
1407       </div>
1408       <div class="date">
1409         10th July 2013
1410       </div>
1411       <div class="body">
1412         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
1413 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
1414 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
1415 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
1416 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
1417 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
1418 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
1419 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
1420
1421 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
1422 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
1423 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
1424 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
1425 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
1426 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
1427 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
1428 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
1429 lock up when I download a new
1430 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
1431 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
1432 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
1433
1434 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1435 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
1436 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1437 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
1438 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
1439 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
1440
1441 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
1442 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
1443 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
1444 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
1445 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
1446 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
1447
1448 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
1449 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
1450 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
1451 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
1452 exist).</p>
1453
1454       </div>
1455       <div class="tags">
1456
1457
1458         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1459
1460
1461       </div>
1462     </div>
1463     <div class="padding"></div>
1464
1465     <div class="entry">
1466       <div class="title">
1467         <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>
1468       </div>
1469       <div class="date">
1470          9th July 2013
1471       </div>
1472       <div class="body">
1473         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
1474 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
1475 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1476 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
1477 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1478 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
1479 Bitraf</a>.</p>
1480
1481 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
1482 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
1483 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
1484 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
1485 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
1486
1487       </div>
1488       <div class="tags">
1489
1490
1491         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>.
1492
1493
1494       </div>
1495     </div>
1496     <div class="padding"></div>
1497
1498     <div class="entry">
1499       <div class="title">
1500         <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>
1501       </div>
1502       <div class="date">
1503          5th July 2013
1504       </div>
1505       <div class="body">
1506         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
1507 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
1508 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
1509 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
1510 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
1511 ended up picking a
1512 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
1513 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
1514 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
1515 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
1516 on that below.</p>
1517
1518 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1519 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1520 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1521 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
1522 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1523 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
1524 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
1525 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
1526 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
1527
1528 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
1529 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
1530 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
1531 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
1532 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
1533 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
1534 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
1535
1536 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
1537 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
1538
1539 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
1540 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
1541 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
1542 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
1543 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
1544 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
1545 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
1546 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
1547 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
1548 kernel developers as
1549 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
1550 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
1551 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
1552 Lenovo forums, both for
1553 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
1554 2012-11-10</a> and for
1555 <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
1556 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
1557 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
1558 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
1559 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
1560 There is even a
1561 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
1562 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
1563 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
1564
1565 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
1566 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
1567 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
1568 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
1569 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
1570 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
1571 fixed. :)</p>
1572
1573       </div>
1574       <div class="tags">
1575
1576
1577         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1578
1579
1580       </div>
1581     </div>
1582     <div class="padding"></div>
1583
1584     <div class="entry">
1585       <div class="title">
1586         <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>
1587       </div>
1588       <div class="date">
1589          4th July 2013
1590       </div>
1591       <div class="body">
1592         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
1593 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
1594 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
1595 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
1596 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
1597 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
1598 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
1599 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
1600 with an expencive door stop.</p>
1601
1602 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
1603 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
1604 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
1605 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
1606 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
1607 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
1608 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
1609
1610 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
1611 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
1612 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
1613 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
1614 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
1615 new laptop now. :)</p>
1616
1617 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
1618
1619       </div>
1620       <div class="tags">
1621
1622
1623         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1624
1625
1626       </div>
1627     </div>
1628     <div class="padding"></div>
1629
1630     <div class="entry">
1631       <div class="title">
1632         <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>
1633       </div>
1634       <div class="date">
1635          3rd July 2013
1636       </div>
1637       <div class="body">
1638         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
1639 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
1640
1641 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
1642 2013-07-03</strong></p>
1643
1644 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1645 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
1646
1647 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
1648
1649 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
1650 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
1651 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
1652 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
1653 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
1654 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
1655 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
1656 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
1657 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
1658 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
1659 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
1660 desktop contains
1661 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
1662 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
1663 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
1664 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
1665
1666 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
1667 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
1668 Squeeze release.</p>
1669
1670 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
1671 <ul>
1672   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
1673   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
1674     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
1675     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
1676   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
1677     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
1678     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
1679   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
1680     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
1681     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
1682     too.</li>
1683   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
1684     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
1685 </ul>
1686 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
1687 <ul>
1688   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
1689   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
1690   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
1691     up for some language options.</li>
1692   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
1693   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
1694   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
1695     d-i is doing it.</li>
1696   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
1697     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
1698   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
1699     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
1700     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
1701   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
1702     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
1703   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
1704   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
1705     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
1706   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
1707     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
1708 </ul>
1709 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
1710 <ul>
1711   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
1712     available yet (698840).</li>
1713   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
1714 </ul>
1715 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
1716
1717 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
1718 <ul>
1719   <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>
1720   <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>
1721   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
1722 </ul>
1723
1724 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
1725 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
1726
1727 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
1728 <ul>
1729   <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>
1730   <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>
1731   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
1732 </ul>
1733
1734 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
1735 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
1736
1737 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
1738
1739 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
1740
1741       </div>
1742       <div class="tags">
1743
1744
1745         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1746
1747
1748       </div>
1749     </div>
1750     <div class="padding"></div>
1751
1752     <div class="entry">
1753       <div class="title">
1754         <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>
1755       </div>
1756       <div class="date">
1757         25th June 2013
1758       </div>
1759       <div class="body">
1760         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
1761 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
1762 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
1763 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
1764 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
1765 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
1766 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
1767 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
1768 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
1769 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
1770 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
1771
1772 <p><pre>
1773 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1774 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
1775 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
1776 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
1777 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
1778 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
1779 firmware-ipw2x00
1780 firmware-ipw2x00
1781 Preconfiguring packages ...
1782 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
1783 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
1784 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
1785 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
1786 #
1787 </pre></p>
1788
1789 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
1790 printed instead:</p>
1791
1792 <p><pre>
1793 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
1794 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
1795 #
1796 </pre></p>
1797
1798 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
1799 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
1800
1801 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
1802 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
1803 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
1804 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
1805 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
1806 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
1807 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
1808 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
1809 machine.</p>
1810
1811 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
1812 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
1813 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
1814 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
1815 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
1816 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
1817
1818       </div>
1819       <div class="tags">
1820
1821
1822         Tags: <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>.
1823
1824
1825       </div>
1826     </div>
1827     <div class="padding"></div>
1828
1829     <div class="entry">
1830       <div class="title">
1831         <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>
1832       </div>
1833       <div class="date">
1834         22nd June 2013
1835       </div>
1836       <div class="body">
1837         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1838 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
1839 which check that services are running, working, and return the
1840 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
1841 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
1842 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
1843 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
1844 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
1845 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
1846
1847 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
1848 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
1849 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
1850 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
1851 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
1852 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
1853 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
1854 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
1855 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
1856 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
1857 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
1858 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
1859 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
1860 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
1861
1862 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
1863 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
1864 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
1865 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
1866 the problem.</p>
1867
1868 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
1869 please join us on
1870 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
1871 irc.debian.org</a> and the
1872 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
1873 list.</p>
1874
1875       </div>
1876       <div class="tags">
1877
1878
1879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1880
1881
1882       </div>
1883     </div>
1884     <div class="padding"></div>
1885
1886     <div class="entry">
1887       <div class="title">
1888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
1889       </div>
1890       <div class="date">
1891         17th June 2013
1892       </div>
1893       <div class="body">
1894         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
1895 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
1896 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
1897 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
1898 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
1899 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
1900 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
1901 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
1902
1903 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1904
1905 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
1906 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
1907 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
1908 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
1909 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
1910 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
1911 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
1912 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
1913 field.</p>
1914
1915 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
1916 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
1917 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
1918 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
1919 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
1920 the only one we have in our country.</p>
1921
1922 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1923 project?</strong></p>
1924
1925 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
1926 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
1927 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
1928 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
1929 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
1930 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
1931 ways to contribute.</p>
1932
1933 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
1934 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
1935 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
1936 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
1937 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
1938 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
1939 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
1940 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
1941 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
1942 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
1943
1944 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1945 Edu?</strong></p>
1946
1947 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
1948 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
1949 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
1950 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
1951 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
1952 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
1953 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
1954 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
1955
1956 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
1957 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
1958 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
1959 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
1960 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
1961 project.</p>
1962
1963 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1964 Edu?</strong></p>
1965
1966 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
1967 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
1968 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
1969 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
1970 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
1971 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
1972 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
1973 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
1974 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
1975
1976 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
1977 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
1978 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
1979 on.</p>
1980
1981 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1982
1983 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
1984 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
1985 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
1986 Enlightenment project a lot!),
1987 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
1988 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
1989 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
1990 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
1991 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
1992
1993 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1994 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1995
1996 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
1997 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
1998 that:</p>
1999
2000 <ul>
2001
2002 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
2003
2004 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
2005     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
2006     of teenagers more?</li>
2007
2008 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
2009     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
2010     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
2011     them!)</li>
2012
2013 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
2014     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
2015     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
2016
2017 </ul>
2018
2019 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
2020 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
2021 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
2022 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
2023 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
2024
2025       </div>
2026       <div class="tags">
2027
2028
2029         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
2030
2031
2032       </div>
2033     </div>
2034     <div class="padding"></div>
2035
2036     <div class="entry">
2037       <div class="title">
2038         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
2039       </div>
2040       <div class="date">
2041         12th June 2013
2042       </div>
2043       <div class="body">
2044         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
2045 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2046 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
2047 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
2048 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
2049 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
2050
2051 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2052
2053 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
2054 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
2055 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
2056
2057 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
2058 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
2059 each other.</p>
2060
2061 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2062 project?</strong></p>
2063
2064 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
2065 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
2066 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
2067 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
2068 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
2069 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
2070 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
2071 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
2072 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
2073 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
2074 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
2075 we'll get there one day.</p>
2076
2077 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2078 Edu?</strong></p>
2079
2080 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
2081 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
2082 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
2083 very high quality work.</p>
2084
2085 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
2086 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
2087 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
2088 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
2089 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
2090
2091 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2092 Edu?</strong></p>
2093
2094 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
2095 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
2096 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
2097
2098 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
2099 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
2100 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
2101 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
2102 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
2103 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
2104 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
2105 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
2106 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
2107 currently.</p>
2108
2109 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
2110 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
2111 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
2112 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
2113 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
2114 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
2115 autonomous.</p>
2116
2117 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2118
2119 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
2120 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
2121 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
2122 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
2123 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
2124
2125 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
2126 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
2127 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
2128 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
2129 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
2130 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
2131 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
2132 X.</p>
2133
2134 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
2135 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
2136 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
2137 it :p)
2138
2139 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2140 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2141
2142 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
2143 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
2144 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
2145 that.</p>
2146
2147 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
2148 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
2149 advantage of that.</p>
2150
2151 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
2152 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
2153 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
2154 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
2155 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
2156 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
2157 best solution for them.</p>
2158
2159 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
2160 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
2161 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
2162
2163       </div>
2164       <div class="tags">
2165
2166
2167         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
2168
2169
2170       </div>
2171     </div>
2172     <div class="padding"></div>
2173
2174     <div class="entry">
2175       <div class="title">
2176         <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>
2177       </div>
2178       <div class="date">
2179         11th June 2013
2180       </div>
2181       <div class="body">
2182         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
2183 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
2184 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
2185 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
2186 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
2187 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
2188 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
2189 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
2190 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
2191 i915 driver used by the
2192 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2193 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
2194
2195 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
2196 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
2197 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
2198 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
2199 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
2200
2201 <pre>
2202 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
2203 update-initramfs -u -k all
2204 </pre>
2205
2206 <p>Since March 2012 there is
2207 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
2208 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
2209 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
2210 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
2211 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
2212 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
2213 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
2214 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
2215 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
2216 number.</p>
2217
2218 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
2219 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
2220
2221 <p><pre>
2222 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
2223     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
2224     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
2225  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
2226  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
2227     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
2228  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
2229     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
2230  Latency: 0
2231  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
2232  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
2233  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
2234  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
2235  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
2236  Capabilities: <access denied>
2237  Kernel driver in use: i915
2238 </pre></p>
2239
2240 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
2241
2242 <p><pre>
2243 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
2244        ...
2245         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
2246         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
2247        ...
2248 }
2249 </pre></p>
2250
2251 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
2252 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
2253 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
2254 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
2255 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
2256 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
2257 yet shown up in
2258 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
2259 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
2260 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
2261 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
2262 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
2263 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
2264
2265 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
2266 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
2267 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
2268 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
2269 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
2270 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
2271 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
2272 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
2273 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
2274 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
2275 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
2276 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
2277
2278 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
2279 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
2280 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
2281 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
2282 backlight.</p>
2283
2284       </div>
2285       <div class="tags">
2286
2287
2288         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2289
2290
2291       </div>
2292     </div>
2293     <div class="padding"></div>
2294
2295     <div class="entry">
2296       <div class="title">
2297         <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>
2298       </div>
2299       <div class="date">
2300         10th June 2013
2301       </div>
2302       <div class="body">
2303         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
2304 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2305
2306 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
2307 2013-06-10</strong></p>
2308
2309 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
2310 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
2311
2312 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2313
2314 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
2315 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
2316 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
2317 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
2318 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
2319 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
2320 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
2321 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
2322 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
2323 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
2324 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
2325 desktop contains
2326 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
2327 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
2328 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
2329 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
2330
2331 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
2332 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
2333 Squeeze release.</p>
2334
2335 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
2336
2337 <ul>
2338
2339 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
2340 <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).
2341 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
2342 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
2343 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
2344
2345 </ul>
2346
2347 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
2348
2349 <ul>
2350
2351 <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.
2352 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
2353 <li>New Romanian translation.
2354 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
2355 <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).
2356 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
2357 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
2358 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
2359 <li>More testsuite tests.
2360 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
2361 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
2362
2363 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
2364 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
2365
2366 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
2367 them up with GOsa².</li>
2368
2369 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
2370
2371 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
2372 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
2373 entered password). </li>
2374
2375 </ul>
2376
2377 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
2378
2379 <ul>
2380
2381 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
2382
2383 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
2384 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
2385 missing import feature).</li>
2386
2387 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
2388
2389 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
2390 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
2391 unfixed.</li>
2392
2393 </ul>
2394
2395 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
2396
2397 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
2398
2399 <ul>
2400
2401 <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>
2402
2403 <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>
2404
2405 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
2406
2407 </ul>
2408
2409 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
2410 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
2411
2412 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
2413
2414 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
2415
2416       </div>
2417       <div class="tags">
2418
2419
2420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2421
2422
2423       </div>
2424     </div>
2425     <div class="padding"></div>
2426
2427     <div class="entry">
2428       <div class="title">
2429         <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>
2430       </div>
2431       <div class="date">
2432          5th June 2013
2433       </div>
2434       <div class="body">
2435         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
2436 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
2437 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
2438 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
2439 the project:
2440
2441 <ol>
2442
2443 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
2444   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
2445   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
2446   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
2447   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
2448
2449 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
2450   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
2451   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
2452   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
2453   #698840</a>.</li>
2454
2455 </ol>
2456
2457 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
2458 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
2459 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
2460
2461       </div>
2462       <div class="tags">
2463
2464
2465         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2466
2467
2468       </div>
2469     </div>
2470     <div class="padding"></div>
2471
2472     <div class="entry">
2473       <div class="title">
2474         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
2475       </div>
2476       <div class="date">
2477          4th June 2013
2478       </div>
2479       <div class="body">
2480         <p>It has been a while since my last English
2481 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2482 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
2483 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
2484 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
2485 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
2486
2487 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2488
2489 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
2490 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
2491 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
2492 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
2493
2494 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
2495 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
2496 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
2497
2498 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2499 project?</strong></p>
2500
2501 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
2502 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
2503 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
2504 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
2505 manual.
2506
2507 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
2508 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
2509 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
2510 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
2511
2512 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
2513 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
2514 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
2515 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
2516 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
2517 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
2518 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
2519 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
2520 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
2521 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
2522
2523 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
2524 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
2525 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
2526 beautiful project.</p>
2527
2528 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2529 Edu?</strong></p>
2530
2531 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
2532 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
2533 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
2534
2535 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
2536 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
2537 of educational free software.</p>
2538
2539 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2540 Edu?</strong></p>
2541
2542 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
2543 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
2544 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
2545 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
2546 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
2547
2548 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
2549 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
2550 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
2551 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
2552 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
2553 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
2554 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
2555 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
2556
2557 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2558
2559 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
2560 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
2561 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
2562 also using the mathematical software
2563 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
2564 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
2565 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
2566
2567 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
2568 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
2569 statistics?</strong></p>
2570
2571 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
2572 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
2573 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
2574 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
2575
2576 <ul>
2577
2578 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
2579 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
2580 constructions in planar geometry
2581
2582 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
2583 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
2584 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
2585
2586 </ul>
2587
2588 <p>I like also
2589 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
2590 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
2591 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
2592
2593 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2594 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2595
2596 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
2597
2598 <ul>
2599
2600 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
2601
2602 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
2603     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
2604     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
2605
2606 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
2607
2608 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
2609     system.</li>
2610
2611 </ul>
2612
2613       </div>
2614       <div class="tags">
2615
2616
2617         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
2618
2619
2620       </div>
2621     </div>
2622     <div class="padding"></div>
2623
2624     <div class="entry">
2625       <div class="title">
2626         <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>
2627       </div>
2628       <div class="date">
2629          1st June 2013
2630       </div>
2631       <div class="body">
2632         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2633 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
2634 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
2635 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
2636 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
2637 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
2638 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
2639 program.</p>
2640
2641 <!-- 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 -->
2642
2643 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
2644 <p>
2645 <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>
2646 <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>
2647 <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>
2648 <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>
2649 <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>
2650 <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>
2651 <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>
2652 <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>
2653 <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>
2654 <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>
2655 <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>
2656 <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>
2657 <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>
2658 <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>
2659 </p>
2660
2661 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
2662 <p>
2663 <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>
2664 <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>
2665 <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>
2666 <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>
2667 <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>
2668 <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>
2669 </p>
2670
2671 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
2672 <p>
2673 <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>
2674 </p>
2675
2676 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
2677 <p>
2678 <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>
2679 <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>
2680 <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>
2681 <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>
2682 <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>
2683 <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>
2684 <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>
2685 <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>
2686 <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>
2687 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
2688 <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>
2689 </p>
2690
2691 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
2692 <p>
2693 <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>
2694 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
2695 </p>
2696
2697 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
2698 <p>
2699 <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>
2700 <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>
2701 <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>
2702 </p>
2703
2704 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
2705 <p>
2706 <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>
2707 <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>
2708 <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>
2709 <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>
2710 <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>
2711 </p>
2712
2713 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
2714 <p>
2715 <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>
2716 <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>
2717 <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>
2718 <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>
2719 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
2720 <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>
2721 <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>
2722 <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>
2723 <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>
2724 <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>
2725 <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>
2726 <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>
2727 <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>
2728 <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>
2729 <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>
2730 <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>
2731 <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>
2732 </p>
2733
2734 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
2735 <p>
2736 <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>
2737 <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>
2738 </p>
2739
2740 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
2741 <p>
2742 <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>
2743 <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>
2744 <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>
2745 <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>
2746 <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>
2747 <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>
2748 <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>
2749 <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>
2750 <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>
2751 <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>
2752 </p>
2753
2754 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
2755 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
2756 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
2757 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
2758 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
2759 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
2760 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
2761
2762       </div>
2763       <div class="tags">
2764
2765
2766         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2767
2768
2769       </div>
2770     </div>
2771     <div class="padding"></div>
2772
2773     <div class="entry">
2774       <div class="title">
2775         <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>
2776       </div>
2777       <div class="date">
2778         27th May 2013
2779       </div>
2780       <div class="body">
2781         <p>Two days ago, I asked
2782 <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
2783 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
2784 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
2785 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
2786 and Windows 8.</p>
2787
2788 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
2789 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
2790 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
2791 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
2792 enough to tell.</p>
2793
2794 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
2795 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
2796 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
2797 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
2798 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
2799 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
2800 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
2801 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
2802 to follow.</p>
2803
2804 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
2805 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
2806 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
2807 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
2808 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
2809 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
2810 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
2811 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
2812
2813 <p>I've updated the
2814 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
2815 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
2816 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
2817 machine.</p>
2818
2819 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
2820 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
2821
2822       </div>
2823       <div class="tags">
2824
2825
2826         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2827
2828
2829       </div>
2830     </div>
2831     <div class="padding"></div>
2832
2833     <div class="entry">
2834       <div class="title">
2835         <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>
2836       </div>
2837       <div class="date">
2838         25th May 2013
2839       </div>
2840       <div class="body">
2841         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
2842 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
2843 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
2844 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
2845 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
2846 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
2847
2848 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
2849 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
2850 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
2851 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
2852 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
2853 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
2854 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
2855 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
2856 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
2857 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
2858
2859 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
2860 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
2861 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
2862 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
2863 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
2864 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
2865
2866 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
2867 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
2868 on new Laptops?</p>
2869
2870       </div>
2871       <div class="tags">
2872
2873
2874         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2875
2876
2877       </div>
2878     </div>
2879     <div class="padding"></div>
2880
2881     <div class="entry">
2882       <div class="title">
2883         <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>
2884       </div>
2885       <div class="date">
2886         17th May 2013
2887       </div>
2888       <div class="body">
2889         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
2890 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
2891 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
2892 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
2893 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
2894 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
2895 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
2896 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
2897 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
2898 donate some money</a>.
2899
2900 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
2901 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
2902 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
2903 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
2904 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
2905
2906 <p>The script,
2907 <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/>
2908 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
2909 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
2910 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
2911
2912 <ol>
2913
2914 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
2915 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
2916 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
2917     our configuration.</li>
2918 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
2919     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
2920     according to the profile specified in the config above,
2921     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
2922 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
2923     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
2924 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
2925
2926 </ol>
2927
2928 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
2929 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
2930 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
2931 the needed packages.</p>
2932
2933 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
2934 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
2935 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
2936 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
2937 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
2938 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
2939
2940 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
2941 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
2942 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
2943
2944 <p><pre>
2945 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
2946 DESKTOP="lxde"
2947 </pre></p>
2948
2949 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
2950 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
2951 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
2952 boot.</p>
2953
2954       </div>
2955       <div class="tags">
2956
2957
2958         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>.
2959
2960
2961       </div>
2962     </div>
2963     <div class="padding"></div>
2964
2965     <div class="entry">
2966       <div class="title">
2967         <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>
2968       </div>
2969       <div class="date">
2970         14th May 2013
2971       </div>
2972       <div class="body">
2973         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2974 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
2975 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
2976
2977 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
2978 2013-05-14</strong></p>
2979
2980 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
2981 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
2982 codename "Wheezy".</p>
2983
2984 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
2985
2986 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
2987 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2988 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
2989 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2990 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2991 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2992 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
2993 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
2994
2995 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
2996 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
2997 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
2998
2999 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3000 <ul>
3001   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
3002     default.</li>
3003   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
3004   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
3005   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
3006     ibus-anthy.</li>
3007 </ul>
3008
3009 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3010 <ul>
3011
3012   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
3013     reliability improvements.</li>
3014   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
3015     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
3016   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
3017     problems.</li>
3018   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
3019     direct:// URL.</li>
3020   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
3021   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
3022   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
3023   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
3024     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
3025   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
3026     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
3027 </ul>
3028
3029 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
3030 <ul>
3031
3032   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
3033     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
3034     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
3035   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
3036   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
3037     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
3038   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
3039   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
3040   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
3041     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
3042   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
3043     password submission problem
3044     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
3045
3046 </ul>
3047
3048 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3049
3050 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
3051 <ul>
3052
3053   <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>
3054   <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>
3055   <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>
3056
3057 </ul>
3058
3059 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
3060
3061 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
3062
3063 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3064
3065 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3066
3067       </div>
3068       <div class="tags">
3069
3070
3071         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3072
3073
3074       </div>
3075     </div>
3076     <div class="padding"></div>
3077
3078     <div class="entry">
3079       <div class="title">
3080         <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>
3081       </div>
3082       <div class="date">
3083         11th May 2013
3084       </div>
3085       <div class="body">
3086         <P>In January,
3087 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
3088 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
3089 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
3090 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
3091 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
3092 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
3093 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
3094 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
3095 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
3096 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
3097 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
3098 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
3099
3100 <p><table>
3101 <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>
3102 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
3103 <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>
3104 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
3105 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
3106 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
3107 <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>
3108 <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>
3109 <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>
3110 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
3111 </table></p>
3112
3113 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
3114 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
3115 available in experimental.</p>
3116
3117 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
3118 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
3119 for LEGO designers.</p>
3120
3121       </div>
3122       <div class="tags">
3123
3124
3125         Tags: <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>.
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/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>
3135       </div>
3136       <div class="date">
3137          5th May 2013
3138       </div>
3139       <div class="body">
3140         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
3141 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
3142 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
3143 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
3144 soon.</p>
3145
3146 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
3147 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
3148 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
3149 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
3150 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
3151 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
3152 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
3153 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
3154 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
3155 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
3156 Edu.</a>
3157
3158 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
3159 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
3160 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
3161 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
3162 follow.<p>
3163
3164       </div>
3165       <div class="tags">
3166
3167
3168         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>.
3169
3170
3171       </div>
3172     </div>
3173     <div class="padding"></div>
3174
3175     <div class="entry">
3176       <div class="title">
3177         <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>
3178       </div>
3179       <div class="date">
3180         26th April 2013
3181       </div>
3182       <div class="body">
3183         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
3184 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
3185 announcement:</p>
3186
3187 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
3188 2013-04-26</strong></p>
3189
3190 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
3191 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
3192
3193 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
3194
3195 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
3196 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
3197 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
3198 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
3199 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
3200 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
3201 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
3202 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
3203 installed via the network.</p>
3204
3205 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
3206 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
3207 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
3208
3209 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
3210
3211 <ul>
3212 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
3213   <ul>
3214      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
3215      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
3216          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
3217          manual.)</li>
3218      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
3219      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
3220      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
3221      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
3222      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
3223      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
3224      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
3225      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
3226      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
3227      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
3228      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
3229      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
3230          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
3231          manual</a> for more details.</li>
3232      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
3233          installation.</li>
3234      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
3235          <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>
3236   </ul></li>
3237 </ul>
3238
3239 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
3240 <ul>
3241 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
3242     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
3243     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
3244 </ul>
3245
3246 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
3247 <ul>
3248 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
3249     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
3250     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
3251 </ul>
3252
3253 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
3254 <ul>
3255 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
3256     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
3257     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
3258 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
3259     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
3260     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
3261 </ul>
3262
3263 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
3264 <ul>
3265 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
3266     yet.</li>
3267 </ul>
3268
3269 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
3270
3271 <ul>
3272 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
3273     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
3274     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
3275 </ul>
3276
3277 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
3278
3279 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
3280 <ul>
3281 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
3282 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
3283 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
3284 </ul>
3285
3286 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
3287
3288 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
3289
3290 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
3291
3292 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
3293
3294       </div>
3295       <div class="tags">
3296
3297
3298         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3299
3300
3301       </div>
3302     </div>
3303     <div class="padding"></div>
3304
3305     <div class="entry">
3306       <div class="title">
3307         <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>
3308       </div>
3309       <div class="date">
3310         16th April 2013
3311       </div>
3312       <div class="body">
3313         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
3314 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
3315 Details about the gathering can be found
3316 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
3317 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
3318 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
3319 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
3320 weekend.</p>
3321
3322 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
3323 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
3324 Edu release.</p>
3325
3326 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
3327
3328       </div>
3329       <div class="tags">
3330
3331
3332         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3333
3334
3335       </div>
3336     </div>
3337     <div class="padding"></div>
3338
3339     <div class="entry">
3340       <div class="title">
3341         <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>
3342       </div>
3343       <div class="date">
3344          3rd April 2013
3345       </div>
3346       <div class="body">
3347         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
3348 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
3349 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
3350 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
3351
3352 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
3353 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
3354 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
3355 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
3356 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
3357 BTS. :)</p>
3358
3359       </div>
3360       <div class="tags">
3361
3362
3363         Tags: <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>.
3364
3365
3366       </div>
3367     </div>
3368     <div class="padding"></div>
3369
3370     <div class="entry">
3371       <div class="title">
3372         <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>
3373       </div>
3374       <div class="date">
3375         26th March 2013
3376       </div>
3377       <div class="body">
3378         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
3379 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
3380 font you use when printing.</p>
3381
3382 <p>Three years ago,
3383 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
3384 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
3385 changed their default front from
3386 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
3387 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
3388 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
3389 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
3390 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
3391 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
3392 prints.</p>
3393
3394 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
3395 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
3396 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
3397 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
3398 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
3399 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
3400 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
3401 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
3402 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
3403 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
3404 depend on the documents printed.</p>
3405
3406 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
3407 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
3408 and save some money in the process.</p>
3409
3410 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
3411 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
3412 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
3413 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
3414 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
3415 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
3416 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
3417 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
3418 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
3419
3420       </div>
3421       <div class="tags">
3422
3423
3424         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3425
3426
3427       </div>
3428     </div>
3429     <div class="padding"></div>
3430
3431     <div class="entry">
3432       <div class="title">
3433         <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>
3434       </div>
3435       <div class="date">
3436         24th March 2013
3437       </div>
3438       <div class="body">
3439         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
3440 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
3441 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
3442 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
3443 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
3444 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
3445 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
3446 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
3447 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
3448 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
3449 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
3450 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
3451
3452 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
3453 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
3454 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
3455 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
3456 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
3457 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
3458 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
3459 all I had to do was to use the
3460 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
3461 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
3462 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
3463 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
3464 xsltproc/fop (aka
3465 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
3466 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
3467 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
3468 technical detail.</p>
3469
3470 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
3471 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
3472 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
3473 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
3474 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
3475 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
3476
3477 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
3478 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
3479 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
3480 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
3481 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
3482 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
3483 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
3484 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
3485 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
3486
3487 <p><blockquote><pre>
3488 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3489 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
3490   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
3491     &lt;hr/&gt;
3492   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
3493 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3494 </pre></blockquote></p>
3495
3496 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
3497
3498 <p><blockquote><pre>
3499 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3500 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
3501   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
3502     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
3503       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
3504     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
3505   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
3506 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3507 </pre></blockquote></p>
3508
3509 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
3510 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
3511 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
3512 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
3513 enough.</p>
3514
3515 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
3516 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
3517 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
3518 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
3519 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
3520 look like this:</p>
3521
3522 <p><blockquote><pre>
3523 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3524 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
3525   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
3526     &lt;br/&gt;
3527   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
3528 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3529 </pre></blockquote></p>
3530
3531 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
3532
3533 <p><blockquote><pre>
3534 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
3535 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
3536   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
3537   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
3538     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
3539   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
3540 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
3541 </pre></blockquote></p>
3542
3543 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
3544 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
3545 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
3546 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
3547 page.</p>
3548
3549 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
3550 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
3551 github</a>
3552 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
3553 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
3554 days.</p>
3555
3556       </div>
3557       <div class="tags">
3558
3559
3560         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>.
3561
3562
3563       </div>
3564     </div>
3565     <div class="padding"></div>
3566
3567     <div class="entry">
3568       <div class="title">
3569         <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>
3570       </div>
3571       <div class="date">
3572         17th March 2013
3573       </div>
3574       <div class="body">
3575         <p>Via
3576 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
3577 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
3578 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
3579 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
3580 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
3581 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
3582 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
3583
3584 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
3585 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
3586
3587 <blockquote>
3588 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
3589 </blockquote>
3590
3591 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
3592
3593 <blockquote>
3594 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
3595 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
3596 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
3597 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
3598 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
3599 </blockquote>
3600
3601 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
3602 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
3603 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
3604 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
3605
3606 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
3607 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
3608
3609 <blockquote>
3610 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
3611 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
3612 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
3613 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
3614 </blockquote>
3615
3616 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
3617 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
3618 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
3619 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
3620 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
3621
3622 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
3623 embedding:</p>
3624
3625 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
3626
3627       </div>
3628       <div class="tags">
3629
3630
3631         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3632
3633
3634       </div>
3635     </div>
3636     <div class="padding"></div>
3637
3638     <div class="entry">
3639       <div class="title">
3640         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
3641       </div>
3642       <div class="date">
3643          8th March 2013
3644       </div>
3645       <div class="body">
3646         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
3647 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
3648 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
3649 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
3650 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
3651 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
3652 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
3653
3654 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
3655
3656 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
3657 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
3658
3659 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
3660 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
3661 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
3662 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
3663 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
3664 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
3665
3666 <p>Images are available for download at
3667 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
3668
3669 <p>md5sums:
3670 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
3671 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
3672 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
3673
3674 <p>sha1sums:
3675 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
3676 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
3677 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
3678
3679 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
3680
3681 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
3682 2013-03-03:</p>
3683
3684 <ul>
3685   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
3686   <ul>
3687         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
3688         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
3689   </ul></li>
3690   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
3691   <ul>
3692         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
3693         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
3694   </ul></li>
3695   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
3696      <ul>
3697         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
3698         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
3699         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
3700                 Closes: #664596</li>
3701         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
3702                 Closes: #664976</li>
3703         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
3704            <ul>
3705                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
3706                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
3707            </ul></li>
3708         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
3709            <ul>
3710                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
3711                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
3712                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
3713                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
3714                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
3715            </ul></li>
3716         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
3717     </ul>
3718   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
3719     <ul>
3720         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
3721     </ul></li>
3722 </ul>
3723
3724 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
3725 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
3726 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
3727 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
3728
3729 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
3730 mailinglist
3731 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
3732 </p></blockquote>
3733
3734 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
3735
3736       </div>
3737       <div class="tags">
3738
3739
3740         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3741
3742
3743       </div>
3744     </div>
3745     <div class="padding"></div>
3746
3747     <div class="entry">
3748       <div class="title">
3749         <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>
3750       </div>
3751       <div class="date">
3752          3rd March 2013
3753       </div>
3754       <div class="body">
3755         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
3756 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
3757 support using
3758 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
3759 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
3760 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
3761 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
3762 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
3763 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
3764 using the GNU LGPL, and
3765 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
3766
3767 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
3768 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
3769 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
3770 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
3771 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
3772 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
3773
3774 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
3775 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
3776 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
3777 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
3778 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
3779 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
3780 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
3781 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
3782 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
3783 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
3784 signal distribution is handled using
3785 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
3786 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
3787 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
3788 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
3789 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
3790 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
3791 them up a bit more first.</p>
3792
3793 <p>The development is coordinated on the
3794 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
3795 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
3796 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
3797 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
3798 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
3799 development.</p>
3800
3801       </div>
3802       <div class="tags">
3803
3804
3805         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>.
3806
3807
3808       </div>
3809     </div>
3810     <div class="padding"></div>
3811
3812     <div class="entry">
3813       <div class="title">
3814         <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>
3815       </div>
3816       <div class="date">
3817         27th February 2013
3818       </div>
3819       <div class="body">
3820         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
3821 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
3822 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
3823 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
3824 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
3825 (where I am the chair of the board) and
3826 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
3827 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
3828 GNU», with this description:
3829
3830 <p><blockquote>
3831 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
3832 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
3833 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
3834 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
3835 </blockquote></p>
3836
3837 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
3838 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
3839 am really curious how many will show up.  See
3840 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
3841 page</a> for the location details.</p>
3842
3843       </div>
3844       <div class="tags">
3845
3846
3847         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>.
3848
3849
3850       </div>
3851     </div>
3852     <div class="padding"></div>
3853
3854     <div class="entry">
3855       <div class="title">
3856         <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>
3857       </div>
3858       <div class="date">
3859         15th February 2013
3860       </div>
3861       <div class="body">
3862         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
3863 now a great source of free maps available from
3864 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
3865 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
3866 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
3867 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
3868 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
3869 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
3870 page for descriptions).</p>
3871
3872 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
3873 map you can just edit the
3874 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
3875 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
3876
3877       </div>
3878       <div class="tags">
3879
3880
3881         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>.
3882
3883
3884       </div>
3885     </div>
3886     <div class="padding"></div>
3887
3888     <div class="entry">
3889       <div class="title">
3890         <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>
3891       </div>
3892       <div class="date">
3893         12th February 2013
3894       </div>
3895       <div class="body">
3896         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
3897 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
3898 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
3899 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
3900 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
3901 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
3902 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
3903 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
3904 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
3905 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
3906 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
3907 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
3908 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
3909 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
3910 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
3911 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
3912
3913 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
3914 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
3915 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
3916 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
3917 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
3918 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
3919 fields:</p>
3920
3921 <p><pre>
3922 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
3923 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
3924 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
3925 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
3926 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
3927 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
3928 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
3929 </pre></p>
3930
3931 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
3932 answer regarding
3933 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
3934 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
3935 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
3936 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
3937
3938 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
3939
3940 <p><pre>
3941 BEGIN:VCARD
3942 VERSION:2.1
3943 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
3944 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
3945 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
3946 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
3947 REV:20130212T095000Z
3948 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
3949 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
3950 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
3951 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
3952 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
3953 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
3954 END:VCARD
3955 </pre></p>
3956
3957 <p>The resulting QR code created using
3958 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
3959 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
3960 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
3961 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
3962 system.</p>
3963
3964 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
3965
3966 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
3967 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
3968 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
3969 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
3970
3971 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
3972 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
3973
3974       </div>
3975       <div class="tags">
3976
3977
3978         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>.
3979
3980
3981       </div>
3982     </div>
3983     <div class="padding"></div>
3984
3985     <div class="entry">
3986       <div class="title">
3987         <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>
3988       </div>
3989       <div class="date">
3990         10th February 2013
3991       </div>
3992       <div class="body">
3993         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
3994
3995 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
3996 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
3997 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
3998 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
3999 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
4000 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
4001 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
4002 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
4003 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
4004 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
4005 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
4006
4007 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
4008 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
4009 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
4010 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
4011 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
4012 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
4013 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
4014 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
4015 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
4016 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
4017 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
4018 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
4019 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
4020 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
4021 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
4022 ones own
4023 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
4024 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
4025 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
4026 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
4027 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
4028 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
4029 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
4030 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
4031 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
4032 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
4033 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
4034
4035 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
4036 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
4037 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
4038 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
4039 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
4040 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
4041
4042 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
4043 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
4044 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
4045
4046       </div>
4047       <div class="tags">
4048
4049
4050         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4051
4052
4053       </div>
4054     </div>
4055     <div class="padding"></div>
4056
4057     <div class="entry">
4058       <div class="title">
4059         <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>
4060       </div>
4061       <div class="date">
4062          2nd February 2013
4063       </div>
4064       <div class="body">
4065         <p>My
4066 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
4067 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
4068 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
4069 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
4070 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
4071 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
4072 version too.</p>
4073
4074 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
4075 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
4076 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
4077 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
4078 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
4079 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
4080 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
4081 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
4082
4083 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
4084 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
4085 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
4086 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
4087 it. :)</p>
4088
4089 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4090 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4091 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4092
4093       </div>
4094       <div class="tags">
4095
4096
4097         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>.
4098
4099
4100       </div>
4101     </div>
4102     <div class="padding"></div>
4103
4104     <div class="entry">
4105       <div class="title">
4106         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
4107       </div>
4108       <div class="date">
4109         22nd January 2013
4110       </div>
4111       <div class="body">
4112         <p>Yesterday, I
4113 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
4114 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
4115 pluggable hardware devices, which I
4116 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
4117 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
4118 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
4119 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
4120 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
4121 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
4122 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
4123 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
4124 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
4125 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
4126
4127 <pre>
4128 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
4129 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
4130 </pre>
4131
4132 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
4133 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
4134 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
4135 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
4136
4137 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
4138 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
4139 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
4140 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
4141 word.</p>
4142
4143 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
4144 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
4145 process.</p>
4146
4147 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
4148 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
4149
4150       </div>
4151       <div class="tags">
4152
4153
4154         Tags: <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>.
4155
4156
4157       </div>
4158     </div>
4159     <div class="padding"></div>
4160
4161     <div class="entry">
4162       <div class="title">
4163         <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>
4164       </div>
4165       <div class="date">
4166         21st January 2013
4167       </div>
4168       <div class="body">
4169         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
4170 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
4171 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
4172 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
4173 it, fetch the
4174 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
4175 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
4176 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
4177 autostart script.</p>
4178
4179 <p>The design is simple:</p>
4180
4181 <ul>
4182
4183 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
4184 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
4185
4186 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
4187 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
4188 initially did.</li>
4189
4190 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
4191 the APT database, a database
4192 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
4193 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
4194
4195 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
4196 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
4197 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
4198 package or packages.</li>
4199
4200 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
4201 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
4202
4203 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
4204 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
4205
4206 </ul>
4207
4208 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
4209 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
4210 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
4211 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
4212
4213 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
4214 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
4215 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
4216 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
4217 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
4218
4219 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
4220 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
4221 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
4222 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
4223 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
4224 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
4225 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
4226 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
4227
4228 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
4229 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
4230 '<tt>svn checkout
4231 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
4232 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
4233 devscripts package.</p>
4234
4235 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
4236 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
4237 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
4238 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
4239 instructions</a> for details.</p>
4240
4241       </div>
4242       <div class="tags">
4243
4244
4245         Tags: <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>.
4246
4247
4248       </div>
4249     </div>
4250     <div class="padding"></div>
4251
4252     <div class="entry">
4253       <div class="title">
4254         <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>
4255       </div>
4256       <div class="date">
4257         19th January 2013
4258       </div>
4259       <div class="body">
4260         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
4261 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
4262 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
4263 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
4264 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
4265 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
4266 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
4267 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
4268 not a durable solution.
4269
4270 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
4271 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
4272
4273 <ul>
4274
4275 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
4276   than A4).</li>
4277 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
4278 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
4279 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
4280 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
4281 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
4282 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
4283 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
4284 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
4285 size).</li>
4286 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
4287   X.org packages.</li>
4288 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
4289   the time).
4290
4291 </ul>
4292
4293 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
4294 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
4295 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
4296 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
4297 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
4298 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
4299 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
4300 still be useful.</p>
4301
4302 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
4303 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
4304 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
4305 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
4306 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
4307 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
4308
4309       </div>
4310       <div class="tags">
4311
4312
4313         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4314
4315
4316       </div>
4317     </div>
4318     <div class="padding"></div>
4319
4320     <div class="entry">
4321       <div class="title">
4322         <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>
4323       </div>
4324       <div class="date">
4325         18th January 2013
4326       </div>
4327       <div class="body">
4328         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
4329 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
4330 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
4331 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
4332 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
4333 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
4334 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
4335
4336 <pre>
4337 #!/usr/bin/python
4338 import sys
4339 import apt
4340 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4341     cache = apt.Cache()
4342     cache.open(None)
4343     thepkgs = []
4344     for pkg in cache:
4345         version = pkg.candidate
4346         if version is None:
4347             version = pkg.installed
4348         if version is None:
4349             continue
4350         record = version.record
4351         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
4352             continue
4353         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
4354         for t in mime_types:
4355             t = t.rstrip().strip()
4356             if t == mimetype:
4357                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
4358     return thepkgs
4359 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
4360 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
4361     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
4362 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
4363 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
4364     print "  %s" %pkg
4365 </pre>
4366
4367 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
4368
4369 <pre>
4370 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
4371 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
4372   gecko-mediaplayer
4373 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
4374 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
4375   browser-plugin-gnash
4376 %
4377 </pre>
4378
4379 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
4380 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
4381 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
4382 anyone working on adding it?</p>
4383
4384 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
4385 request for icweasel support for this feature is
4386 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
4387 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
4388 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
4389 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
4390
4391       </div>
4392       <div class="tags">
4393
4394
4395         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4396
4397
4398       </div>
4399     </div>
4400     <div class="padding"></div>
4401
4402     <div class="entry">
4403       <div class="title">
4404         <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>
4405       </div>
4406       <div class="date">
4407         16th January 2013
4408       </div>
4409       <div class="body">
4410         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
4411 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
4412 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
4413 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
4414 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
4415 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
4416 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
4417 downloaded by the browser.</p>
4418
4419 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
4420 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
4421 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
4422 can be found on the
4423 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
4424 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
4425 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
4426 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
4427 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
4428
4429 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
4430
4431 <pre>
4432   count MIME type
4433   ----- -----------------------
4434      32 text/plain
4435      30 audio/mpeg
4436      29 image/png
4437      28 image/jpeg
4438      27 application/ogg
4439      26 audio/x-mp3
4440      25 image/tiff
4441      25 image/gif
4442      22 image/bmp
4443      22 audio/x-wav
4444      20 audio/x-flac
4445      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4446      18 video/x-ms-asf
4447      18 audio/x-musepack
4448      18 audio/x-mpeg
4449      18 application/x-ogg
4450      17 video/mpeg
4451      17 audio/x-scpls
4452      17 audio/ogg
4453      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4454 </pre>
4455
4456 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
4457
4458 <pre>
4459   count MIME type
4460   ----- -----------------------
4461      33 text/plain
4462      32 image/png
4463      32 image/jpeg
4464      29 audio/mpeg
4465      27 image/gif
4466      26 image/tiff
4467      26 application/ogg
4468      25 audio/x-mp3
4469      22 image/bmp
4470      21 audio/x-wav
4471      19 audio/x-mpegurl
4472      19 audio/x-mpeg
4473      18 video/mpeg
4474      18 audio/x-scpls
4475      18 audio/x-flac
4476      18 application/x-ogg
4477      17 video/x-ms-asf
4478      17 text/html
4479      17 audio/x-musepack
4480      16 image/x-xbitmap
4481 </pre>
4482
4483 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
4484
4485 <pre>
4486   count MIME type
4487   ----- -----------------------
4488      31 text/plain
4489      31 image/png
4490      31 image/jpeg
4491      29 audio/mpeg
4492      28 application/ogg
4493      27 image/gif
4494      26 image/tiff
4495      26 audio/x-mp3
4496      23 audio/x-wav
4497      22 image/bmp
4498      21 audio/x-flac
4499      20 audio/x-mpegurl
4500      19 audio/x-mpeg
4501      18 video/x-ms-asf
4502      18 video/mpeg
4503      18 audio/x-scpls
4504      18 application/x-ogg
4505      17 audio/x-musepack
4506      16 video/x-ms-wmv
4507      16 video/x-msvideo
4508 </pre>
4509
4510 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
4511 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
4512 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
4513 issues.</p>
4514
4515 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
4516 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
4517
4518       </div>
4519       <div class="tags">
4520
4521
4522         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4523
4524
4525       </div>
4526     </div>
4527     <div class="padding"></div>
4528
4529     <div class="entry">
4530       <div class="title">
4531         <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>
4532       </div>
4533       <div class="date">
4534         15th January 2013
4535       </div>
4536       <div class="body">
4537         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
4538 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
4539 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
4540 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
4541 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
4542 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
4543 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
4544 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
4545 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
4546 packages.</p>
4547
4548 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
4549 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
4550 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
4551 modalias.</p>
4552
4553 <p><blockquote>
4554 Package: package-name
4555 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
4556 </blockquote></p>
4557
4558 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
4559 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
4560
4561 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
4562 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
4563
4564 <p><blockquote>
4565 Package: cheese
4566 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
4567 </blockquote></p>
4568
4569 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
4570 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
4571
4572 <p><blockquote>
4573 Package: pcmciautils
4574 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
4575 </blockquote></p>
4576
4577 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
4578 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
4579
4580 <p><blockquote>
4581 Package: colorhug-client
4582 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
4583 </blockquote></p>
4584
4585 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
4586 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
4587 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
4588
4589 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
4590 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
4591 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
4592 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
4593 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
4594 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
4595 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
4596 Raring.</p>
4597
4598 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
4599 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
4600 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
4601 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
4602 try the
4603 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
4604 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
4605 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
4606 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
4607
4608 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
4609 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
4610
4611 <p><blockquote>
4612 % ./hw-support-lookup
4613 <br>yubikey-personalization
4614 <br>%
4615 </blockquote></p>
4616
4617 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
4618 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
4619
4620 <p><blockquote>
4621 % ./hw-support-lookup
4622 <br>pcmciautils
4623 <br>%
4624 </blockquote></p>
4625
4626 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
4627 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
4628 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
4629
4630 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
4631 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
4632 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
4633 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
4634 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
4635 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
4636 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
4637 see if it work.</p>
4638
4639 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4640 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4641 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4642 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4643
4644       </div>
4645       <div class="tags">
4646
4647
4648         Tags: <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>.
4649
4650
4651       </div>
4652     </div>
4653     <div class="padding"></div>
4654
4655     <div class="entry">
4656       <div class="title">
4657         <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>
4658       </div>
4659       <div class="date">
4660         14th January 2013
4661       </div>
4662       <div class="body">
4663         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
4664 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
4665 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
4666 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
4667 in
4668 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
4669 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
4670
4671 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
4672
4673 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
4674 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
4675 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
4676 &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;,
4677 &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
4678 &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;.
4679
4680 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
4681 this shell script:</p>
4682
4683 <pre>
4684 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
4685 </pre>
4686
4687 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
4688 using modinfo:</p>
4689
4690 <pre>
4691 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
4692 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
4693 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
4694 %
4695 </pre>
4696
4697 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
4698
4699 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
4700 Bridge memory controller:</p>
4701
4702 <p><blockquote>
4703 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
4704 </blockquote></p>
4705
4706 <p>This represent these values:</p>
4707
4708 <pre>
4709  v   00008086  (vendor)
4710  d   00002770  (device)
4711  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
4712  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
4713  bc  06        (bus class)
4714  sc  00        (bus subclass)
4715  i   00        (interface)
4716 </pre>
4717
4718 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
4719 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
4720 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
4721 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
4722
4723 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
4724 means.</p>
4725
4726 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
4727
4728 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
4729 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
4730
4731 <p><blockquote>
4732 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
4733 </blockquote></p>
4734
4735 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
4736
4737 <pre>
4738  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
4739  p    0001  (device product)
4740  d    0206  (bcddevice)
4741  dc     09  (device class)
4742  dsc    00  (device subclass)
4743  dp     00  (device protocol)
4744  ic     09  (interface class)
4745  isc    00  (interface subclass)
4746  ip     00  (interface protocol)
4747 </pre>
4748
4749 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
4750 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
4751 these alias entries show up:</p>
4752
4753 <p><blockquote>
4754 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
4755 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
4756 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
4757 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
4758 </blockquote></p>
4759
4760 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
4761 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
4762 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
4763
4764 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
4765
4766 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
4767 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
4768
4769 <p><blockquote>
4770 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4771 </blockquote></p>
4772
4773 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
4774
4775 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
4776
4777 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
4778 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
4779 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
4780
4781 <p><blockquote>
4782 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
4783 </blockquote></p>
4784
4785 <p>The values present are</p>
4786
4787 <pre>
4788  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
4789  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
4790  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
4791  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
4792  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
4793  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
4794  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
4795  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
4796  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
4797  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
4798  ct   10             (chassis type)
4799  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
4800 </pre>
4801
4802 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
4803 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
4804
4805 <pre>
4806   3 Desktop
4807   4 Low Profile Desktop
4808   5 Pizza Box
4809   6 Mini Tower
4810   7 Tower
4811   8 Portable
4812   9 Laptop
4813  10 Notebook
4814  11 Hand Held
4815  12 Docking Station
4816  13 All In One
4817  14 Sub Notebook
4818  15 Space-saving
4819  16 Lunch Box
4820  17 Main Server Chassis
4821  18 Expansion Chassis
4822  19 Sub Chassis
4823  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
4824  21 Peripheral Chassis
4825  22 RAID Chassis
4826  23 Rack Mount Chassis
4827  24 Sealed-case PC
4828  25 Multi-system
4829  26 CompactPCI
4830  27 AdvancedTCA
4831  28 Blade
4832  29 Blade Enclosing
4833 </pre>
4834
4835 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
4836 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
4837 claim it is a desktop.</p>
4838
4839 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
4840
4841 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
4842 test machine:</p>
4843
4844 <p><blockquote>
4845 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
4846 </blockquote></p>
4847
4848 <p>The values present are</p>
4849
4850 <pre>
4851   ty  01  (type)
4852   pr  00  (prototype)
4853   id  00  (id)
4854   ex  00  (extra)
4855 </pre>
4856
4857 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
4858 the valid values are.</p>
4859
4860 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
4861
4862 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
4863 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
4864 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
4865 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
4866 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
4867 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
4868 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
4869
4870 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
4871
4872 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
4873 one can use the following shell script:</p>
4874
4875 <pre>
4876   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
4877     echo "$id" ; \
4878     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
4879   done
4880 </pre>
4881
4882 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
4883 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
4884
4885 <pre>
4886   acpi:ACPI0003:
4887     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
4888   acpi:device:
4889   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
4890   acpi:IBM0068:
4891     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
4892     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
4893     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
4894     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
4895   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
4896     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
4897     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
4898     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
4899   [...]
4900 </pre>
4901
4902 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
4903 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
4904 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
4905 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
4906
4907 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
4908 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
4909 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
4910
4911       </div>
4912       <div class="tags">
4913
4914
4915         Tags: <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>.
4916
4917
4918       </div>
4919     </div>
4920     <div class="padding"></div>
4921
4922     <div class="entry">
4923       <div class="title">
4924         <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>
4925       </div>
4926       <div class="date">
4927         10th January 2013
4928       </div>
4929       <div class="body">
4930         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
4931 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
4932 Launcher and updated the Debian package
4933 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
4934 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
4935 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
4936 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
4937 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
4938 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
4939 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
4940 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
4941 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
4942 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
4943 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
4944 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
4945 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
4946 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
4947 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
4948
4949       </div>
4950       <div class="tags">
4951
4952
4953         Tags: <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>.
4954
4955
4956       </div>
4957     </div>
4958     <div class="padding"></div>
4959
4960     <div class="entry">
4961       <div class="title">
4962         <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>
4963       </div>
4964       <div class="date">
4965          9th January 2013
4966       </div>
4967       <div class="body">
4968         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
4969 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
4970 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
4971 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
4972 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
4973 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
4974 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
4975 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
4976 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
4977 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
4978 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
4979
4980 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
4981 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
4982 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
4983 simple:
4984
4985 <ul>
4986
4987 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
4988   starting when a user log in.</li>
4989
4990 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
4991   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
4992
4993 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
4994   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
4995   packages.</li>
4996
4997 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
4998   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
4999
5000 </ul>
5001
5002 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
5003 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
5004 discover database to find packages and
5005 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
5006 packages.</p>
5007
5008 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
5009 draft package is now checked into
5010 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
5011 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
5012 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
5013 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
5014 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
5015 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
5016 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
5017 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
5018 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
5019 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
5020 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
5021 because of the freeze).</p>
5022
5023 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
5024 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
5025 inserted):</p>
5026
5027 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
5028
5029 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
5030 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
5031 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
5032
5033 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
5034 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
5035 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
5036 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
5037 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
5038 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
5039 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
5040
5041 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
5042 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
5043 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
5044 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
5045 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
5046 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
5047 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
5048 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
5049 not be installed?</p>
5050
5051 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
5052 please send me an email. :)</p>
5053
5054       </div>
5055       <div class="tags">
5056
5057
5058         Tags: <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>.
5059
5060
5061       </div>
5062     </div>
5063     <div class="padding"></div>
5064
5065     <div class="entry">
5066       <div class="title">
5067         <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>
5068       </div>
5069       <div class="date">
5070          2nd January 2013
5071       </div>
5072       <div class="body">
5073         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
5074 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
5075 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
5076 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
5077 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
5078 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
5079 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
5080 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
5081 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
5082 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
5083
5084 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
5085 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
5086 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
5087
5088       </div>
5089       <div class="tags">
5090
5091
5092         Tags: <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>.
5093
5094
5095       </div>
5096     </div>
5097     <div class="padding"></div>
5098
5099     <div class="entry">
5100       <div class="title">
5101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5102       </div>
5103       <div class="date">
5104         28th December 2012
5105       </div>
5106       <div class="body">
5107         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
5108 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
5109 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
5110 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
5111 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
5112 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
5113 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
5114 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
5115 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
5116 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
5117 followed by many others. :)</p>
5118
5119 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
5120 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
5121 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
5122 you want to donate to the project.</p>
5123
5124       </div>
5125       <div class="tags">
5126
5127
5128         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5129
5130
5131       </div>
5132     </div>
5133     <div class="padding"></div>
5134
5135     <div class="entry">
5136       <div class="title">
5137         <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>
5138       </div>
5139       <div class="date">
5140         25th December 2012
5141       </div>
5142       <div class="body">
5143         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
5144 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
5145
5146 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
5147 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
5148 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
5149 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
5150 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
5151 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
5152 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
5153 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
5154 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
5155 name.</p>
5156
5157 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
5158 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
5159 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
5160
5161 <blockquote><pre>
5162 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
5163 cd bitcoin
5164 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
5165 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
5166 </pre></blockquote>
5167
5168 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
5169 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
5170 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
5171 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
5172 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
5173 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
5174 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
5175 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
5176 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
5177
5178 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5179 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5180 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5181
5182       </div>
5183       <div class="tags">
5184
5185
5186         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>.
5187
5188
5189       </div>
5190     </div>
5191     <div class="padding"></div>
5192
5193     <div class="entry">
5194       <div class="title">
5195         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
5196       </div>
5197       <div class="date">
5198         21st December 2012
5199       </div>
5200       <div class="body">
5201         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
5202 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
5203 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
5204 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
5205 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
5206 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
5207 is now maintained by a
5208 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
5209 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
5210 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
5211 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
5212 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
5213 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
5214 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
5215 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
5216 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
5217 Corallo in a
5218 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
5219 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
5220 Debian package.</p>
5221
5222 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
5223 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
5224 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
5225 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
5226 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
5227 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
5228 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
5229 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
5230 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
5231 new version to unstable.
5232
5233 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
5234 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
5235 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
5236 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
5237 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
5238 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
5239 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
5240 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
5241 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
5242 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
5243 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
5244 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
5245 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
5246 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
5247 have not tested them.</p>
5248
5249 <p>My
5250 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
5251 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
5252 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
5253 years ago, as can be
5254 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
5255 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
5256 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
5257 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
5258 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
5259 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
5260 the same address as last time,
5261 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5262
5263       </div>
5264       <div class="tags">
5265
5266
5267         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>.
5268
5269
5270       </div>
5271     </div>
5272     <div class="padding"></div>
5273
5274     <div class="entry">
5275       <div class="title">
5276         <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>
5277       </div>
5278       <div class="date">
5279         18th December 2012
5280       </div>
5281       <div class="body">
5282         <p>A few days ago I came across
5283 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
5284 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
5285 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
5286 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
5287 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
5288 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
5289 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
5290 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
5291 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
5292
5293 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
5294 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
5295 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
5296 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
5297
5298 <blockquote><pre>
5299 2004-05-27 Book Store
5300       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
5301       Liabilities:Visa
5302 </pre></blockquote>
5303
5304 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
5305 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
5306 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
5307 Spang</a>,
5308 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
5309 Keen</a>,
5310 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
5311 Cantino</a> and
5312 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
5313 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
5314 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
5315 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
5316 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
5317
5318 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
5319 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
5320 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
5321 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
5322 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
5323
5324 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
5325 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
5326 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
5327 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
5328 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
5329 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
5330 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
5331 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
5332 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
5333
5334       </div>
5335       <div class="tags">
5336
5337
5338         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5339
5340
5341       </div>
5342     </div>
5343     <div class="padding"></div>
5344
5345     <div class="entry">
5346       <div class="title">
5347         <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>
5348       </div>
5349       <div class="date">
5350          6th December 2012
5351       </div>
5352       <div class="body">
5353         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
5354 Oslo</a>, we use the
5355 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
5356 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
5357 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
5358 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
5359 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
5360 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
5361 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
5362 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
5363 Python.</p>
5364
5365 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
5366 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
5367 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
5368 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
5369 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
5370 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
5371
5372 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
5373 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
5374 user currently logged in:</p>
5375
5376 <blockquote><pre>
5377 #!/usr/bin/env python
5378 import getpass
5379 import xmlrpclib
5380 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
5381 username = getpass.getuser()
5382 password = getpass.getpass()
5383 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
5384 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
5385 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
5386 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
5387 result = server.logout(sessionid)
5388 print result
5389 </pre></blockquote>
5390
5391 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
5392 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
5393
5394       </div>
5395       <div class="tags">
5396
5397
5398         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>.
5399
5400
5401       </div>
5402     </div>
5403     <div class="padding"></div>
5404
5405     <div class="entry">
5406       <div class="title">
5407         <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>
5408       </div>
5409       <div class="date">
5410         17th November 2012
5411       </div>
5412       <div class="body">
5413         <p>While working on a
5414 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
5415 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
5416 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
5417 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
5418 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
5419 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
5420
5421 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
5422 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
5423 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
5424 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
5425 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
5426 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
5427 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
5428 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
5429 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
5430 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
5431 arguments.</p>
5432
5433 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
5434 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
5435 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
5436 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
5437 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
5438 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
5439 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
5440 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
5441
5442 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
5443 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
5444 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
5445 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
5446 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
5447 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
5448 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
5449 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
5450 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
5451 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
5452 correct right holder.</p>
5453
5454 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
5455 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
5456 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
5457 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
5458 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
5459 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
5460 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
5461 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
5462 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
5463 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
5464 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
5465 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
5466 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
5467 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
5468
5469 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
5470 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
5471 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
5472
5473 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
5474 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
5475
5476       </div>
5477       <div class="tags">
5478
5479
5480         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>.
5481
5482
5483       </div>
5484     </div>
5485     <div class="padding"></div>
5486
5487     <div class="entry">
5488       <div class="title">
5489         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
5490       </div>
5491       <div class="date">
5492         14th November 2012
5493       </div>
5494       <div class="body">
5495         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
5496 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
5497 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
5498 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
5499 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
5500 the people behind the German
5501 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
5502 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
5503 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
5504
5505 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5506
5507 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
5508 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
5509 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
5510
5511 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
5512 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
5513 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
5514 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
5515 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
5516 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
5517
5518 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
5519 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
5520 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
5521 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
5522 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
5523 relationship management and the communication processes in the
5524 project.</p>
5525
5526 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
5527 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
5528 and a yoga teacher.</p>
5529
5530 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5531 project?</strong></p>
5532
5533 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
5534
5535 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
5536 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
5537 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
5538 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
5539 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
5540 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
5541 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
5542 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
5543 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
5544 parents.</p>
5545
5546 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
5547 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
5548 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
5549 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
5550 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
5551 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
5552 Germany.</p>
5553
5554 <p>For information about our school project you can read
5555 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
5556 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
5557
5558 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5559 Edu?</strong></p>
5560
5561 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
5562 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
5563
5564 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
5565 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
5566 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
5567 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
5568 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
5569 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
5570 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
5571 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
5572 teachers, parents...</p>
5573
5574 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5575 Edu?</strong></p>
5576
5577 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
5578 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
5579
5580 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
5581 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
5582 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
5583 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
5584 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
5585
5586 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
5587 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
5588 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
5589 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
5590 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
5591 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
5592 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
5593
5594 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5595
5596 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
5597 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
5598 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
5599 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
5600
5601 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5602 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5603
5604 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
5605 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
5606 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
5607 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
5608 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
5609
5610 <ul>
5611
5612 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
5613 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
5614 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
5615
5616 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
5617 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
5618 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
5619 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
5620 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
5621 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
5622 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
5623
5624 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
5625 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
5626 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
5627 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
5628
5629 </ul>
5630
5631       </div>
5632       <div class="tags">
5633
5634
5635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5636
5637
5638       </div>
5639     </div>
5640     <div class="padding"></div>
5641
5642     <div class="entry">
5643       <div class="title">
5644         <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>
5645       </div>
5646       <div class="date">
5647          4th November 2012
5648       </div>
5649       <div class="body">
5650         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
5651 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
5652 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
5653 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
5654 see how a member of the bitcoin community
5655 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
5656 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
5657 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
5658 competition.  My thoughts go to the
5659 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
5660 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
5661 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
5662 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
5663 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
5664
5665 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
5666 that the community already seem to have
5667 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
5668 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
5669 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
5670 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
5671 wealth is available.</p>
5672
5673       </div>
5674       <div class="tags">
5675
5676
5677         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>.
5678
5679
5680       </div>
5681     </div>
5682     <div class="padding"></div>
5683
5684     <div class="entry">
5685       <div class="title">
5686         <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>
5687       </div>
5688       <div class="date">
5689         26th October 2012
5690       </div>
5691       <div class="body">
5692         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
5693 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
5694 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
5695 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
5696 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
5697 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
5698 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
5699 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
5700 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
5701 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
5702 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
5703 it every time.</p>
5704
5705 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
5706 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
5707 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
5708 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
5709 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
5710 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
5711 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
5712 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
5713 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
5714 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
5715 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
5716 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
5717
5718 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
5719 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
5720 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
5721 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
5722 article: First the unplanned outage:
5723
5724 <blockquote><pre>
5725 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
5726 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
5727 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
5728 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
5729 Duration:    40 minutes
5730 Scope:       Exchange 2003
5731 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
5732              a cluster failover.
5733
5734 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
5735              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
5736 Technician:  [xxx]
5737 </pre></blockquote>
5738
5739 Next the planned outage:
5740
5741 <blockquote><pre>
5742 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
5743 Severity:    Major (Planned)
5744 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
5745 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
5746 Duration:    10 hours
5747 Scope:       H2 Transport
5748 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
5749              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
5750              4510s.
5751 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
5752              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
5753              connectivity.
5754 Technician:  [xxx]
5755 </pre></blockquote>
5756
5757 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
5758 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
5759 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
5760 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
5761 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
5762 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
5763 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
5764
5765 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
5766 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
5767 university too.  We do register
5768 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
5769 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
5770 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
5771 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
5772 for other sites to consider too?</p>
5773
5774       </div>
5775       <div class="tags">
5776
5777
5778         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>.
5779
5780
5781       </div>
5782     </div>
5783     <div class="padding"></div>
5784
5785     <div class="entry">
5786       <div class="title">
5787         <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>
5788       </div>
5789       <div class="date">
5790         22nd October 2012
5791       </div>
5792       <div class="body">
5793         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
5794 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
5795 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
5796 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
5797 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
5798 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
5799 background information is available in Norwegian from
5800 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
5801 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
5802 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
5803 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
5804 willing to
5805 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
5806 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
5807 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
5808 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
5809 sounded like
5810 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
5811 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
5812 later.</p>
5813
5814 <p>And thought this action is
5815 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
5816 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
5817 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
5818 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
5819 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
5820 rights.</p>
5821
5822 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
5823 unacceptable terms.  For example
5824 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
5825 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
5826 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
5827 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
5828 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
5829
5830 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
5831 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
5832 restored the account of the user, as reported by
5833 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
5834 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
5835 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
5836 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
5837 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
5838 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
5839 reading two opinions from
5840 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
5841 Phipps</a> and
5842 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
5843 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
5844 details about the original story.</p>
5845
5846       </div>
5847       <div class="tags">
5848
5849
5850         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>.
5851
5852
5853       </div>
5854     </div>
5855     <div class="padding"></div>
5856
5857     <div class="entry">
5858       <div class="title">
5859         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
5860       </div>
5861       <div class="date">
5862         18th October 2012
5863       </div>
5864       <div class="body">
5865         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
5866 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
5867 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
5868 across a marvellous drawing by
5869 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
5870 visualising some of what is going on.
5871
5872 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
5873 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
5874
5875 <blockquote>
5876 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
5877 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
5878 </blockquote>
5879
5880 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
5881 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
5882 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
5883 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
5884 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
5885 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
5886
5887       </div>
5888       <div class="tags">
5889
5890
5891         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>.
5892
5893
5894       </div>
5895     </div>
5896     <div class="padding"></div>
5897
5898     <div class="entry">
5899       <div class="title">
5900         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
5901       </div>
5902       <div class="date">
5903         12th October 2012
5904       </div>
5905       <div class="body">
5906         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
5907 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
5908 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
5909 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
5910 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
5911 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
5912 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
5913 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
5914 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
5915 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
5916 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
5917 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
5918 matter".</p>
5919
5920 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
5921 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
5922 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
5923 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
5924 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
5925 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
5926 to argue its side.</p>
5927
5928 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
5929 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
5930 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
5931 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
5932
5933 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
5934 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
5935 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
5936
5937       </div>
5938       <div class="tags">
5939
5940
5941         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>.
5942
5943
5944       </div>
5945     </div>
5946     <div class="padding"></div>
5947
5948     <div class="entry">
5949       <div class="title">
5950         <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>
5951       </div>
5952       <div class="date">
5953          3rd October 2012
5954       </div>
5955       <div class="body">
5956         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
5957 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
5958 the computer science book collection available in his local
5959 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
5960 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
5961 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
5962 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
5963 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
5964 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
5965 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
5966 recently published books.</p>
5967
5968 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
5969 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
5970 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
5971 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
5972 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
5973 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
5974 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
5975 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
5976 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
5977 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
5978 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
5979 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
5980 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
5981 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
5982 for the library that evening.</p>
5983
5984 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
5985 going to know that for example
5986 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
5987 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
5988 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
5989 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
5990 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
5991 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
5992 book right away.</p>
5993
5994       </div>
5995       <div class="tags">
5996
5997
5998         Tags: <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/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
6008       </div>
6009       <div class="date">
6010         23rd September 2012
6011       </div>
6012       <div class="body">
6013         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
6014 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
6015 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
6016 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
6017 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
6018 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
6019
6020 When I started, I
6021 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
6022 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
6023 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
6024 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
6025 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
6026 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
6027 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
6028
6029 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
6030
6031 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
6032 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
6033 the project files currently available from
6034 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6035
6036 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6037 the updated
6038 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6039 and
6040 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6041 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6042 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6043 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6044
6045       </div>
6046       <div class="tags">
6047
6048
6049         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>.
6050
6051
6052       </div>
6053     </div>
6054     <div class="padding"></div>
6055
6056     <div class="entry">
6057       <div class="title">
6058         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
6059       </div>
6060       <div class="date">
6061         17th September 2012
6062       </div>
6063       <div class="body">
6064         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
6065 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
6066 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
6067 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
6068 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
6069 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
6070 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
6071
6072 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6073
6074 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
6075 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
6076 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
6077 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
6078 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
6079 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
6080 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
6081 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
6082 training is anyway very important</p>
6083
6084 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
6085 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
6086 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
6087 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
6088 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
6089
6090 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6091 project?</strong></p>
6092
6093 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
6094 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
6095 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
6096 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
6097 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
6098 hole.</p>
6099
6100 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6101 Edu?</strong></p>
6102
6103 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
6104 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
6105 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
6106 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
6107 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
6108 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
6109 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
6110 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
6111 hassle.</p>
6112
6113 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6114 Edu?</strong></p>
6115
6116 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
6117 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
6118 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
6119 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
6120 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
6121 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
6122 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
6123 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
6124
6125 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6126
6127 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
6128 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
6129 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
6130 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
6131 has the same...</p>
6132
6133 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
6134 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
6135 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
6136 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
6137
6138 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6139 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6140
6141 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
6142 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
6143 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
6144
6145 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
6146 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
6147 don't.</p>
6148
6149 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
6150 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
6151 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
6152 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
6153 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
6154 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
6155 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
6156
6157       </div>
6158       <div class="tags">
6159
6160
6161         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
6162
6163
6164       </div>
6165     </div>
6166     <div class="padding"></div>
6167
6168     <div class="entry">
6169       <div class="title">
6170         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
6171       </div>
6172       <div class="date">
6173         15th September 2012
6174       </div>
6175       <div class="body">
6176         <p>After the
6177 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
6178 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
6179 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
6180 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
6181 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
6182 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
6183 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
6184 was
6185 <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
6186 formal working group should be formed.</p>
6187
6188 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
6189 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
6190 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
6191 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
6192 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
6193 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
6194 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
6195 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
6196
6197 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
6198 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
6199 IETF.</p>
6200
6201       </div>
6202       <div class="tags">
6203
6204
6205         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>.
6206
6207
6208       </div>
6209     </div>
6210     <div class="padding"></div>
6211
6212     <div class="entry">
6213       <div class="title">
6214         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
6215       </div>
6216       <div class="date">
6217         12th September 2012
6218       </div>
6219       <div class="body">
6220         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
6221 publication of of
6222 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
6223 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
6224 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
6225 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
6226 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
6227 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
6228 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
6229 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
6230 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
6231 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
6232
6233 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
6234 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
6235 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
6236 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
6237
6238 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
6239 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
6240
6241       </div>
6242       <div class="tags">
6243
6244
6245         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>.
6246
6247
6248       </div>
6249     </div>
6250     <div class="padding"></div>
6251
6252     <div class="entry">
6253       <div class="title">
6254         <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>
6255       </div>
6256       <div class="date">
6257          7th September 2012
6258       </div>
6259       <div class="body">
6260         <p>As I
6261 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
6262 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
6263 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
6264 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
6265 repository for the project</a>.</p>
6266
6267 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
6268 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
6269 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
6270 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
6271
6272 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
6273 PostScript formats at
6274 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
6275 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
6276
6277       </div>
6278       <div class="tags">
6279
6280
6281         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
6282
6283
6284       </div>
6285     </div>
6286     <div class="padding"></div>
6287
6288     <div class="entry">
6289       <div class="title">
6290         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
6291       </div>
6292       <div class="date">
6293         23rd August 2012
6294       </div>
6295       <div class="body">
6296         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
6297 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
6298 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
6299 revisit the great site
6300 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
6301 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
6302 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
6303
6304       </div>
6305       <div class="tags">
6306
6307
6308         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>.
6309
6310
6311       </div>
6312     </div>
6313     <div class="padding"></div>
6314
6315     <div class="entry">
6316       <div class="title">
6317         <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>
6318       </div>
6319       <div class="date">
6320         17th August 2012
6321       </div>
6322       <div class="body">
6323         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
6324 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
6325 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
6326 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
6327 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
6328 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
6329 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
6330 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
6331 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
6332 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
6333 summer I
6334 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
6335 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
6336 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
6337
6338 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
6339 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
6340 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
6341 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
6342 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
6343 progress:</p>
6344
6345 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
6346
6347 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
6348 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
6349 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
6350 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
6351 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
6352 english version of the docbook source.</p>
6353
6354 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
6355 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
6356 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
6357 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
6358 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
6359 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
6360 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
6361 project files currently available from <a
6362 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6363
6364 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
6365 the updated
6366 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
6367 and
6368 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
6369 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
6370 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
6371 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
6372
6373       </div>
6374       <div class="tags">
6375
6376
6377         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>.
6378
6379
6380       </div>
6381     </div>
6382     <div class="padding"></div>
6383
6384     <div class="entry">
6385       <div class="title">
6386         <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>
6387       </div>
6388       <div class="date">
6389         10th August 2012
6390       </div>
6391       <div class="body">
6392         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
6393 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
6394 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
6395 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
6396 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
6397 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
6398 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
6399 case for the language
6400 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
6401 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
6402
6403 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
6404 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
6405 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
6406 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
6407 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
6408
6409 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
6410 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
6411 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
6412 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
6413 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
6414 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
6415 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
6416 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
6417 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
6418 alias for 'nb'.</p>
6419
6420 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
6421 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
6422 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
6423 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
6424 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
6425 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
6426 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
6427 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
6428 at the same time. :(</p>
6429
6430 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
6431 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
6432 processors. :(</p>
6433
6434 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
6435
6436       </div>
6437       <div class="tags">
6438
6439
6440         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>.
6441
6442
6443       </div>
6444     </div>
6445     <div class="padding"></div>
6446
6447     <div class="entry">
6448       <div class="title">
6449         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
6450       </div>
6451       <div class="date">
6452         31st July 2012
6453       </div>
6454       <div class="body">
6455         <p>I tried to send this text to the
6456 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
6457 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
6458 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
6459 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
6460 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
6461 out.</p>
6462
6463 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
6464 learning curve at the moment.</p>
6465
6466 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
6467 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
6468 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
6469 available from
6470 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
6471 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
6472 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
6473 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
6474 Squeeze.</p>
6475
6476 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
6477 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
6478 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
6479 problems.</p>
6480
6481 <ul>
6482
6483 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
6484    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
6485    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
6486    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
6487    index references spanning several pages (See
6488    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
6489    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
6490    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
6491
6492 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
6493    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
6494    #683163</a>).</li>
6495
6496 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
6497    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
6498    footnote and text body, see
6499    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
6500    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
6501    refs listed are not right).</li>
6502
6503 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
6504
6505 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
6506    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
6507
6508 </ul>
6509
6510 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
6511 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
6512 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
6513
6514 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
6515
6516       </div>
6517       <div class="tags">
6518
6519
6520         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>.
6521
6522
6523       </div>
6524     </div>
6525     <div class="padding"></div>
6526
6527     <div class="entry">
6528       <div class="title">
6529         <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>
6530       </div>
6531       <div class="date">
6532         21st July 2012
6533       </div>
6534       <div class="body">
6535         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
6536 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
6537 norwegian version</a> of the book
6538 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
6539 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
6540 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
6541 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
6542 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6543
6544 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
6545 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
6546 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
6547 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
6548 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
6549 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
6550 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
6551 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
6552 print. :)</p>
6553
6554 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
6555 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
6556 language.</p>
6557
6558       </div>
6559       <div class="tags">
6560
6561
6562         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>.
6563
6564
6565       </div>
6566     </div>
6567     <div class="padding"></div>
6568
6569     <div class="entry">
6570       <div class="title">
6571         <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>
6572       </div>
6573       <div class="date">
6574         16th July 2012
6575       </div>
6576       <div class="body">
6577         <p>I am currently working on a
6578 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
6579 to translate</a> the book
6580 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
6581 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
6582 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
6583 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
6584 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
6585 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
6586 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
6587
6588 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
6589 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
6590 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
6591 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
6592 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
6593 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
6594 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
6595 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
6596 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
6597
6598       </div>
6599       <div class="tags">
6600
6601
6602         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>.
6603
6604
6605       </div>
6606     </div>
6607     <div class="padding"></div>
6608
6609     <div class="entry">
6610       <div class="title">
6611         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
6612       </div>
6613       <div class="date">
6614          9th July 2012
6615       </div>
6616       <div class="body">
6617         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6618 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
6619 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
6620 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
6621 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
6622 to adjust and scale the just released
6623 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
6624 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
6625 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
6626
6627 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
6628
6629 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
6630 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
6631 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
6632 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
6633 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
6634 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
6635 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
6636 perspective when working with IT.</p>
6637
6638 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
6639 project?</strong></p>
6640
6641 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
6642 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
6643 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
6644 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
6645 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
6646 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
6647
6648 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6649 Edu?</strong></p>
6650
6651 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
6652 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
6653 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
6654 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
6655 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
6656 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
6657 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
6658 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
6659 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
6660 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
6661 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
6662 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
6663 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
6664 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
6665 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
6666 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
6667 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
6668 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
6669 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
6670 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
6671 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
6672 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
6673 quicker to update.
6674
6675 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
6676 Edu?</strong></p>
6677
6678 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
6679 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
6680 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
6681 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
6682 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
6683 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
6684
6685 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
6686 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
6687 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
6688 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
6689 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
6690 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
6691 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
6692 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
6693 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
6694 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
6695 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
6696 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
6697 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
6698 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
6699 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
6700
6701 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
6702 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
6703 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
6704 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
6705 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
6706 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
6707 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
6708 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
6709
6710 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
6711 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
6712 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
6713 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
6714 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
6715 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
6716 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
6717 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
6718 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
6719 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
6720 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
6721 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
6722 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
6723 sound file.</p>
6724
6725 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
6726 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
6727 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
6728 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
6729 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
6730 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
6731 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
6732 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
6733 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
6734
6735 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
6736
6737 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
6738 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
6739 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
6740 )</p>
6741
6742 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6743 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
6744
6745 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
6746 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
6747 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
6748 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
6749 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
6750 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
6751 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
6752 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
6753 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
6754 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
6755 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
6756 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
6757 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
6758 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
6759 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
6760
6761 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
6762 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
6763 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
6764 management with Airtime</a>,
6765 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
6766 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
6767 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
6768 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
6769 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
6770
6771       </div>
6772       <div class="tags">
6773
6774
6775         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
6776
6777
6778       </div>
6779     </div>
6780     <div class="padding"></div>
6781
6782     <div class="entry">
6783       <div class="title">
6784         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
6785       </div>
6786       <div class="date">
6787          8th July 2012
6788       </div>
6789       <div class="body">
6790         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
6791 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
6792 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
6793 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
6794 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
6795 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
6796 Steinberg in his blog post
6797 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
6798 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
6799 spending of your tax money.</p>
6800
6801 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
6802 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
6803 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
6804 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
6805 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
6806 purchases.</p>
6807
6808       </div>
6809       <div class="tags">
6810
6811
6812         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6813
6814
6815       </div>
6816     </div>
6817     <div class="padding"></div>
6818
6819     <div class="entry">
6820       <div class="title">
6821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
6822       </div>
6823       <div class="date">
6824          7th July 2012
6825       </div>
6826       <div class="body">
6827         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6828 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
6829 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
6830 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
6831 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
6832 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
6833 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
6834 receive.  The software is
6835
6836 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
6837 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
6838 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
6839 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
6840 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
6841 Windows</a>.</p>
6842
6843 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
6844 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
6845
6846 <p><ul>
6847
6848   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
6849     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
6850
6851   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
6852     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
6853     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
6854     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
6855     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
6856     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
6857     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
6858     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
6859     </li>
6860
6861   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
6862     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
6863
6864   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
6865     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
6866
6867   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
6868     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
6869
6870   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
6871
6872   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
6873     formats </li>
6874
6875   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
6876     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
6877     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
6878     (as separate sets)</li>
6879
6880   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
6881     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
6882     percentage)</li>
6883
6884   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
6885     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
6886     memory):
6887     <ul>
6888       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
6889       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
6890       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
6891       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
6892       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
6893       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
6894       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
6895       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
6896       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
6897       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
6898           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
6899           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
6900           activity)</li>
6901       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
6902       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
6903     </ul></li>
6904
6905   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
6906     <ul>
6907       <li>Break periods</li>
6908       <li>For teacher(s):
6909         <ul>
6910           <li>Not available periods</li>
6911           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
6912           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
6913           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
6914           <li>Min hours daily</li>
6915           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
6916
6917           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
6918             days per week</li>
6919         </ul></li>
6920       <li>For students (sets):
6921         <ul>
6922           <li>Not available periods</li>
6923           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
6924           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
6925           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
6926           <li>Min hours daily</li>
6927           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
6928
6929           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
6930             days per week</li>
6931         </ul></li>
6932       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
6933         <ul>
6934           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
6935           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
6936           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
6937           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
6938           <li>End(s) students day</li>
6939           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
6940           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
6941             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
6942           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
6943           <li>Not overlapping</li>
6944           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
6945           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
6946         </ul></li>
6947     </ul></li>
6948
6949   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
6950     <ul>
6951       <li>Room not available periods</li>
6952       <li>For teacher(s):
6953         <ul>
6954           <li>Home room(s)</li>
6955           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
6956           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
6957         </ul>
6958       </li>
6959
6960       <li>For students (sets):
6961         <ul>
6962           <li>Home room(s)</li>
6963           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
6964           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
6965         </ul>
6966       </li>
6967       <li>Preferred room(s):
6968         <ul>
6969           <li>For a subject</li>
6970           <li>For an activity tag</li>
6971           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
6972           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
6973         </ul>
6974       </li>
6975
6976       <li>For a set of activities:
6977         <ul>
6978           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
6979         </ul>
6980       </li>
6981     </ul>
6982   </li>
6983 </ul></p>
6984
6985 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
6986 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
6987 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
6988 manually, check it out.
6989
6990 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
6991 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
6992 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
6993 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
6994 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
6995 section</a>.</p>
6996
6997       </div>
6998       <div class="tags">
6999
7000
7001         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7002
7003
7004       </div>
7005     </div>
7006     <div class="padding"></div>
7007
7008     <div class="entry">
7009       <div class="title">
7010         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
7011       </div>
7012       <div class="date">
7013          3rd July 2012
7014       </div>
7015       <div class="body">
7016         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
7017 project (Norwegian version of
7018 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
7019 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
7020 a problem with the municipalities using
7021 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
7022 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
7023 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
7024 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
7025 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
7026 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
7027 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
7028 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
7029 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
7030 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
7031 the From: header.</p>
7032
7033 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
7034 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
7035 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
7036 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
7037 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
7038 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
7039 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
7040 behaviour.</p>
7041
7042 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
7043 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
7044 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
7045 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
7046 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
7047 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
7048 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
7049
7050       </div>
7051       <div class="tags">
7052
7053
7054         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>.
7055
7056
7057       </div>
7058     </div>
7059     <div class="padding"></div>
7060
7061     <div class="entry">
7062       <div class="title">
7063         <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>
7064       </div>
7065       <div class="date">
7066         26th June 2012
7067       </div>
7068       <div class="body">
7069         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
7070 another interview with the people behind
7071 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
7072 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
7073 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
7074 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
7075 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
7076 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7077 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
7078
7079 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7080
7081 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
7082 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
7083 ICT in schools</p>
7084
7085 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7086 project?</strong></p>
7087
7088 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
7089 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
7090 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
7091 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
7092
7093 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7094 Edu?</strong></p>
7095
7096 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
7097 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
7098 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
7099 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
7100
7101 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7102 Edu?</strong></p>
7103
7104 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
7105 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
7106 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
7107 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
7108 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
7109 technologies in school.</p>
7110
7111 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7112
7113 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
7114 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
7115 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
7116
7117 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7118 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7119
7120 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
7121 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
7122 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
7123 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
7124
7125 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
7126 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
7127 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
7128
7129 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
7130 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
7131 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
7132 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
7133 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
7134 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
7135 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
7136 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
7137 working there.</p>
7138
7139       </div>
7140       <div class="tags">
7141
7142
7143         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7144
7145
7146       </div>
7147     </div>
7148     <div class="padding"></div>
7149
7150     <div class="entry">
7151       <div class="title">
7152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
7153       </div>
7154       <div class="date">
7155         24th June 2012
7156       </div>
7157       <div class="body">
7158         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
7159 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
7160 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
7161 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
7162 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
7163 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
7164 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
7165 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
7166 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
7167 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
7168 missing in my book.</p>
7169
7170 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
7171 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
7172 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
7173 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
7174 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
7175 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
7176 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
7177
7178       </div>
7179       <div class="tags">
7180
7181
7182         Tags: <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>.
7183
7184
7185       </div>
7186     </div>
7187     <div class="padding"></div>
7188
7189     <div class="entry">
7190       <div class="title">
7191         <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>
7192       </div>
7193       <div class="date">
7194         11th June 2012
7195       </div>
7196       <div class="body">
7197         <p>During my work on
7198 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
7199 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
7200 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
7201 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
7202 explanation.</p>
7203
7204 <p><ul>
7205
7206 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
7207 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
7208 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
7209 system depend on tasksel tasks in
7210 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
7211 installation.</li>
7212
7213 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
7214 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
7215 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
7216 at least try to enable it for these services:
7217 <ul>
7218
7219   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
7220     quotas.</li>
7221   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
7222   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
7223   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
7224   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
7225   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
7226
7227 </ul></li>
7228
7229 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
7230 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
7231 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
7232 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
7233
7234 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
7235 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
7236 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
7237
7238 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
7239 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
7240 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
7241 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
7242 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
7243 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
7244
7245 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
7246 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
7247 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
7248 in Wheezy.
7249
7250 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
7251 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
7252 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
7253
7254 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
7255 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
7256 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
7257 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
7258
7259 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
7260 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
7261 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
7262 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
7263
7264 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
7265 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
7266 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
7267
7268 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
7269 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
7270 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
7271
7272 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
7273 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
7274 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
7275 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
7276 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
7277
7278 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
7279 <ul>
7280
7281 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
7282 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
7283 <li>and probably more?</li>
7284 </ul></li>
7285
7286 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
7287 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
7288 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
7289 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
7290 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
7291 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
7292 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
7293 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
7294
7295
7296 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
7297 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
7298 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
7299 use.</li>
7300
7301 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
7302 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
7303 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
7304 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
7305 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
7306
7307 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
7308 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
7309 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
7310 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
7311 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
7312 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
7313
7314 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
7315 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
7316 There are at least three implementations,
7317 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
7318 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
7319 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
7320 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
7321 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
7322 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
7323 given room.</li>
7324
7325 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
7326 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
7327 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
7328 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
7329 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
7330 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
7331 investigated.</li>
7332
7333 </ul></p>
7334
7335 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
7336 version.</p>
7337
7338       </div>
7339       <div class="tags">
7340
7341
7342         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7343
7344
7345       </div>
7346     </div>
7347     <div class="padding"></div>
7348
7349     <div class="entry">
7350       <div class="title">
7351         <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>
7352       </div>
7353       <div class="date">
7354          9th June 2012
7355       </div>
7356       <div class="body">
7357         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
7358 <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
7359 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
7360 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
7361 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
7362 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
7363 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
7364 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
7365 be willing to pay for.</p>
7366
7367 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
7368 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
7369 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
7370 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
7371 Orwell</a>.</p>
7372
7373       </div>
7374       <div class="tags">
7375
7376
7377         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>.
7378
7379
7380       </div>
7381     </div>
7382     <div class="padding"></div>
7383
7384     <div class="entry">
7385       <div class="title">
7386         <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>
7387       </div>
7388       <div class="date">
7389          6th June 2012
7390       </div>
7391       <div class="body">
7392         <p>A few days ago
7393 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
7394 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
7395 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
7396 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
7397 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
7398 code for HP, Dell and IBM
7399 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
7400 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
7401 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
7402 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
7403 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
7404
7405 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
7406 output:
7407
7408 <blockquote><pre>
7409 % 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>
7410 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": ""})
7411 %
7412 </pre></blockquote>
7413
7414 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
7415 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
7416 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
7417
7418       </div>
7419       <div class="tags">
7420
7421
7422         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>.
7423
7424
7425       </div>
7426     </div>
7427     <div class="padding"></div>
7428
7429     <div class="entry">
7430       <div class="title">
7431         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
7432       </div>
7433       <div class="date">
7434          2nd June 2012
7435       </div>
7436       <div class="body">
7437         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
7438 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7439 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
7440 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
7441 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7442 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
7443
7444 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7445
7446 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
7447 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
7448 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
7449 by Angela).</p>
7450
7451 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
7452 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
7453 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
7454 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
7455 becoming an osteopath.</p>
7456
7457 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
7458 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
7459 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
7460 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
7461 skills with communication skills.</p>
7462
7463 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7464 project?</strong></p>
7465
7466 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
7467 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
7468 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
7469 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
7470 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
7471
7472 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
7473 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
7474 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
7475 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
7476 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
7477 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
7478 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
7479 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
7480 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
7481
7482 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
7483 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
7484 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
7485
7486 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
7487
7488 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
7489 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
7490 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
7491 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
7492 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
7493 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
7494 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
7495 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
7496 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
7497 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
7498 point.</p>
7499
7500 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
7501 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
7502 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
7503 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
7504 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
7505 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
7506
7507 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
7508 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
7509 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
7510 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
7511 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
7512 spare time.</p>
7513
7514 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
7515 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
7516 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
7517 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
7518 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
7519
7520 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
7521 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
7522 avoidance do exist.</p>
7523
7524 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
7525 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
7526 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
7527 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
7528 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
7529 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
7530 and probably a gain for all.</p>
7531
7532 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7533 Edu?</strong></p>
7534
7535 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
7536 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
7537 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
7538 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
7539 project communication, honest communication within the group of
7540 developers, etc.</p>
7541
7542 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7543 Edu?</strong></p>
7544
7545 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
7546
7547 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
7548 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
7549 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
7550 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
7551 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
7552 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
7553 contribute).</p>
7554
7555 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
7556 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
7557 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
7558 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
7559 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
7560 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
7561 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
7562 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
7563 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
7564 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
7565
7566 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7567
7568 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
7569
7570 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
7571 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
7572 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
7573
7574 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
7575 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
7576 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
7577 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
7578
7579 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
7580 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
7581 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
7582 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
7583 whiteboard.</p>
7584
7585 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
7586
7587 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7588 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7589
7590 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
7591 enrol people.</p>
7592
7593       </div>
7594       <div class="tags">
7595
7596
7597         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7598
7599
7600       </div>
7601     </div>
7602     <div class="padding"></div>
7603
7604     <div class="entry">
7605       <div class="title">
7606         <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>
7607       </div>
7608       <div class="date">
7609          1st June 2012
7610       </div>
7611       <div class="body">
7612         <p>A few years ago I wrote
7613 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
7614 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
7615 I have learned from colleges here at the
7616 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
7617 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
7618 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
7619 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
7620 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
7621
7622 <p><pre>
7623 use strict;
7624 use warnings;
7625 use SOAP::Lite;
7626 use Data::Dumper;
7627 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
7628 my $App = 'test';
7629 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
7630 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
7631 my $s = SOAP::Lite
7632     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
7633     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
7634     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
7635     ;
7636 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
7637     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
7638     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
7639     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
7640 );
7641 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
7642 </pre></p>
7643
7644 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
7645
7646 <p><pre>
7647 $VAR1 = {
7648           'Asset' => {
7649                      'Entitlements' => {
7650                                        'EntitlementData' => [
7651                                                             {
7652                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
7653                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
7654                                                               'Provider' => '',
7655                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
7656                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
7657                                                             },
7658                                                             {
7659                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
7660                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
7661                                                               'Provider' => '',
7662                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
7663                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
7664                                                             },
7665                                                             {
7666                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
7667                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
7668                                                               'Provider' => '',
7669                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
7670                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
7671                                                             }
7672                                                           ]
7673                                      },
7674                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
7675                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
7676                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
7677                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
7678                                           'Buid' => '2323',
7679                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
7680                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
7681                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
7682                                         }
7683                    }
7684         };
7685 </pre></p>
7686
7687 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
7688 service outside the
7689 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
7690 documentation</a>, and according to
7691 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
7692 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
7693 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
7694
7695 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
7696 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
7697
7698       </div>
7699       <div class="tags">
7700
7701
7702         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>.
7703
7704
7705       </div>
7706     </div>
7707     <div class="padding"></div>
7708
7709     <div class="entry">
7710       <div class="title">
7711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
7712       </div>
7713       <div class="date">
7714         31st May 2012
7715       </div>
7716       <div class="body">
7717         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
7718 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
7719 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
7720 running Debian Squeeze, where
7721 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
7722 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
7723 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
7724 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
7725 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
7726 another day.</p>
7727
7728 <p>After calibration, I get a
7729 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
7730 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
7731 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
7732 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
7733 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
7734 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
7735 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
7736 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
7737 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
7738 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
7739 and a simple</p>
7740
7741 <p><pre>
7742 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
7743 </pre></p>
7744
7745 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
7746 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
7747 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
7748 enough for now.</p>
7749
7750       </div>
7751       <div class="tags">
7752
7753
7754         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7755
7756
7757       </div>
7758     </div>
7759     <div class="padding"></div>
7760
7761     <div class="entry">
7762       <div class="title">
7763         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
7764       </div>
7765       <div class="date">
7766         27th May 2012
7767       </div>
7768       <div class="body">
7769         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
7770 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
7771 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
7772 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
7773 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
7774 since then, helping to make sure the
7775 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
7776 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
7777
7778 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7779
7780 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
7781 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
7782 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
7783 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
7784 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
7785 our computer network.</p>
7786
7787 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
7788 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
7789 (4 months).</p>
7790
7791 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
7792 project?</strong></p>
7793
7794 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
7795 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
7796 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
7797 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
7798 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
7799 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
7800 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
7801 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
7802 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
7803 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
7804 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
7805 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
7806 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
7807 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
7808
7809 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7810 Edu?</strong></p>
7811
7812 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
7813 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
7814 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
7815 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
7816 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
7817 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
7818 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
7819 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
7820
7821 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7822 Edu?</strong></p>
7823
7824 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
7825 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
7826 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
7827 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
7828 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
7829 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
7830 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
7831 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
7832 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
7833 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
7834 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
7835 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
7836
7837 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7838
7839 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
7840 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
7841 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
7842
7843 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7844 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7845
7846 <p><ol>
7847
7848 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
7849 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
7850 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
7851 developing.</li>
7852
7853 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
7854 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
7855 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
7856 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
7857 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
7858
7859 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
7860 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
7861 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
7862
7863 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
7864 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
7865 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
7866 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
7867
7868 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
7869 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
7870 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
7871
7872 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
7873
7874 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
7875 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
7876 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
7877 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
7878
7879 </ol></p>
7880
7881       </div>
7882       <div class="tags">
7883
7884
7885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7886
7887
7888       </div>
7889     </div>
7890     <div class="padding"></div>
7891
7892     <div class="entry">
7893       <div class="title">
7894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
7895       </div>
7896       <div class="date">
7897         26th May 2012
7898       </div>
7899       <div class="body">
7900         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
7901 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
7902 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
7903 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
7904 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
7905
7906 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
7907 <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>
7908 comment:</p>
7909
7910 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
7911 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
7912 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
7913 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
7914 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
7915 </blockquote></p>
7916
7917 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
7918 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
7919 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
7920 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
7921 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
7922 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
7923 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
7924 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
7925 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
7926 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
7927 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
7928 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
7929 of wasted effort.</p>
7930
7931 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
7932 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
7933 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
7934
7935 <p>See
7936 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
7937 and
7938 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
7939 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
7940 </blockquote></p>
7941
7942       </div>
7943       <div class="tags">
7944
7945
7946         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>.
7947
7948
7949       </div>
7950     </div>
7951     <div class="padding"></div>
7952
7953     <div class="entry">
7954       <div class="title">
7955         <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>
7956       </div>
7957       <div class="date">
7958         18th May 2012
7959       </div>
7960       <div class="body">
7961         <p>In january, I
7962 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
7963 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
7964 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
7965 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
7966 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
7967 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
7968 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
7969 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
7970 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
7971 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
7972
7973 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
7974 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
7975 drivers. :)</p>
7976
7977       </div>
7978       <div class="tags">
7979
7980
7981         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7982
7983
7984       </div>
7985     </div>
7986     <div class="padding"></div>
7987
7988     <div class="entry">
7989       <div class="title">
7990         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
7991       </div>
7992       <div class="date">
7993         13th May 2012
7994       </div>
7995       <div class="body">
7996         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
7997 publish another interview with the people behind
7998 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
7999 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
8000 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
8001 details get right before release.
8002
8003 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8004
8005 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
8006 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
8007 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
8008 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
8009 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
8010 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
8011 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
8012 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
8013
8014 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
8015 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
8016 home since 2006.</p>
8017
8018 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8019 project?</strong></p>
8020
8021 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
8022 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
8023 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
8024 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
8025 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
8026 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
8027
8028 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
8029 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
8030 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
8031 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
8032 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
8033 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
8034 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
8035 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
8036 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
8037 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
8038 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
8039 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
8040 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
8041 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
8042 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
8043 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
8044
8045 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8046 Edu?</strong></p>
8047
8048 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
8049 for me as today.</p>
8050
8051 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
8052
8053 <p><ul>
8054
8055 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
8056 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
8057
8058 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
8059 cost.</li>
8060
8061 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
8062 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
8063 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
8064 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
8065 server</li>
8066
8067 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
8068 school.</li>
8069
8070 </ul></p>
8071
8072 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
8073 came up in this way:</p>
8074
8075 <p><ul>
8076
8077 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
8078 now.</li>
8079
8080 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
8081 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
8082 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
8083
8084 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
8085 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
8086 interfaces used in the past.</li>
8087
8088 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
8089 different needs.</li>
8090
8091 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
8092
8093 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
8094 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
8095 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
8096
8097 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
8098 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
8099
8100 </ul></p>
8101
8102 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8103 Edu?</strong></p>
8104
8105 <p><ul>
8106
8107 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
8108 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
8109 whole municipality areas.</li>
8110
8111 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
8112 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
8113 politicians.</li>
8114
8115 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
8116
8117 </ul></p>
8118
8119 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8120
8121 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
8122 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
8123 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
8124 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
8125 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
8126 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
8127
8128 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
8129 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
8130 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
8131 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
8132 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
8133
8134 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8135 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8136
8137 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
8138 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
8139 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
8140
8141       </div>
8142       <div class="tags">
8143
8144
8145         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8146
8147
8148       </div>
8149     </div>
8150     <div class="padding"></div>
8151
8152     <div class="entry">
8153       <div class="title">
8154         <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>
8155       </div>
8156       <div class="date">
8157         30th April 2012
8158       </div>
8159       <div class="body">
8160         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
8161 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
8162
8163 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
8164 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
8165 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
8166 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
8167 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
8168 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
8169 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
8170 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
8171 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
8172 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
8173 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
8174 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
8175 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
8176 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
8177 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
8178 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
8179
8180 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
8181 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
8182 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
8183 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
8184 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
8185 finally found a Danish supplier
8186 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
8187 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
8188 days ago.</p>
8189
8190 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
8191 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
8192 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
8193 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
8194 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
8195 toys.</p>
8196
8197       </div>
8198       <div class="tags">
8199
8200
8201         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8202
8203
8204       </div>
8205     </div>
8206     <div class="padding"></div>
8207
8208     <div class="entry">
8209       <div class="title">
8210         <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>
8211       </div>
8212       <div class="date">
8213         26th April 2012
8214       </div>
8215       <div class="body">
8216         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
8217 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
8218 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
8219 that the video editor application included with
8220 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
8221 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
8222 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
8223
8224 <p><blockquote>
8225 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
8226 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
8227 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
8228 </blockquote></p>
8229
8230 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
8231
8232 <p><blockquote>
8233 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
8234 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
8235 </blockquote></p>
8236
8237 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
8238 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
8239 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
8240 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
8241 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
8242 video.  AMR is
8243 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
8244 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
8245 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
8246 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
8247 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
8248 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
8249 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
8250
8251 <p>I know why I prefer
8252 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
8253 standards</a> also for video.</p>
8254
8255       </div>
8256       <div class="tags">
8257
8258
8259         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>.
8260
8261
8262       </div>
8263     </div>
8264     <div class="padding"></div>
8265
8266     <div class="entry">
8267       <div class="title">
8268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
8269       </div>
8270       <div class="date">
8271         19th April 2012
8272       </div>
8273       <div class="body">
8274         <p>Here in Norway, the
8275 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
8276 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
8277 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
8278 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
8279 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
8280 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
8281 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
8282 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
8283 on the same level.</p>
8284
8285 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
8286 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
8287 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
8288 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
8289 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
8290 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
8291 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
8292 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
8293 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
8294 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
8295 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
8296 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
8297 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
8298 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
8299 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
8300 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
8301 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
8302 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
8303
8304 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
8305 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
8306 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
8307 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
8308 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
8309 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
8310 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
8311 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
8312
8313 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
8314 from Simon Phipps
8315 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
8316 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
8317
8318 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
8319 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
8320 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
8321 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
8322 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
8323 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
8324 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
8325 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
8326 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
8327
8328       </div>
8329       <div class="tags">
8330
8331
8332         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>.
8333
8334
8335       </div>
8336     </div>
8337     <div class="padding"></div>
8338
8339     <div class="entry">
8340       <div class="title">
8341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
8342       </div>
8343       <div class="date">
8344         15th April 2012
8345       </div>
8346       <div class="body">
8347         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
8348 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
8349 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
8350 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
8351 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
8352 up in the recently released
8353 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
8354 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
8355
8356 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8357
8358 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
8359 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
8360 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
8361 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
8362 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
8363 information technology and science/technology.</p>
8364
8365 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8366 project?</strong></p>
8367
8368 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
8369 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
8370 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
8371 contributing.</p>
8372
8373 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8374 Edu?</strong></p>
8375
8376 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
8377 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
8378 Debian Project!</p>
8379
8380 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8381 Edu?</strong></p>
8382
8383 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
8384 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
8385 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
8386 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
8387 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
8388 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
8389 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
8390
8391 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
8392 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
8393
8394 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8395
8396 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
8397 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
8398 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
8399 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
8400
8401 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8402 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8403
8404 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
8405 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
8406 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
8407 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
8408 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
8409 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
8410 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
8411
8412 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
8413 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
8414 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
8415 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
8416 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
8417 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
8418 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
8419 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
8420
8421       </div>
8422       <div class="tags">
8423
8424
8425         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
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/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
8435       </div>
8436       <div class="date">
8437          8th April 2012
8438       </div>
8439       <div class="body">
8440         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
8441 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
8442 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
8443 contributor to the
8444 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
8445 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
8446
8447 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8448
8449 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
8450 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
8451
8452 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8453 project?</strong></p>
8454
8455 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
8456 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
8457 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
8458 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
8459 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
8460 "localisation".</p>
8461
8462 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8463 Edu?</strong></p>
8464
8465 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8466 Edu?</strong></p>
8467
8468 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
8469 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
8470 education system.</p>
8471
8472 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
8473 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
8474 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
8475 money on the latest hardware.</p>
8476
8477 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8478
8479 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
8480 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
8481 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
8482
8483 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8484 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8485
8486 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
8487 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
8488 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
8489
8490       </div>
8491       <div class="tags">
8492
8493
8494         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8495
8496
8497       </div>
8498     </div>
8499     <div class="padding"></div>
8500
8501     <div class="entry">
8502       <div class="title">
8503         <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>
8504       </div>
8505       <div class="date">
8506          6th April 2012
8507       </div>
8508       <div class="body">
8509         <p>Recently I have spent time with
8510 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
8511 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
8512 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
8513 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
8514 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
8515 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
8516 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
8517 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
8518
8519 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
8520 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
8521 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
8522 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
8523 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
8524 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
8525 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
8526 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
8527
8528 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
8529 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
8530 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
8531 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
8532 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
8533 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
8534 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
8535 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
8536
8537 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
8538 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
8539 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
8540 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
8541 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
8542 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
8543 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
8544 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
8545 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
8546 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
8547
8548 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
8549 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
8550 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
8551 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
8552
8553 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
8554 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
8555
8556       </div>
8557       <div class="tags">
8558
8559
8560         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8561
8562
8563       </div>
8564     </div>
8565     <div class="padding"></div>
8566
8567     <div class="entry">
8568       <div class="title">
8569         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
8570       </div>
8571       <div class="date">
8572          5th April 2012
8573       </div>
8574       <div class="body">
8575         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
8576 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
8577 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
8578 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
8579 for schools.  Check out his article
8580 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
8581 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
8582
8583       </div>
8584       <div class="tags">
8585
8586
8587         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8588
8589
8590       </div>
8591     </div>
8592     <div class="padding"></div>
8593
8594     <div class="entry">
8595       <div class="title">
8596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
8597       </div>
8598       <div class="date">
8599          1st April 2012
8600       </div>
8601       <div class="body">
8602         <p>Germany is a core area for the
8603 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8604 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
8605 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
8606
8607 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8608
8609 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
8610 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
8611 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
8612 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
8613 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
8614 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
8615 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
8616 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
8617
8618 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
8619 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
8620 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
8621 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
8622 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
8623 the end of April this year.</p>
8624
8625 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8626 project?</strong></p>
8627
8628 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
8629 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
8630 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
8631 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
8632 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
8633 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
8634 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
8635 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
8636 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
8637 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
8638 Skolelinux.</p>
8639
8640 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
8641 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
8642 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
8643 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
8644 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
8645 the admin teachers.</p>
8646
8647 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8648 Edu?</strong></p>
8649
8650 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
8651 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
8652 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
8653
8654 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
8655 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
8656 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
8657 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
8658 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
8659
8660 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8661 Edu?</strong></p>
8662
8663 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
8664
8665 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8666
8667 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
8668 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
8669 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
8670 LibreOffice.</p>
8671
8672 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8673 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8674
8675 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
8676 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
8677 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
8678
8679       </div>
8680       <div class="tags">
8681
8682
8683         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8684
8685
8686       </div>
8687     </div>
8688     <div class="padding"></div>
8689
8690     <div class="entry">
8691       <div class="title">
8692         <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>
8693       </div>
8694       <div class="date">
8695         25th March 2012
8696       </div>
8697       <div class="body">
8698         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
8699
8700 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
8701 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
8702 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
8703 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
8704 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
8705 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
8706 and download as a
8707 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
8708 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
8709
8710 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
8711   <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"' />
8712     <p>Download video as
8713       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
8714 </video></p>
8715
8716       </div>
8717       <div class="tags">
8718
8719
8720         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8721
8722
8723       </div>
8724     </div>
8725     <div class="padding"></div>
8726
8727     <div class="entry">
8728       <div class="title">
8729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
8730       </div>
8731       <div class="date">
8732         19th March 2012
8733       </div>
8734       <div class="body">
8735         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
8736 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
8737 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
8738 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
8739 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
8740
8741 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8742
8743 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
8744 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
8745 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
8746 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
8747 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
8748 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
8749 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
8750 installations.</p>
8751
8752 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8753 project?</strong></p>
8754
8755 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
8756 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
8757 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
8758 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
8759 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
8760 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
8761 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
8762 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
8763 these things we decided to try it.</p>
8764
8765 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8766 Edu?</strong></p>
8767
8768 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
8769 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
8770 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
8771 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
8772 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
8773 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
8774 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
8775 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
8776
8777 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8778 Edu?</strong></p>
8779
8780 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
8781 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
8782 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
8783 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
8784 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
8785
8786 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8787
8788 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
8789 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
8790 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
8791 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
8792 that counts...)</p>
8793
8794 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8795 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8796
8797 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
8798 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
8799 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
8800 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
8801 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
8802 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
8803 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
8804 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
8805 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
8806 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
8807 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
8808
8809 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
8810 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
8811 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
8812
8813       </div>
8814       <div class="tags">
8815
8816
8817         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8818
8819
8820       </div>
8821     </div>
8822     <div class="padding"></div>
8823
8824     <div class="entry">
8825       <div class="title">
8826         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
8827       </div>
8828       <div class="date">
8829         16th March 2012
8830       </div>
8831       <div class="body">
8832         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
8833 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
8834 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
8835 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
8836
8837 <ol>
8838
8839 <li>The documentation is written in a
8840 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
8841 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
8842 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
8843 docbook XML.</li>
8844
8845 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
8846 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
8847 with the translated text.</li>
8848
8849 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
8850 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
8851 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
8852 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
8853 images.</li>
8854
8855 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
8856 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
8857
8858 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
8859 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
8860
8861 </ol>
8862
8863 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
8864 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
8865 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
8866 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
8867 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
8868
8869 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
8870 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
8871 package</a>.</p>
8872
8873       </div>
8874       <div class="tags">
8875
8876
8877         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8878
8879
8880       </div>
8881     </div>
8882     <div class="padding"></div>
8883
8884     <div class="entry">
8885       <div class="title">
8886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
8887       </div>
8888       <div class="date">
8889         11th March 2012
8890       </div>
8891       <div class="body">
8892         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
8893 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
8894 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
8895 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
8896 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
8897 you have not done so already.</p>
8898
8899 <p>I plan to present the new version at
8900 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
8901 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
8902 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
8903
8904       </div>
8905       <div class="tags">
8906
8907
8908         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8909
8910
8911       </div>
8912     </div>
8913     <div class="padding"></div>
8914
8915     <div class="entry">
8916       <div class="title">
8917         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
8918       </div>
8919       <div class="date">
8920          9th March 2012
8921       </div>
8922       <div class="body">
8923         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
8924 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
8925 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8926 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
8927 more international audience.</p>
8928
8929 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
8930 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
8931 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
8932 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
8933 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
8934 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
8935 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
8936
8937
8938 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8939
8940 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
8941 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
8942 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
8943 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
8944 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
8945 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
8946 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
8947 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
8948 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
8949 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
8950 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
8951
8952 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
8953 project?</strong></p>
8954
8955 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
8956 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
8957 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
8958 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
8959 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
8960 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
8961 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
8962 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
8963 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
8964 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
8965 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
8966 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
8967 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
8968
8969 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8970 Edu?</strong></p>
8971
8972 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
8973 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
8974 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
8975 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
8976 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
8977 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
8978 Japan.</p>
8979
8980 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
8981 Edu?</strong></p>
8982
8983 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
8984 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
8985 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
8986 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
8987 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
8988 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
8989 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
8990 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
8991 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
8992 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
8993 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
8994 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
8995 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
8996 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
8997 help.</p>
8998
8999 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9000
9001 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
9002 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
9003 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
9004 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
9005 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
9006 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
9007 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
9008 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
9009 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
9010 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
9011 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
9012
9013 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9014 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9015
9016 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
9017 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
9018 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
9019 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
9020 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
9021 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
9022 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
9023 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
9024 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
9025 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
9026 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
9027 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
9028
9029       </div>
9030       <div class="tags">
9031
9032
9033         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9034
9035
9036       </div>
9037     </div>
9038     <div class="padding"></div>
9039
9040     <div class="entry">
9041       <div class="title">
9042         <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>
9043       </div>
9044       <div class="date">
9045          7th March 2012
9046       </div>
9047       <div class="body">
9048         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
9049
9050 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
9051 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
9052 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
9053 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
9054 download as a
9055 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
9056 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
9057
9058 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
9059   <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"' />
9060     <p>Download video as
9061       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
9062 </video></p>
9063
9064       </div>
9065       <div class="tags">
9066
9067
9068         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9069
9070
9071       </div>
9072     </div>
9073     <div class="padding"></div>
9074
9075     <div class="entry">
9076       <div class="title">
9077         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
9078       </div>
9079       <div class="date">
9080          4th March 2012
9081       </div>
9082       <div class="body">
9083         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
9084 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9085 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
9086 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
9087 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
9088 need a software solution for your school.</p>
9089
9090       </div>
9091       <div class="tags">
9092
9093
9094         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9095
9096
9097       </div>
9098     </div>
9099     <div class="padding"></div>
9100
9101     <div class="entry">
9102       <div class="title">
9103         <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>
9104       </div>
9105       <div class="date">
9106          3rd March 2012
9107       </div>
9108       <div class="body">
9109         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9110 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
9111 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
9112 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
9113 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
9114 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
9115 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
9116 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
9117 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
9118 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
9119 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
9120 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
9121 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
9122 year...</p>
9123
9124 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
9125 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
9126 name,
9127 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
9128 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
9129 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
9130 mean). I've been following
9131 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
9132 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
9133 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
9134 Check it out. :)</p>
9135
9136       </div>
9137       <div class="tags">
9138
9139
9140         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9141
9142
9143       </div>
9144     </div>
9145     <div class="padding"></div>
9146
9147     <div class="entry">
9148       <div class="title">
9149         <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>
9150       </div>
9151       <div class="date">
9152         27th February 2012
9153       </div>
9154       <div class="body">
9155         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
9156 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9157 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
9158 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
9159 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
9160 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
9161 need a software solution for your school.</p>
9162
9163       </div>
9164       <div class="tags">
9165
9166
9167         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9168
9169
9170       </div>
9171     </div>
9172     <div class="padding"></div>
9173
9174     <div class="entry">
9175       <div class="title">
9176         <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>
9177       </div>
9178       <div class="date">
9179         19th February 2012
9180       </div>
9181       <div class="body">
9182         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
9183 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
9184 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
9185 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
9186 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
9187 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
9188 solution for your school.</p>
9189
9190       </div>
9191       <div class="tags">
9192
9193
9194         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9195
9196
9197       </div>
9198     </div>
9199     <div class="padding"></div>
9200
9201     <div class="entry">
9202       <div class="title">
9203         <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>
9204       </div>
9205       <div class="date">
9206         14th February 2012
9207       </div>
9208       <div class="body">
9209         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
9210 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
9211 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
9212 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
9213 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
9214 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
9215 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
9216 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
9217 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
9218
9219 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
9220 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
9221 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
9222 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
9223 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
9224
9225 <blockquote><pre>
9226 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
9227 do
9228     printf "Failed disk $d: "
9229     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
9230 done
9231 </blockquote></pre>
9232
9233 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
9234 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
9235
9236 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
9237
9238 <blockquote><pre>
9239 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
9240 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
9241 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
9242 </blockquote></pre>
9243
9244 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
9245 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
9246 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
9247 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
9248 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
9249 mounted inside my box.</p>
9250
9251 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
9252 Software RAID in the
9253 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
9254 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
9255 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
9256 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
9257 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
9258 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
9259
9260       </div>
9261       <div class="tags">
9262
9263
9264         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>.
9265
9266
9267       </div>
9268     </div>
9269     <div class="padding"></div>
9270
9271     <div class="entry">
9272       <div class="title">
9273         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
9274       </div>
9275       <div class="date">
9276         13th February 2012
9277       </div>
9278       <div class="body">
9279         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
9280 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
9281 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
9282 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
9283 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
9284 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
9285 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
9286 change the global proxy setting by editing
9287 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
9288 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
9289
9290 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
9291 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
9292 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
9293
9294 <blockquote><pre>
9295 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
9296 {
9297    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
9298        isPlainHostName(host) ||
9299        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
9300       return "DIRECT";
9301    else
9302       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
9303 }
9304 </pre></blockquote>
9305
9306 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
9307
9308 <blockquote><pre>
9309 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
9310 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
9311 </pre></blockquote>
9312
9313 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
9314 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
9315 would be used for
9316 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
9317 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
9318 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
9319 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
9320 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
9321 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
9322 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
9323 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
9324 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
9325 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
9326
9327 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
9328 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
9329 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
9330 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
9331 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
9332 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
9333
9334 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
9335 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
9336 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
9337 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
9338 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
9339 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
9340 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
9341 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
9342 the network setup changes.</p>
9343
9344 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
9345 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
9346 draft</a> and a
9347 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
9348 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
9349
9350       </div>
9351       <div class="tags">
9352
9353
9354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9355
9356
9357       </div>
9358     </div>
9359     <div class="padding"></div>
9360
9361     <div class="entry">
9362       <div class="title">
9363         <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>
9364       </div>
9365       <div class="date">
9366          5th February 2012
9367       </div>
9368       <div class="body">
9369         <p>Since the Lenny version of
9370 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
9371 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
9372 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
9373 in the morning.  This is done using the
9374 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
9375
9376 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
9377 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
9378 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
9379 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
9380 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
9381 the
9382 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
9383 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
9384 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
9385 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
9386 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
9387
9388 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
9389 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
9390 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
9391 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
9392 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
9393 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
9394 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
9395
9396 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
9397 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
9398 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
9399 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
9400 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
9401
9402       </div>
9403       <div class="tags">
9404
9405
9406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9407
9408
9409       </div>
9410     </div>
9411     <div class="padding"></div>
9412
9413     <div class="entry">
9414       <div class="title">
9415         <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>
9416       </div>
9417       <div class="date">
9418          4th February 2012
9419       </div>
9420       <div class="body">
9421         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
9422 publish the third beta version of
9423 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
9424 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
9425 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
9426 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
9427 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
9428 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
9429 on the project announcement list.</p>
9430
9431 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
9432 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
9433
9434 <ul>
9435
9436 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
9437   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
9438   the installation.</li>
9439
9440 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
9441   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
9442
9443 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
9444   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
9445   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
9446
9447 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
9448   for the local system administrator is created during installation
9449   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
9450   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
9451   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
9452   up to date on the system.</li>
9453
9454 </ul>
9455
9456 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
9457 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
9458 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
9459 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
9460
9461 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
9462 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
9463 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
9464 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
9465 will see you there?</p>
9466
9467       </div>
9468       <div class="tags">
9469
9470
9471         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9472
9473
9474       </div>
9475     </div>
9476     <div class="padding"></div>
9477
9478     <div class="entry">
9479       <div class="title">
9480         <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>
9481       </div>
9482       <div class="date">
9483         27th January 2012
9484       </div>
9485       <div class="body">
9486         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
9487 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
9488 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
9489 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
9490 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
9491 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
9492 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
9493
9494 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
9495 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
9496 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
9497 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
9498 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
9499 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
9500 not taken care of by this.</p>
9501
9502 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
9503 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
9504 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
9505 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
9506 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
9507 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
9508 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
9509 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
9510 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
9511 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
9512 firmware packages.</p>
9513
9514 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
9515 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
9516 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
9517 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
9518 initrd with extra firmware, the
9519 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
9520 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
9521 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
9522
9523 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
9524 network cards working.  For this,
9525 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
9526 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
9527 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
9528
9529 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
9530 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
9531 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
9532
9533 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
9534 try.</p>
9535
9536       </div>
9537       <div class="tags">
9538
9539
9540         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9541
9542
9543       </div>
9544     </div>
9545     <div class="padding"></div>
9546
9547     <div class="entry">
9548       <div class="title">
9549         <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>
9550       </div>
9551       <div class="date">
9552         25th January 2012
9553       </div>
9554       <div class="body">
9555         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
9556 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
9557 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
9558 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
9559 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
9560
9561 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
9562 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
9563 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
9564 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
9565 this is done, log on to the central server and run
9566 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
9567 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
9568 will look similar to this:</p>
9569
9570 <p><blockquote><pre>
9571 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
9572 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
9573 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.
9574
9575 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
9576
9577 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9578 enter password: *******
9579 %
9580 </pre></blockquote></p>
9581
9582 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
9583 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
9584 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
9585 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
9586 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
9587 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
9588 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
9589 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
9590 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
9591 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
9592 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
9593 automatically.</p>
9594
9595 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
9596 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
9597
9598 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
9599 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
9600 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
9601
9602       </div>
9603       <div class="tags">
9604
9605
9606         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9607
9608
9609       </div>
9610     </div>
9611     <div class="padding"></div>
9612
9613     <div class="entry">
9614       <div class="title">
9615         <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>
9616       </div>
9617       <div class="date">
9618         10th January 2012
9619       </div>
9620       <div class="body">
9621         <p>In the Squeeze version of
9622 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
9623 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
9624 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
9625 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
9626 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
9627 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
9628 first time.</p>
9629
9630 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
9631 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
9632 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
9633 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
9634
9635 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
9636 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
9637 new setting.</p>
9638
9639 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
9640 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
9641 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
9642
9643       </div>
9644       <div class="tags">
9645
9646
9647         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9648
9649
9650       </div>
9651     </div>
9652     <div class="padding"></div>
9653
9654     <div class="entry">
9655       <div class="title">
9656         <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>
9657       </div>
9658       <div class="date">
9659          7th January 2012
9660       </div>
9661       <div class="body">
9662         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
9663 the second beta version of
9664 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
9665 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
9666 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
9667 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
9668 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
9669 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
9670 on the project announcement list.</p>
9671
9672       </div>
9673       <div class="tags">
9674
9675
9676         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9677
9678
9679       </div>
9680     </div>
9681     <div class="padding"></div>
9682
9683     <div class="entry">
9684       <div class="title">
9685         <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>
9686       </div>
9687       <div class="date">
9688          3rd January 2012
9689       </div>
9690       <div class="body">
9691         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
9692 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
9693 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
9694 interesting.</p>
9695
9696 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
9697 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
9698 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
9699 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
9700 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
9701 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
9702 wrap up its tasks.</p>
9703
9704 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
9705 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
9706 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
9707 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
9708 because I was typing.</P>
9709
9710 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
9711 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
9712 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
9713 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
9714 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
9715 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
9716 generate entropy.</p>
9717
9718 <p>The fix is in
9719 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
9720 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
9721 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
9722 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
9723
9724       </div>
9725       <div class="tags">
9726
9727
9728         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9729
9730
9731       </div>
9732     </div>
9733     <div class="padding"></div>
9734
9735     <div class="entry">
9736       <div class="title">
9737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
9738       </div>
9739       <div class="date">
9740         21st November 2011
9741       </div>
9742       <div class="body">
9743         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
9744 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
9745 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
9746 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
9747 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
9748 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
9749 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
9750 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
9751 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
9752 the tools to do so.</p>
9753
9754 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
9755 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
9756 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
9757 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
9758
9759 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
9760 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
9761 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
9762 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
9763 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
9764 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
9765 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
9766 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
9767
9768 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
9769 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
9770 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
9771
9772 <p><pre>
9773 #!/usr/bin/perl
9774 use strict;
9775 use warnings;
9776 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
9777 BEGIN {
9778     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
9779     my %rhelmodules = (
9780         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
9781         );
9782     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
9783         eval "use $module;";
9784         if ($@) {
9785             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
9786             system("yum install -y $pkg");
9787             eval "use $module;";
9788         }
9789     }
9790 }
9791 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
9792
9793 upgrade_dell();
9794
9795 exit 0;
9796
9797 sub run_firmware_script {
9798     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
9799     unless ($script) {
9800         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
9801         exit 1
9802     }
9803     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
9804
9805     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
9806         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
9807     } else {
9808         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
9809     }
9810 }
9811
9812 sub run_firmware_scripts {
9813     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
9814     # Run firmware packages
9815     for my $dir (@dirs) {
9816         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
9817         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
9818         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
9819             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
9820             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
9821         }
9822         closedir $dh;
9823     }
9824 }
9825
9826 sub download {
9827     my $url = shift;
9828     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
9829     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
9830 }
9831
9832 sub upgrade_dell {
9833     my @dirs;
9834     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9835     chomp $product;
9836
9837     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
9838
9839         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
9840         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
9841
9842         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
9843             CLEANUP => 1
9844             );
9845         chdir($tmpdir);
9846         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
9847         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
9848         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
9849         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
9850         my $fwopts = "-q";
9851         if (@paths) {
9852             for my $url (@paths) {
9853                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
9854             }
9855             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
9856         } else {
9857             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9858             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9859         }
9860         chdir('/');
9861     } else {
9862         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9863         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9864     }
9865 }
9866
9867 sub fetch_dell_fw {
9868     my $path = shift;
9869     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
9870     download($url);
9871 }
9872
9873 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
9874 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
9875 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
9876 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
9877     my $filename = shift;
9878
9879     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9880     chomp $product;
9881     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
9882
9883     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
9884
9885     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
9886     my @paths;
9887     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
9888         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
9889         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
9890         my $oscode;
9891         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
9892             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
9893         } else {
9894             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
9895         }
9896         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
9897         {
9898             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
9899         }
9900     }
9901     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
9902         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
9903
9904         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
9905         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
9906
9907         my $cpath = $component->{path};
9908         for my $path (@paths) {
9909             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
9910                 push(@paths, $cpath);
9911             }
9912         }
9913     }
9914     return @paths;
9915 }
9916 </pre>
9917
9918 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
9919 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
9920 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
9921 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
9922 outdated.</p>
9923
9924       </div>
9925       <div class="tags">
9926
9927
9928         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9929
9930
9931       </div>
9932     </div>
9933     <div class="padding"></div>
9934
9935     <div class="entry">
9936       <div class="title">
9937         <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>
9938       </div>
9939       <div class="date">
9940          7th October 2011
9941       </div>
9942       <div class="body">
9943         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
9944 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
9945 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
9946 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
9947 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
9948 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
9949 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
9950 models.</p>
9951
9952 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
9953 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
9954 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
9955 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
9956
9957 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
9958 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
9959 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
9960 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
9961 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
9962 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
9963 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
9964 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
9965 distributed.</p>
9966
9967 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
9968
9969 <ul>
9970
9971 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
9972   other relevant equipment.</li>
9973
9974 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
9975
9976 </ul>
9977
9978 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
9979 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
9980 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
9981 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
9982 books available.</p>
9983
9984 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
9985 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
9986 libraries. :)</p>
9987
9988       </div>
9989       <div class="tags">
9990
9991
9992         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>.
9993
9994
9995       </div>
9996     </div>
9997     <div class="padding"></div>
9998
9999     <div class="entry">
10000       <div class="title">
10001         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
10002       </div>
10003       <div class="date">
10004         17th September 2011
10005       </div>
10006       <div class="body">
10007         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
10008 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
10009 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
10010 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
10011 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
10012 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
10013 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
10014 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
10015
10016 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
10017
10018 <blockquote><pre>
10019 #!/bin/sh
10020 # apt-get install lsdvd
10021 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
10022 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
10023 </pre></blockquote>
10024
10025 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
10026 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
10027 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
10028 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
10029
10030 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
10031 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
10032 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
10033 back as an ISO.
10034
10035 <blockquote><pre>
10036 #!/bin/sh
10037 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
10038 set -e
10039 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
10040 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
10041 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
10042 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
10043 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
10044 </pre></blockquote>
10045
10046 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
10047
10048 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
10049 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
10050 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
10051 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
10052 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
10053
10054 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
10055 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
10056 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
10057 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
10058 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
10059 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
10060
10061       </div>
10062       <div class="tags">
10063
10064
10065         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>.
10066
10067
10068       </div>
10069     </div>
10070     <div class="padding"></div>
10071
10072     <div class="entry">
10073       <div class="title">
10074         <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>
10075       </div>
10076       <div class="date">
10077          4th August 2011
10078       </div>
10079       <div class="body">
10080         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
10081 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
10082 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
10083 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
10084 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
10085 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
10086 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
10087 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
10088 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
10089
10090 <p><blockquote>
10091 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
10092 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
10093 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
10094 </blockquote></p>
10095
10096 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
10097 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
10098 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
10099 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
10100 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
10101 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
10102 hard to explain.</p>
10103
10104 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
10105 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
10106 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
10107 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
10108 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
10109 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
10110 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
10111 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
10112 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
10113 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
10114 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
10115 mode).</p>
10116
10117 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
10118 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
10119 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
10120 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
10121 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
10122 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
10123 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
10124 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
10125 after visiting single user mode.</p>
10126
10127 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
10128 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
10129 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
10130 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
10131 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
10132 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
10133 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
10134 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
10135
10136 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
10137 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
10138 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
10139
10140       </div>
10141       <div class="tags">
10142
10143
10144         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>.
10145
10146
10147       </div>
10148     </div>
10149     <div class="padding"></div>
10150
10151     <div class="entry">
10152       <div class="title">
10153         <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>
10154       </div>
10155       <div class="date">
10156         30th July 2011
10157       </div>
10158       <div class="body">
10159         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
10160 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
10161 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
10162 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
10163 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
10164 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
10165 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
10166 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
10167 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
10168 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
10169 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
10170 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
10171 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
10172
10173 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
10174 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
10175 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
10176 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
10177 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
10178 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
10179 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
10180 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
10181 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
10182
10183 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
10184 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
10185 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
10186 is presented.</p>
10187
10188 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
10189 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
10190 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
10191 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
10192 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
10193 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
10194 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
10195 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
10196 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
10197 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
10198 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
10199 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
10200 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
10201 find time to push this forward.</p>
10202
10203       </div>
10204       <div class="tags">
10205
10206
10207         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>.
10208
10209
10210       </div>
10211     </div>
10212     <div class="padding"></div>
10213
10214     <div class="entry">
10215       <div class="title">
10216         <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>
10217       </div>
10218       <div class="date">
10219         29th July 2011
10220       </div>
10221       <div class="body">
10222         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
10223 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
10224 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
10225 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
10226 issues.</p>
10227
10228 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
10229 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
10230 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
10231
10232 <ol>
10233
10234 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
10235 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
10236 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
10237 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
10238 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
10239 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
10240 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
10241 Debian.</li>
10242
10243 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
10244 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
10245 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
10246 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
10247 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
10248 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
10249 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
10250 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
10251 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
10252 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
10253 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
10254 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
10255 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
10256
10257 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
10258 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
10259 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
10260 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
10261 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
10262 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
10263 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
10264 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
10265 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
10266 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
10267
10268 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
10269 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
10270 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
10271 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
10272 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
10273 latter behaviour.</li>
10274
10275 </ol>
10276
10277 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
10278 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
10279 it do not matter much.</p>
10280
10281 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
10282 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
10283 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
10284
10285       </div>
10286       <div class="tags">
10287
10288
10289         Tags: <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>.
10290
10291
10292       </div>
10293     </div>
10294     <div class="padding"></div>
10295
10296     <div class="entry">
10297       <div class="title">
10298         <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>
10299       </div>
10300       <div class="date">
10301         26th July 2011
10302       </div>
10303       <div class="body">
10304         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
10305 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
10306 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
10307 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
10308 security support for a few years.</p>
10309
10310 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
10311 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
10312 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
10313 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
10314 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
10315 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
10316 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
10317 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
10318 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
10319 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
10320 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
10321 easier in the future.</p>
10322
10323 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
10324 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
10325 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
10326 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
10327 do not have time for.</p>
10328
10329       </div>
10330       <div class="tags">
10331
10332
10333         Tags: <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>.
10334
10335
10336       </div>
10337     </div>
10338     <div class="padding"></div>
10339
10340     <div class="entry">
10341       <div class="title">
10342         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
10343       </div>
10344       <div class="date">
10345         20th June 2011
10346       </div>
10347       <div class="body">
10348         <p>Reading
10349 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
10350 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
10351 parts of the
10352 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
10353 and
10354 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
10355 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
10356 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
10357 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
10358
10359       </div>
10360       <div class="tags">
10361
10362
10363         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>.
10364
10365
10366       </div>
10367     </div>
10368     <div class="padding"></div>
10369
10370     <div class="entry">
10371       <div class="title">
10372         <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>
10373       </div>
10374       <div class="date">
10375         30th April 2011
10376       </div>
10377       <div class="body">
10378         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
10379 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
10380 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
10381 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
10382 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
10383 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
10384 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
10385 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
10386 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
10387 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
10388
10389 <p>Where is it?  Visit
10390 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
10391 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
10392 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
10393 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
10394
10395       </div>
10396       <div class="tags">
10397
10398
10399         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>.
10400
10401
10402       </div>
10403     </div>
10404     <div class="padding"></div>
10405
10406     <div class="entry">
10407       <div class="title">
10408         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
10409       </div>
10410       <div class="date">
10411         29th April 2011
10412       </div>
10413       <div class="body">
10414         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
10415 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
10416 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
10417 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
10418 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
10419 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
10420 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
10421 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
10422 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
10423 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
10424 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
10425 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
10426 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
10427
10428 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
10429 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
10430 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
10431 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
10432 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
10433 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
10434 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
10435 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
10436 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
10437 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
10438 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
10439 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
10440 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
10441
10442 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
10443 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
10444 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
10445 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
10446 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
10447 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
10448 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
10449 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
10450 it.</p>
10451
10452 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
10453 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
10454 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
10455 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
10456 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
10457 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
10458 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
10459
10460 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
10461 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
10462 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
10463 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
10464 and range= options.</p>
10465
10466 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
10467 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
10468 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
10469 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
10470 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
10471 to best handle this.  I've noticed
10472 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
10473 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
10474 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
10475 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
10476
10477 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
10478 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
10479 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
10480 discussions instead of only
10481 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
10482 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
10483 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
10484 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
10485 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
10486 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
10487
10488       </div>
10489       <div class="tags">
10490
10491
10492         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>.
10493
10494
10495       </div>
10496     </div>
10497     <div class="padding"></div>
10498
10499     <div class="entry">
10500       <div class="title">
10501         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
10502       </div>
10503       <div class="date">
10504          6th April 2011
10505       </div>
10506       <div class="body">
10507         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
10508 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
10509 A few days ago the project
10510 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
10511 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
10512 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
10513 into Gnash.</p>
10514
10515       </div>
10516       <div class="tags">
10517
10518
10519         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>.
10520
10521
10522       </div>
10523     </div>
10524     <div class="padding"></div>
10525
10526     <div class="entry">
10527       <div class="title">
10528         <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>
10529       </div>
10530       <div class="date">
10531          3rd April 2011
10532       </div>
10533       <div class="body">
10534         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
10535 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
10536 update in English.</p>
10537
10538 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
10539 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
10540 of the British service
10541 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
10542 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
10543 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
10544 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
10545 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
10546 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
10547 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
10548 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
10549 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
10550 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
10551 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
10552 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
10553 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
10554
10555 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
10556 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
10557 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
10558 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
10559 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
10560 public infrastructure.</p>
10561
10562 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
10563 such service?</p>
10564
10565       </div>
10566       <div class="tags">
10567
10568
10569         Tags: <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>.
10570
10571
10572       </div>
10573     </div>
10574     <div class="padding"></div>
10575
10576     <div class="entry">
10577       <div class="title">
10578         <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>
10579       </div>
10580       <div class="date">
10581         28th January 2011
10582       </div>
10583       <div class="body">
10584         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
10585 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
10586 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
10587 available on the Internet, and check our locally
10588 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
10589 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
10590 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
10591 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
10592 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
10593 out which security holes were present in our free software
10594 collection.</p>
10595
10596 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
10597 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
10598 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
10599 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
10600 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
10601 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
10602 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
10603 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
10604 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
10605 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
10606 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
10607 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
10608 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
10609 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
10610 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
10611 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
10612
10613 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
10614 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
10615 check out, one could look up
10616 <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
10617 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
10618 The most recent one is
10619 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
10620 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
10621 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
10622
10623 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
10624 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
10625 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
10626 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
10627 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
10628 security issues out.</p>
10629
10630 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
10631 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
10632 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
10633 RHEL is providing
10634 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
10635 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
10636 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
10637
10638 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
10639 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
10640 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
10641 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
10642 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
10643 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
10644 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
10645 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
10646 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
10647 established soon.</p>
10648
10649 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
10650 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
10651 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
10652 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
10653 for their packages.</p>
10654
10655       </div>
10656       <div class="tags">
10657
10658
10659         Tags: <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>.
10660
10661
10662       </div>
10663     </div>
10664     <div class="padding"></div>
10665
10666     <div class="entry">
10667       <div class="title">
10668         <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>
10669       </div>
10670       <div class="date">
10671         23rd January 2011
10672       </div>
10673       <div class="body">
10674         <p>In the
10675 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
10676 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
10677 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
10678 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
10679 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
10680 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
10681 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
10682 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
10683 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
10684 one of my machines like this:</p>
10685
10686 <pre>
10687 loaded modules:
10688 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
10689 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
10690 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
10691 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
10692 10de:03ec pata_amd
10693 10de:03f6 sata_nv
10694 1022:1103 k8temp
10695 109e:036e bttv
10696 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
10697 11ab:4364 sky2
10698 </pre>
10699
10700 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
10701 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
10702
10703 <pre>
10704 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
10705     echo loaded pci modules:
10706     (
10707         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
10708         for address in * ; do
10709             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
10710                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
10711                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
10712                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
10713                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
10714                     echo "$id $module"
10715                 fi
10716             fi
10717         done
10718     )
10719     echo
10720 fi
10721 </pre>
10722
10723 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
10724 mappings:</p>
10725
10726 <pre>
10727 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
10728     echo loaded usb modules:
10729     (
10730         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
10731         for address in * ; do
10732             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
10733                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
10734                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
10735                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
10736                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
10737                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
10738                         echo "$id $module"
10739                     fi
10740                 fi
10741             fi
10742         done
10743     )
10744     echo
10745 fi
10746 </pre>
10747
10748 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
10749 well.</p>
10750
10751       </div>
10752       <div class="tags">
10753
10754
10755         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10756
10757
10758       </div>
10759     </div>
10760     <div class="padding"></div>
10761
10762     <div class="entry">
10763       <div class="title">
10764         <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>
10765       </div>
10766       <div class="date">
10767         16th January 2011
10768       </div>
10769       <div class="body">
10770         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
10771 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
10772 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
10773 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
10774 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
10775 the Wikipedia article on
10776 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
10777 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
10778 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
10779 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
10780 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
10781 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
10782 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
10783 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
10784 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
10785 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
10786 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
10787 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
10788
10789 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
10790 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
10791 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
10792 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
10793 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
10794 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
10795 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
10796 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
10797 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
10798 from last week</a>.</p>
10799
10800 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
10801 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
10802 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
10803 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
10804 was without royalties and license terms, check out
10805 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
10806 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
10807
10808 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
10809 available from
10810 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
10811 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
10812 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
10813
10814 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
10815 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
10816 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
10817 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
10818
10819       </div>
10820       <div class="tags">
10821
10822
10823         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>.
10824
10825
10826       </div>
10827     </div>
10828     <div class="padding"></div>
10829
10830     <div class="entry">
10831       <div class="title">
10832         <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>
10833       </div>
10834       <div class="date">
10835         12th January 2011
10836       </div>
10837       <div class="body">
10838         <p>Today I discovered
10839 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
10840 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
10841 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
10842 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
10843 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
10844 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
10845 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
10846 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
10847 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
10848 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
10849 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
10850 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
10851 on the Google announcement is available from
10852 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
10853 A good read. :)</p>
10854
10855 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
10856 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
10857 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
10858 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
10859 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
10860 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
10861 browsers support H.264, and others support
10862 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
10863 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
10864 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
10865 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
10866 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
10867 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
10868 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
10869 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
10870
10871 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
10872 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
10873 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
10874 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
10875 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
10876 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
10877 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
10878
10879 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
10880 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
10881 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
10882 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
10883 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
10884 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
10885 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
10886
10887 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
10888 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
10889 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
10890 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
10891 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
10892 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
10893 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
10894
10895 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
10896 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
10897 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
10898 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
10899 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
10900 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
10901 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
10902 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
10903 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
10904 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
10905 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
10906 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
10907 I guess time will tell.</p>
10908
10909 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
10910 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
10911 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
10912
10913       </div>
10914       <div class="tags">
10915
10916
10917         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>.
10918
10919
10920       </div>
10921     </div>
10922     <div class="padding"></div>
10923
10924     <div class="entry">
10925       <div class="title">
10926         <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>
10927       </div>
10928       <div class="date">
10929         30th December 2010
10930       </div>
10931       <div class="body">
10932         <p>After trying to
10933 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
10934 Ogg Theora</a> to
10935 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
10936 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
10937 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
10938 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
10939 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
10940 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
10941 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
10942
10943 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
10944 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
10945 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
10946 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
10947 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
10948 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
10949 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
10950
10951 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
10952 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
10953
10954       </div>
10955       <div class="tags">
10956
10957
10958         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>.
10959
10960
10961       </div>
10962     </div>
10963     <div class="padding"></div>
10964
10965     <div class="entry">
10966       <div class="title">
10967         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
10968       </div>
10969       <div class="date">
10970         27th December 2010
10971       </div>
10972       <div class="body">
10973         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
10974 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
10975 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
10976 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
10977 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
10978 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
10979 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
10980 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
10981
10982 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
10983 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
10984 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
10985 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
10986 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
10987 page</a>.</p>
10988
10989 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
10990 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
10991 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
10992 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
10993 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
10994 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
10995 specification on equal terms.</p>
10996
10997 <blockquote>
10998
10999 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
11000 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
11001 open standard:</p>
11002
11003 <ul>
11004
11005 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
11006 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
11007 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
11008 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
11009
11010 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
11011 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
11012 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
11013 nominal fee.</li>
11014
11015 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
11016 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
11017 free basis.</li>
11018
11019 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
11020
11021 </ul>
11022 </blockquote>
11023
11024 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
11025 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
11026 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
11027 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
11028 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
11029 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
11030 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
11031
11032 <blockquote>
11033
11034 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
11035
11036 <ol>
11037
11038 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
11039 tilgængelig.</li>
11040
11041 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
11042 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
11043
11044 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
11045 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
11046
11047 </ol>
11048
11049 </blockquote>
11050
11051 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
11052 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
11053
11054 <blockquote>
11055
11056 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
11057
11058 <ol>
11059
11060 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
11061 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
11062
11063 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
11064 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
11065 Standard themselves;</li>
11066
11067 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
11068 any party or in any business model;</li>
11069
11070 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
11071 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
11072 parties;</li>
11073
11074 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
11075 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
11076 parties.</li>
11077
11078 </ol>
11079
11080 </blockquote>
11081
11082 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
11083 its
11084 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
11085 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
11086
11087 <blockquote>
11088 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
11089
11090 <ul>
11091
11092 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
11093   democratic:
11094
11095          <ul>
11096
11097          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
11098             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
11099             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
11100             and managed.</li>
11101
11102          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
11103             method, can be changed through input from all
11104             participants.</li>
11105
11106          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
11107             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
11108
11109          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
11110             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
11111
11112          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
11113             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
11114             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
11115
11116          </ul>
11117
11118 </li>
11119
11120 </ul>
11121
11122 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
11123 <ul>
11124
11125 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
11126   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
11127   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
11128   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
11129   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
11130
11131 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
11132   a technical or economic barriers</li>
11133
11134 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
11135   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
11136   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
11137   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
11138   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
11139   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
11140   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
11141   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
11142   intended to function.</li>
11143
11144 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
11145   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
11146   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
11147
11148 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
11149   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
11150   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
11151   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
11152   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
11153   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
11154   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
11155   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
11156
11157       <ul>
11158
11159       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
11160         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
11161         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
11162
11163       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
11164         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
11165         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
11166         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
11167
11168       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
11169         licensor</li>
11170
11171       </ul>
11172 </li>
11173
11174 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
11175   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
11176   or restricted licensing terms</li>
11177
11178 </ul>
11179
11180 </blockquote>
11181
11182 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
11183 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
11184 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
11185 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
11186 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
11187 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
11188 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
11189 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
11190 Standards.</p>
11191
11192       </div>
11193       <div class="tags">
11194
11195
11196         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>.
11197
11198
11199       </div>
11200     </div>
11201     <div class="padding"></div>
11202
11203     <div class="entry">
11204       <div class="title">
11205         <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>
11206       </div>
11207       <div class="date">
11208         25th December 2010
11209       </div>
11210       <div class="body">
11211         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
11212 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
11213
11214 <blockquote>
11215
11216 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
11217 as follows:</p>
11218
11219 <ol>
11220
11221 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
11222 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
11223 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
11224
11225 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
11226 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
11227 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
11228 parties.</li>
11229
11230 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
11231 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
11232 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
11233
11234 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
11235 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
11236
11237 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
11238
11239 </ol>
11240
11241 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
11242 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
11243 products based on the standard.</p>
11244 </blockquote>
11245
11246 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
11247 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
11248 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
11249 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
11250 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
11251 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
11252 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
11253 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
11254
11255 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
11256
11257 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
11258 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
11259 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
11260 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
11261 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
11262 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
11263 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
11264 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
11265 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
11266 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
11267 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
11268 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
11269 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
11270 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
11271
11272 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
11273
11274 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
11275 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
11276 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
11277 documentation indicating this.</p>
11278
11279 <p>According to
11280 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
11281 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
11282 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
11283 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
11284 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
11285 report is correct.</p>
11286
11287 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
11288
11289 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
11290 container format</a> and both the
11291 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
11292 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
11293 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
11294
11295 <blockquote>
11296
11297 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
11298 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
11299 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
11300 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
11301 specification compliance.
11302
11303 </blockquote>
11304
11305 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
11306 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
11307 this is the term:<p>
11308
11309 <blockquote>
11310
11311 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
11312 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
11313 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
11314 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
11315 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
11316 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
11317 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
11318 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
11319 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
11320 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
11321 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
11322 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
11323
11324 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
11325 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
11326 </blockquote>
11327
11328 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
11329 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
11330 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
11331 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
11332 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
11333
11334 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
11335
11336 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
11337 Theora format.
11338 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
11339 and
11340 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
11341 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
11342 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
11343 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
11344 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
11345 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
11346 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
11347 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
11348
11349 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
11350
11351 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
11352
11353 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11354
11355 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
11356 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
11357 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
11358 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
11359 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
11360 this.</p>
11361
11362 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
11363 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
11364
11365       </div>
11366       <div class="tags">
11367
11368
11369         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>.
11370
11371
11372       </div>
11373     </div>
11374     <div class="padding"></div>
11375
11376     <div class="entry">
11377       <div class="title">
11378         <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>
11379       </div>
11380       <div class="date">
11381         25th December 2010
11382       </div>
11383       <div class="body">
11384         <p>A few days ago
11385 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
11386 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
11387 2.0 of
11388 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
11389 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
11390 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
11391 Nothing very surprising there, given
11392 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
11393 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
11394 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
11395 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
11396 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
11397 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
11398 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
11399 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
11400 standard definition from its content.</p>
11401
11402 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
11403 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
11404 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
11405 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
11406 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
11407 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
11408 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
11409 background information about that story is available in
11410 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
11411 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
11412
11413 <blockquote>
11414 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
11415 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
11416 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
11417
11418 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
11419
11420 <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>
11421
11422 <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>
11423
11424 <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>
11425
11426 <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>
11427
11428 <p>
11429 <ul>
11430 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
11431 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
11432 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
11433 </ul>
11434 </p>
11435
11436 <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>
11437
11438 <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>
11439
11440 <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>
11441
11442 <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>
11443
11444 <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>
11445
11446
11447 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
11448 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
11449 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
11450 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
11451 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
11452 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
11453
11454 </p>
11455
11456 <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>
11457
11458 <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>
11459
11460 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
11461
11462 <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>
11463
11464 <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>
11465
11466 <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>
11467
11468 <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>
11469
11470 <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>
11471
11472 <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>
11473
11474 <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>
11475
11476 <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>
11477
11478 <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>
11479
11480 <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>
11481
11482 <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>
11483
11484 <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>
11485
11486 <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>
11487
11488 <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>
11489
11490 <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>
11491
11492 <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>
11493
11494 <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>
11495
11496 <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>
11497
11498 <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>
11499
11500 <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>
11501
11502 <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>
11503
11504 <p>On security:</p>
11505
11506 <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>
11507
11508 <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>
11509
11510 <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>
11511
11512 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
11513
11514 <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>
11515
11516 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
11517
11518 <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>
11519
11520 <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>
11521
11522 <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>
11523
11524 <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>
11525
11526 <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>
11527
11528 <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>
11529
11530 <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>
11531
11532 <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>
11533
11534 <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>
11535
11536 <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>
11537
11538 <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>
11539
11540 <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>
11541
11542 <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>
11543
11544 <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>
11545
11546 <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>
11547
11548 <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>
11549
11550 <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>
11551
11552 <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>
11553
11554 <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>
11555
11556 <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>
11557
11558 <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>
11559
11560 <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>
11561
11562 <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>
11563
11564 <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>
11565
11566 <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>
11567
11568 <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>
11569
11570 <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>
11571
11572 <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>
11573
11574 <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>
11575
11576 <p>Cordially,<br>
11577 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
11578 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
11579 </blockquote>
11580
11581       </div>
11582       <div class="tags">
11583
11584
11585         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>.
11586
11587
11588       </div>
11589     </div>
11590     <div class="padding"></div>
11591
11592     <div class="entry">
11593       <div class="title">
11594         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
11595       </div>
11596       <div class="date">
11597         25th December 2010
11598       </div>
11599       <div class="body">
11600         <p>Half a year ago I
11601 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
11602 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
11603 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
11604 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
11605
11606 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
11607 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
11608 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
11609 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
11610 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
11611 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
11612 got such a great test tool available.</p>
11613
11614       </div>
11615       <div class="tags">
11616
11617
11618         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>.
11619
11620
11621       </div>
11622     </div>
11623     <div class="padding"></div>
11624
11625     <div class="entry">
11626       <div class="title">
11627         <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>
11628       </div>
11629       <div class="date">
11630         22nd December 2010
11631       </div>
11632       <div class="body">
11633         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
11634 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
11635 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
11636 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
11637 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
11638 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
11639 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
11640 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
11641 university.</p>
11642
11643 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
11644 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
11645 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
11646 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
11647 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
11648 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
11649 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
11650 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
11651
11652 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
11653 I perform on a new model.</p>
11654
11655 <ul>
11656
11657 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
11658 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
11659 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
11660
11661 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
11662 installation, X.org is working.</li>
11663
11664 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
11665 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
11666 reported by the program.</li>
11667
11668 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
11669 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
11670 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
11671 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
11672 normally test this by playing
11673 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
11674 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
11675
11676 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
11677 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
11678
11679 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
11680 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
11681
11682 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
11683 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
11684
11685 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
11686 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
11687 few.</li>
11688
11689 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
11690 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
11691 notice this.</li>
11692
11693 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
11694 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
11695 resume.</li>
11696
11697 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
11698 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
11699 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
11700 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
11701 not.</li>
11702
11703 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
11704 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
11705 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
11706 existence.</li>
11707
11708 </ul>
11709
11710 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
11711 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
11712 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
11713 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
11714 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
11715 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
11716 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
11717 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
11718
11719       </div>
11720       <div class="tags">
11721
11722
11723         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>.
11724
11725
11726       </div>
11727     </div>
11728     <div class="padding"></div>
11729
11730     <div class="entry">
11731       <div class="title">
11732         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
11733       </div>
11734       <div class="date">
11735         11th December 2010
11736       </div>
11737       <div class="body">
11738         <p>As I continue to explore
11739 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
11740 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
11741 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
11742
11743 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
11744 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
11745 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
11746 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
11747 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
11748 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
11749 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
11750 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
11751 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
11752 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
11753 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
11754 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
11755 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
11756 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
11757 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
11758 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
11759 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
11760 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
11761 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
11762 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
11763
11764 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
11765 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
11766 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
11767 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
11768 If the Skolelinux foundation
11769 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
11770 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
11771 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
11772 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
11773 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
11774 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
11775 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
11776 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
11777
11778 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
11779 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
11780 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
11781 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
11782 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
11783 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
11784 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
11785 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
11786 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
11787 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
11788 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
11789 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
11790 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
11791 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
11792 currencies.</p>
11793
11794 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
11795 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
11796 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
11797 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
11798 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
11799 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
11800 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
11801 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
11802 BitCoins.  Check out
11803 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
11804 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
11805 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
11806 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
11807 yet.</p>
11808
11809 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
11810 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
11811 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
11812 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
11813 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
11814
11815       </div>
11816       <div class="tags">
11817
11818
11819         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>.
11820
11821
11822       </div>
11823     </div>
11824     <div class="padding"></div>
11825
11826     <div class="entry">
11827       <div class="title">
11828         <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>
11829       </div>
11830       <div class="date">
11831         10th December 2010
11832       </div>
11833       <div class="body">
11834         <p>With this weeks lawless
11835 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
11836 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
11837 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
11838 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
11839 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
11840 A blog post from
11841 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
11842 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
11843 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
11844 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
11845 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
11846 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
11847 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
11848
11849 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
11850 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
11851 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
11852 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
11853 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
11854 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
11855 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
11856 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
11857 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
11858 Debian</a> soon.</p>
11859
11860 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
11861 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
11862 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
11863 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
11864 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
11865 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
11866 you can even get
11867 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
11868 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
11869 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
11870 on the current exchange rates.</p>
11871
11872 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
11873 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
11874 donations to the address
11875 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
11876
11877       </div>
11878       <div class="tags">
11879
11880
11881         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>.
11882
11883
11884       </div>
11885     </div>
11886     <div class="padding"></div>
11887
11888     <div class="entry">
11889       <div class="title">
11890         <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>
11891       </div>
11892       <div class="date">
11893          9th December 2010
11894       </div>
11895       <div class="body">
11896         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
11897 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
11898 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
11899 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
11900 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
11901 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
11902 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
11903 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
11904 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
11905 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
11906 operational.</p>
11907
11908 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
11909 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
11910 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
11911 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
11912 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
11913 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
11914 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
11915
11916       </div>
11917       <div class="tags">
11918
11919
11920         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>.
11921
11922
11923       </div>
11924     </div>
11925     <div class="padding"></div>
11926
11927     <div class="entry">
11928       <div class="title">
11929         <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>
11930       </div>
11931       <div class="date">
11932         29th November 2010
11933       </div>
11934       <div class="body">
11935         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11936 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
11937 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
11938 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
11939 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
11940 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
11941
11942 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
11943 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
11944 will hold its
11945 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
11946 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
11947 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
11948 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
11949 vote this year.</p>
11950
11951       </div>
11952       <div class="tags">
11953
11954
11955         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11956
11957
11958       </div>
11959     </div>
11960     <div class="padding"></div>
11961
11962     <div class="entry">
11963       <div class="title">
11964         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
11965       </div>
11966       <div class="date">
11967         27th November 2010
11968       </div>
11969       <div class="body">
11970         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
11971 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
11972 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
11973 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
11974 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
11975 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
11976 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
11977 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
11978
11979 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
11980 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
11981 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
11982 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
11983 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
11984 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
11985 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
11986 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
11987 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
11988 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
11989 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
11990
11991 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
11992 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
11993 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
11994 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
11995 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
11996 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
11997 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
11998 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
11999 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
12000 what is going on.</p>
12001
12002       </div>
12003       <div class="tags">
12004
12005
12006         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>.
12007
12008
12009       </div>
12010     </div>
12011     <div class="padding"></div>
12012
12013     <div class="entry">
12014       <div class="title">
12015         <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>
12016       </div>
12017       <div class="date">
12018         22nd November 2010
12019       </div>
12020       <div class="body">
12021         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
12022 upgrade testing of the
12023 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
12024 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
12025 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
12026 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
12027
12028 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
12029
12030 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12031
12032 <blockquote><p>
12033   apache2.2-bin
12034   aptdaemon
12035   baobab
12036   binfmt-support
12037   browser-plugin-gnash
12038   cheese-common
12039   cli-common
12040   cups-pk-helper
12041   dmz-cursor-theme
12042   empathy
12043   empathy-common
12044   freedesktop-sound-theme
12045   freeglut3
12046   gconf-defaults-service
12047   gdm-themes
12048   gedit-plugins
12049   geoclue
12050   geoclue-hostip
12051   geoclue-localnet
12052   geoclue-manual
12053   geoclue-yahoo
12054   gnash
12055   gnash-common
12056   gnome
12057   gnome-backgrounds
12058   gnome-cards-data
12059   gnome-codec-install
12060   gnome-core
12061   gnome-desktop-environment
12062   gnome-disk-utility
12063   gnome-screenshot
12064   gnome-search-tool
12065   gnome-session-canberra
12066   gnome-system-log
12067   gnome-themes-extras
12068   gnome-themes-more
12069   gnome-user-share
12070   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
12071   gstreamer0.10-tools
12072   gtk2-engines
12073   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
12074   gtk2-engines-smooth
12075   hamster-applet
12076   libapache2-mod-dnssd
12077   libapr1
12078   libaprutil1
12079   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
12080   libaprutil1-ldap
12081   libart2.0-cil
12082   libboost-date-time1.42.0
12083   libboost-python1.42.0
12084   libboost-thread1.42.0
12085   libchamplain-0.4-0
12086   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
12087   libcheese-gtk18
12088   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
12089   libcryptui0
12090   libdiscid0
12091   libelf1
12092   libepc-1.0-2
12093   libepc-common
12094   libepc-ui-1.0-2
12095   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
12096   libfreerdp0
12097   libgconf2.0-cil
12098   libgdata-common
12099   libgdata7
12100   libgdu-gtk0
12101   libgee2
12102   libgeoclue0
12103   libgexiv2-0
12104   libgif4
12105   libglade2.0-cil
12106   libglib2.0-cil
12107   libgmime2.4-cil
12108   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
12109   libgnome2.24-cil
12110   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
12111   libgpod-common
12112   libgpod4
12113   libgtk2.0-cil
12114   libgtkglext1
12115   libgtksourceview2.0-common
12116   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
12117   libmono-addins0.2-cil
12118   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
12119   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
12120   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
12121   libmono-posix2.0-cil
12122   libmono-security2.0-cil
12123   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
12124   libmono-system2.0-cil
12125   libmtp8
12126   libmusicbrainz3-6
12127   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
12128   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
12129   libopal3.6.8
12130   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
12131   libpt2.6.7
12132   libpython2.6
12133   librpm1
12134   librpmio1
12135   libsdl1.2debian
12136   libsrtp0
12137   libssh-4
12138   libtelepathy-farsight0
12139   libtelepathy-glib0
12140   libtidy-0.99-0
12141   media-player-info
12142   mesa-utils
12143   mono-2.0-gac
12144   mono-gac
12145   mono-runtime
12146   nautilus-sendto
12147   nautilus-sendto-empathy
12148   p7zip-full
12149   pkg-config
12150   python-aptdaemon
12151   python-aptdaemon-gtk
12152   python-axiom
12153   python-beautifulsoup
12154   python-bugbuddy
12155   python-clientform
12156   python-coherence
12157   python-configobj
12158   python-crypto
12159   python-cupshelpers
12160   python-elementtree
12161   python-epsilon
12162   python-evolution
12163   python-feedparser
12164   python-gdata
12165   python-gdbm
12166   python-gst0.10
12167   python-gtkglext1
12168   python-gtksourceview2
12169   python-httplib2
12170   python-louie
12171   python-mako
12172   python-markupsafe
12173   python-mechanize
12174   python-nevow
12175   python-notify
12176   python-opengl
12177   python-openssl
12178   python-pam
12179   python-pkg-resources
12180   python-pyasn1
12181   python-pysqlite2
12182   python-rdflib
12183   python-serial
12184   python-tagpy
12185   python-twisted-bin
12186   python-twisted-conch
12187   python-twisted-core
12188   python-twisted-web
12189   python-utidylib
12190   python-webkit
12191   python-xdg
12192   python-zope.interface
12193   remmina
12194   remmina-plugin-data
12195   remmina-plugin-rdp
12196   remmina-plugin-vnc
12197   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
12198   rhythmbox-plugins
12199   rpm-common
12200   rpm2cpio
12201   seahorse-plugins
12202   shotwell
12203   software-center
12204   system-config-printer-udev
12205   telepathy-gabble
12206   telepathy-mission-control-5
12207   telepathy-salut
12208   tomboy
12209   totem
12210   totem-coherence
12211   totem-mozilla
12212   totem-plugins
12213   transmission-common
12214   xdg-user-dirs
12215   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
12216   xserver-xephyr
12217 </p></blockquote>
12218
12219 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12220
12221 <blockquote><p>
12222   cheese
12223   ekiga
12224   eog
12225   epiphany-extensions
12226   evolution-exchange
12227   fast-user-switch-applet
12228   file-roller
12229   gcalctool
12230   gconf-editor
12231   gdm
12232   gedit
12233   gedit-common
12234   gnome-games
12235   gnome-games-data
12236   gnome-nettool
12237   gnome-system-tools
12238   gnome-themes
12239   gnuchess
12240   gucharmap
12241   guile-1.8-libs
12242   libavahi-ui0
12243   libdmx1
12244   libgalago3
12245   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
12246   libgtksourceview2.0-0
12247   liblircclient0
12248   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
12249   libspeexdsp1
12250   libsvga1
12251   rhythmbox
12252   seahorse
12253   sound-juicer
12254   system-config-printer
12255   totem-common
12256   transmission-gtk
12257   vinagre
12258   vino
12259 </p></blockquote>
12260
12261 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12262
12263 <blockquote><p>
12264   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12265 </p></blockquote>
12266
12267 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12268
12269 <blockquote><p>
12270 [nothing]
12271 </p></blockquote>
12272
12273 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
12274
12275 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12276
12277 <blockquote><p>
12278   ksmserver
12279 </p></blockquote>
12280
12281 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12282
12283 <blockquote><p>
12284   kwin
12285   network-manager-kde
12286 </p></blockquote>
12287
12288 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12289
12290 <blockquote><p>
12291   arts
12292   dolphin
12293   freespacenotifier
12294   google-gadgets-gst
12295   google-gadgets-xul
12296   kappfinder
12297   kcalc
12298   kcharselect
12299   kde-core
12300   kde-plasma-desktop
12301   kde-standard
12302   kde-window-manager
12303   kdeartwork
12304   kdeartwork-emoticons
12305   kdeartwork-style
12306   kdeartwork-theme-icon
12307   kdebase
12308   kdebase-apps
12309   kdebase-workspace
12310   kdebase-workspace-bin
12311   kdebase-workspace-data
12312   kdeeject
12313   kdelibs
12314   kdeplasma-addons
12315   kdeutils
12316   kdewallpapers
12317   kdf
12318   kfloppy
12319   kgpg
12320   khelpcenter4
12321   kinfocenter
12322   konq-plugins-l10n
12323   konqueror-nsplugins
12324   kscreensaver
12325   kscreensaver-xsavers
12326   ktimer
12327   kwrite
12328   libgle3
12329   libkde4-ruby1.8
12330   libkonq5
12331   libkonq5-templates
12332   libnetpbm10
12333   libplasma-ruby
12334   libplasma-ruby1.8
12335   libqt4-ruby1.8
12336   marble-data
12337   marble-plugins
12338   netpbm
12339   nuvola-icon-theme
12340   plasma-dataengines-workspace
12341   plasma-desktop
12342   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
12343   plasma-runners-addons
12344   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
12345   plasma-scriptengine-python
12346   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
12347   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
12348   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
12349   plasma-scriptengines
12350   plasma-wallpapers-addons
12351   plasma-widget-folderview
12352   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
12353   ruby
12354   sweeper
12355   update-notifier-kde
12356   xscreensaver-data-extra
12357   xscreensaver-gl
12358   xscreensaver-gl-extra
12359   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
12360 </p></blockquote>
12361
12362 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12363
12364 <blockquote><p>
12365   ark
12366   google-gadgets-common
12367   google-gadgets-qt
12368   htdig
12369   kate
12370   kdebase-bin
12371   kdebase-data
12372   kdepasswd
12373   kfind
12374   klipper
12375   konq-plugins
12376   konqueror
12377   ksysguard
12378   ksysguardd
12379   libarchive1
12380   libcln6
12381   libeet1
12382   libeina-svn-06
12383   libggadget-1.0-0b
12384   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
12385   libgps19
12386   libkdecorations4
12387   libkephal4
12388   libkonq4
12389   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
12390   libkscreensaver5
12391   libksgrd4
12392   libksignalplotter4
12393   libkunitconversion4
12394   libkwineffects1a
12395   libmarblewidget4
12396   libntrack-qt4-1
12397   libntrack0
12398   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
12399   libplasmaclock4a
12400   libplasmagenericshell4
12401   libprocesscore4a
12402   libprocessui4a
12403   libqalculate5
12404   libqedje0a
12405   libqtruby4shared2
12406   libqzion0a
12407   libruby1.8
12408   libscim8c2a
12409   libsmokekdecore4-3
12410   libsmokekdeui4-3
12411   libsmokekfile3
12412   libsmokekhtml3
12413   libsmokekio3
12414   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
12415   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
12416   libsmokekparts3
12417   libsmokektexteditor3
12418   libsmokekutils3
12419   libsmokenepomuk3
12420   libsmokephonon3
12421   libsmokeplasma3
12422   libsmokeqtcore4-3
12423   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
12424   libsmokeqtgui4-3
12425   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
12426   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
12427   libsmokeqtscript4-3
12428   libsmokeqtsql4-3
12429   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
12430   libsmokeqttest4-3
12431   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
12432   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
12433   libsmokeqtxml4-3
12434   libsmokesolid3
12435   libsmokesoprano3
12436   libtaskmanager4a
12437   libtidy-0.99-0
12438   libweather-ion4a
12439   libxklavier16
12440   libxxf86misc1
12441   okteta
12442   oxygencursors
12443   plasma-dataengines-addons
12444   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
12445   plasma-widget-lancelot
12446   plasma-widgets-addons
12447   plasma-widgets-workspace
12448   polkit-kde-1
12449   ruby1.8
12450   systemsettings
12451   update-notifier-common
12452 </p></blockquote>
12453
12454 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
12455 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
12456 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
12457 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
12458
12459       </div>
12460       <div class="tags">
12461
12462
12463         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>.
12464
12465
12466       </div>
12467     </div>
12468     <div class="padding"></div>
12469
12470     <div class="entry">
12471       <div class="title">
12472         <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>
12473       </div>
12474       <div class="date">
12475         22nd November 2010
12476       </div>
12477       <div class="body">
12478         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
12479 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
12480 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
12481 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
12482 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
12483 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
12484 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
12485 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
12486 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
12487
12488 <p>I found
12489 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
12490 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
12491 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
12492 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
12493 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
12494 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
12495
12496 <pre>
12497 #!/bin/sh
12498
12499 # Based on
12500 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
12501
12502 set -e
12503 set -x
12504
12505 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
12506     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
12507     exit 1
12508 else
12509     host="$1"
12510 fi
12511
12512 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
12513     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
12514     exit 1
12515 fi
12516
12517 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
12518 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
12519 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
12520 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
12521
12522 img=$host.img
12523 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
12524 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
12525
12526 parted $img mklabel msdos
12527 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
12528 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
12529 parted $img set 1 boot on
12530
12531 modprobe dm-mod
12532 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
12533 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
12534
12535 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
12536 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
12537 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
12538
12539 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
12540 losetup -d /dev/loop0
12541 </pre>
12542
12543 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
12544 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
12545
12546 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
12547 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
12548 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
12549 seem to work just fine.</p>
12550
12551       </div>
12552       <div class="tags">
12553
12554
12555         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>.
12556
12557
12558       </div>
12559     </div>
12560     <div class="padding"></div>
12561
12562     <div class="entry">
12563       <div class="title">
12564         <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>
12565       </div>
12566       <div class="date">
12567         20th November 2010
12568       </div>
12569       <div class="body">
12570         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
12571 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
12572 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
12573 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
12574
12575 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
12576 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
12577 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
12578
12579 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
12580
12581 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12582
12583 <blockquote><p>
12584   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
12585   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
12586   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
12587   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
12588   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
12589   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
12590   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
12591   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
12592   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
12593   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
12594   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
12595   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
12596   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
12597   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
12598   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
12599   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
12600   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
12601   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
12602   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
12603   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
12604   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
12605   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
12606   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
12607   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
12608   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
12609   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
12610   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
12611   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
12612   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
12613   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
12614   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
12615   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
12616   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
12617   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
12618   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
12619   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
12620   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
12621   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
12622   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
12623   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
12624   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
12625   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
12626   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
12627   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
12628   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
12629   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
12630   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
12631   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
12632   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
12633   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
12634   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
12635   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
12636   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
12637   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
12638   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
12639   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
12640   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
12641   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
12642   zip
12643 </p></blockquote>
12644
12645 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
12646
12647 <blockquote><p>
12648   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
12649   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
12650   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
12651   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
12652   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
12653   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
12654   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
12655   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
12656   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
12657   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
12658   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
12659   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
12660   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
12661   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
12662   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
12663   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
12664   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
12665   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
12666   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
12667   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
12668   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
12669   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
12670   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
12671   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
12672   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
12673   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
12674   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
12675   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
12676   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
12677 </p></blockquote>
12678
12679 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12680
12681 <blockquote><p>
12682   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
12683 </p></blockquote>
12684
12685 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12686
12687 <blockquote><p>
12688 [nothing]
12689 </p></blockquote>
12690
12691 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
12692
12693 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
12694
12695 <blockquote><p>
12696   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
12697   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
12698   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
12699   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
12700   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
12701   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
12702   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
12703   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
12704   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
12705   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
12706   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
12707   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
12708   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
12709   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
12710   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
12711   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
12712   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
12713   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
12714   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
12715   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
12716   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
12717   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
12718   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
12719   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
12720   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
12721   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
12722   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
12723   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
12724   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
12725   ttf-sazanami-gothic
12726 </p></blockquote>
12727
12728 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
12729
12730 <blockquote><p>
12731   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
12732   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
12733   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
12734   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
12735   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
12736   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
12737   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
12738   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
12739   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
12740   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
12741   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
12742   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
12743   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
12744   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
12745   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
12746   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
12747   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
12748   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
12749   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
12750   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
12751   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
12752   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
12753   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
12754   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
12755   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
12756   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
12757   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
12758   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
12759   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
12760   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
12761   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
12762   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
12763   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
12764 </p></blockquote>
12765
12766 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
12767
12768 <blockquote><p>
12769   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
12770   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
12771   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
12772   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
12773   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
12774   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
12775   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
12776 </p></blockquote>
12777
12778 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
12779
12780 <blockquote><p>
12781   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
12782 </p></blockquote>
12783
12784       </div>
12785       <div class="tags">
12786
12787
12788         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>.
12789
12790
12791       </div>
12792     </div>
12793     <div class="padding"></div>
12794
12795     <div class="entry">
12796       <div class="title">
12797         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
12798       </div>
12799       <div class="date">
12800         20th November 2010
12801       </div>
12802       <div class="body">
12803         <p>Answering
12804 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
12805 call from the Gnash project</a> for
12806 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
12807 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
12808 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
12809 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
12810 releases out more often.</p>
12811
12812 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
12813 I have considered setting up a <a
12814 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
12815 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
12816 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
12817 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
12818 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
12819 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
12820 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
12821 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
12822 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
12823 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
12824 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
12825 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
12826
12827       </div>
12828       <div class="tags">
12829
12830
12831         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>.
12832
12833
12834       </div>
12835     </div>
12836     <div class="padding"></div>
12837
12838     <div class="entry">
12839       <div class="title">
12840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
12841       </div>
12842       <div class="date">
12843          9th November 2010
12844       </div>
12845       <div class="body">
12846         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
12847
12848 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
12849 3D linked in from
12850 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
12851 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
12852
12853       </div>
12854       <div class="tags">
12855
12856
12857         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>.
12858
12859
12860       </div>
12861     </div>
12862     <div class="padding"></div>
12863
12864     <div class="entry">
12865       <div class="title">
12866         <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>
12867       </div>
12868       <div class="date">
12869          7th November 2010
12870       </div>
12871       <div class="body">
12872         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
12873 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
12874 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
12875 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
12876 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
12877 working using this DVD.</p>
12878
12879 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
12880 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
12881 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
12882 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
12883 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
12884 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
12885 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
12886
12887 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
12888 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
12889 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
12890 Debian archive.</p>
12891
12892 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
12893 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
12894 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
12895 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
12896 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
12897 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
12898 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
12899 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
12900 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
12901 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
12902 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
12903 free X driver should work.</p>
12904
12905 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
12906 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
12907 DVD more useful again.</p>
12908
12909       </div>
12910       <div class="tags">
12911
12912
12913         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12914
12915
12916       </div>
12917     </div>
12918     <div class="padding"></div>
12919
12920     <div class="entry">
12921       <div class="title">
12922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
12923       </div>
12924       <div class="date">
12925         24th October 2010
12926       </div>
12927       <div class="body">
12928         <p>Some updates.</p>
12929
12930 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
12931 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
12932 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
12933 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
12934 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
12935 :)</p>
12936
12937 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
12938 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
12939 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
12940 It is called
12941 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
12942 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
12943 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
12944 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
12945 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
12946 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
12947
12948 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
12949 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
12950 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
12951 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
12952 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
12953 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
12954 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
12955 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
12956 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
12957 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
12958
12959       </div>
12960       <div class="tags">
12961
12962
12963         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>.
12964
12965
12966       </div>
12967     </div>
12968     <div class="padding"></div>
12969
12970     <div class="entry">
12971       <div class="title">
12972         <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>
12973       </div>
12974       <div class="date">
12975         19th October 2010
12976       </div>
12977       <div class="body">
12978         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
12979 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
12980 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
12981 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
12982 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
12983 AVM2 flash files.</p>
12984
12985 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
12986 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
12987 following text:</P>
12988
12989 <p><blockquote>
12990
12991   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
12992   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
12993
12994   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
12995
12996   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
12997
12998   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
12999   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
13000   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
13001   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
13002   days. The project web page is available from
13003   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
13004   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
13005   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
13006
13007   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
13008   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
13009   to get this to happen.</p>
13010
13011   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
13012   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
13013
13014 </blockquote></p>
13015
13016 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
13017 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
13018 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
13019 :)</p>
13020
13021       </div>
13022       <div class="tags">
13023
13024
13025         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>.
13026
13027
13028       </div>
13029     </div>
13030     <div class="padding"></div>
13031
13032     <div class="entry">
13033       <div class="title">
13034         <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>
13035       </div>
13036       <div class="date">
13037          9th October 2010
13038       </div>
13039       <div class="body">
13040         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
13041 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
13042 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
13043 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
13044 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
13045 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
13046 robots.</p>
13047
13048 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
13049 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
13050 a few less important features too.</p>
13051
13052 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
13053 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
13054 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
13055 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
13056
13057 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
13058 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
13059 source or binary package:</p>
13060
13061 <p><ul>
13062 <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>
13063 <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>
13064 <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>
13065 </ul></p>
13066
13067 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
13068 please let me know.</p>
13069
13070       </div>
13071       <div class="tags">
13072
13073
13074         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>.
13075
13076
13077       </div>
13078     </div>
13079     <div class="padding"></div>
13080
13081     <div class="entry">
13082       <div class="title">
13083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
13084       </div>
13085       <div class="date">
13086          3rd October 2010
13087       </div>
13088       <div class="body">
13089         <p><ul>
13090
13091 <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
13092 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
13093
13094 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
13095 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
13096 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
13097
13098 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
13099 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
13100 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
13101 simple setup.
13102
13103 </ul></p>
13104
13105       </div>
13106       <div class="tags">
13107
13108
13109         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>.
13110
13111
13112       </div>
13113     </div>
13114     <div class="padding"></div>
13115
13116     <div class="entry">
13117       <div class="title">
13118         <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>
13119       </div>
13120       <div class="date">
13121          9th September 2010
13122       </div>
13123       <div class="body">
13124         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
13125 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
13126 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
13127 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
13128 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
13129 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
13130 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
13131 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
13132 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
13133
13134 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
13135 written:</p>
13136
13137 <blockquote>
13138 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
13139 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
13140 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
13141 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
13142 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
13143
13144 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
13145 standard.</p>
13146 </blockquote>
13147
13148 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
13149 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
13150 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
13151 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
13152
13153 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
13154 read
13155 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
13156 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
13157 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
13158 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
13159 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
13160 the issue.  The solution is to support the
13161 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
13162 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
13163 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
13164
13165       </div>
13166       <div class="tags">
13167
13168
13169         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>.
13170
13171
13172       </div>
13173     </div>
13174     <div class="padding"></div>
13175
13176     <div class="entry">
13177       <div class="title">
13178         <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>
13179       </div>
13180       <div class="date">
13181          4th September 2010
13182       </div>
13183       <div class="body">
13184         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
13185 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
13186 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
13187 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
13188 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
13189 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
13190 installed.</p>
13191
13192 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
13193 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
13194 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
13195 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
13196 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
13197 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
13198 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
13199 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
13200 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
13201
13202 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
13203 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
13204 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
13205 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
13206 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
13207 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
13208 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
13209 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
13210 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
13211 pages they want to visit.</p>
13212
13213 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
13214 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
13215 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
13216 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
13217 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
13218 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
13219 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
13220 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
13221 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
13222 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
13223 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
13224
13225       </div>
13226       <div class="tags">
13227
13228
13229         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>.
13230
13231
13232       </div>
13233     </div>
13234     <div class="padding"></div>
13235
13236     <div class="entry">
13237       <div class="title">
13238         <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>
13239       </div>
13240       <div class="date">
13241          1st September 2010
13242       </div>
13243       <div class="body">
13244         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
13245 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
13246 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
13247 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
13248 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
13249 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
13250 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
13251 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
13252 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
13253 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
13254 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
13255 drive around.</p>
13256
13257 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
13258 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
13259
13260 <p><pre>
13261 use Spykee;
13262 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
13263 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
13264 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
13265 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
13266 $spykee->left();
13267 sleep 2;
13268 $spykee->right();
13269 sleep 2;
13270 $spykee->forward();
13271 sleep 2;
13272 $spykee->back();
13273 sleep 2;
13274 $spykee->stop();
13275 </pre></p>
13276
13277 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
13278 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
13279 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
13280 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
13281 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
13282 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
13283 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
13284 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
13285 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
13286 going. :).</p>
13287
13288 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
13289 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
13290 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
13291 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
13292
13293       </div>
13294       <div class="tags">
13295
13296
13297         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>.
13298
13299
13300       </div>
13301     </div>
13302     <div class="padding"></div>
13303
13304     <div class="entry">
13305       <div class="title">
13306         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
13307       </div>
13308       <div class="date">
13309         30th August 2010
13310       </div>
13311       <div class="body">
13312         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
13313 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
13314 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
13315 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
13316 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
13317 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
13318 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
13319
13320 <pre>
13321 % ln foo bar
13322 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
13323 %
13324 </pre>
13325
13326 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
13327 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
13328 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
13329 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
13330 nevertheless. :)</p>
13331
13332 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
13333 git from
13334 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
13335
13336       </div>
13337       <div class="tags">
13338
13339
13340         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13341
13342
13343       </div>
13344     </div>
13345     <div class="padding"></div>
13346
13347     <div class="entry">
13348       <div class="title">
13349         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
13350       </div>
13351       <div class="date">
13352         26th August 2010
13353       </div>
13354       <div class="body">
13355         <p>My file system sematics program
13356 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
13357 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
13358 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
13359 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
13360 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
13361 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
13362 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
13363 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
13364 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
13365 script:</p>
13366
13367 <pre>
13368 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
13369   mode_t retval = 0;
13370   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
13371   if (-1 != fd) {
13372     unlink(name);
13373     struct stat statbuf;
13374     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
13375       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
13376     }
13377     close(fd);
13378   }
13379   return retval;
13380 }
13381
13382 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
13383 int test_umask(void) {
13384   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
13385
13386   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
13387   mode_t newmode;
13388   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
13389     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
13390            newmode);
13391   }
13392   umask(007);
13393   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
13394     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
13395            newmode);
13396   }
13397
13398   umask (orig_umask);
13399   return 0;
13400 }
13401
13402 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
13403   [...]
13404   test_umask();
13405   return 0;
13406 }
13407 </pre>
13408
13409 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
13410
13411 <pre>
13412 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13413 info: testing symlink creation
13414 info: testing subdirectory creation
13415 info: testing fcntl locking
13416   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13417   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13418   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
13419   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13420   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13421   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
13422 info: testing umask effect on file creation
13423 </pre>
13424
13425 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
13426 result:</p>
13427
13428 <pre>
13429 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13430 info: testing symlink creation
13431 info: testing subdirectory creation
13432 info: testing fcntl locking
13433   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13434   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13435   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
13436   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13437   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13438   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
13439 info: testing umask effect on file creation
13440   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
13441   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
13442 </pre>
13443
13444 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
13445 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
13446 directory.</p>
13447
13448 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
13449 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
13450
13451 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
13452 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
13453 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
13454
13455       </div>
13456       <div class="tags">
13457
13458
13459         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13460
13461
13462       </div>
13463     </div>
13464     <div class="padding"></div>
13465
13466     <div class="entry">
13467       <div class="title">
13468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
13469       </div>
13470       <div class="date">
13471         15th August 2010
13472       </div>
13473       <div class="body">
13474         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
13475 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
13476 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
13477 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
13478 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
13479 long time.</p>
13480
13481       </div>
13482       <div class="tags">
13483
13484
13485         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>.
13486
13487
13488       </div>
13489     </div>
13490     <div class="padding"></div>
13491
13492     <div class="entry">
13493       <div class="title">
13494         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
13495       </div>
13496       <div class="date">
13497          9th August 2010
13498       </div>
13499       <div class="body">
13500         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
13501 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
13502 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
13503 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
13504 generated configuration.</p>
13505
13506 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
13507 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
13508 without any manual configuration.</p>
13509
13510 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
13511 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
13512 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
13513 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
13514 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
13515 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
13516 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
13517 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
13518 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
13519 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
13520 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
13521 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
13522 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
13523 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
13524 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
13525 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
13526 use.</p>
13527
13528 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
13529 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
13530 working properly out of the box:</p>
13531
13532 <ul>
13533 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
13534 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
13535 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
13536 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
13537 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
13538 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
13539 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
13540 </ul>
13541
13542 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
13543
13544 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
13545 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
13546 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
13547 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
13548 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
13549
13550 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
13551 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
13552 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
13553 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
13554 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
13555 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
13556 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
13557 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
13558
13559 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
13560 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
13561 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
13562 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
13563 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
13564 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
13565 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
13566 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
13567 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
13568 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
13569 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
13570 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
13571 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
13572 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
13573 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
13574 current DNS domain is used.</p>
13575
13576 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
13577 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
13578 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
13579 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
13580 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
13581 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
13582 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
13583 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
13584 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
13585 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
13586 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
13587 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
13588 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
13589
13590 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
13591 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
13592 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
13593 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
13594 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
13595 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
13596 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
13597 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
13598 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
13599 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
13600 do for now. :)</p>
13601
13602 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
13603 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
13604 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
13605 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
13606 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
13607 yet.</p>
13608
13609 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
13610 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13611
13612 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
13613 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
13614 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
13615 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
13616
13617       </div>
13618       <div class="tags">
13619
13620
13621         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13622
13623
13624       </div>
13625     </div>
13626     <div class="padding"></div>
13627
13628     <div class="entry">
13629       <div class="title">
13630         <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>
13631       </div>
13632       <div class="date">
13633          8th August 2010
13634       </div>
13635       <div class="body">
13636         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
13637 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
13638 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
13639 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
13640 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
13641 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
13642 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
13643
13644 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
13645 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
13646 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
13647 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
13648 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
13649 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
13650 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
13651
13652 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
13653 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
13654 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
13655 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
13656 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
13657
13658 <pre>
13659 /*
13660  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
13661  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
13662  * directory.
13663  * License: GPL v2 or later
13664  *
13665  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
13666  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
13667 */
13668
13669 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
13670 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
13671 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
13672
13673 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
13674
13675 #include &lt;errno.h>
13676 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
13677 #include &lt;stdio.h>
13678 #include &lt;string.h>
13679 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
13680 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
13681 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
13682 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
13683 #include &lt;unistd.h>
13684
13685 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
13686 /*
13687  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
13688  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
13689  * below.
13690  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
13691  */
13692 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
13693 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
13694   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
13695 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
13696   char *zErrMsg;
13697   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
13698   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
13699   unlink(name);
13700   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
13701   if( rc ){
13702     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
13703     sqlite3_close(db);
13704     return -1;
13705   }
13706
13707   /* create tables */
13708   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
13709   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
13710     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
13711     sqlite3_close(db);
13712     return -1;
13713   }
13714   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
13715   sqlite3_close(db);
13716   return 0;
13717 }
13718 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
13719
13720 /*
13721  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
13722  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
13723  * done in the sqlite3 library.
13724  * See also
13725  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
13726  * POSIX specification
13727  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
13728  */
13729 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
13730   struct flock fl;
13731   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
13732   unlink(name);
13733   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
13734   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
13735
13736   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
13737   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
13738   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
13739   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
13740   fl.l_len    = 1;
13741   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
13742   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13743
13744   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
13745   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
13746   fl.l_len    = 510;
13747   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
13748   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13749
13750   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
13751   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
13752   fl.l_len    = 1;
13753   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
13754   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13755
13756   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
13757   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
13758   fl.l_len    = 1;
13759   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
13760   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13761
13762   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
13763   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
13764   fl.l_len    = 510;
13765   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13766
13767   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
13768   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
13769   fl.l_len    = 2;
13770   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
13771   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
13772
13773   close(fd);
13774   return 0;
13775 }
13776
13777 /*
13778  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
13779  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
13780  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
13781  * slowing down file operations.
13782  */
13783 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
13784 #define LEVELS 5
13785   char *path = strdup("test");
13786   char *dirs[LEVELS];
13787   int level;
13788   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
13789   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
13790     char *newpath = NULL;
13791     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
13792       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
13793              path, strerror(errno));
13794       break;
13795     }
13796     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
13797     free(path);
13798     path = newpath;
13799   }
13800   return 0;
13801 }
13802
13803 /*
13804  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
13805  * KDE.
13806  */
13807 int test_symlinks(void) {
13808   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
13809   unlink("symlink");
13810   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
13811     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
13812   return 0;
13813 }
13814
13815 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
13816   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
13817   test_symlinks();
13818   test_subdirectory_creation();
13819 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
13820   test_sqlite_open();
13821 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
13822   test_gcompris_locking();
13823   return 0;
13824 }
13825 </pre>
13826
13827 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
13828 this:</p>
13829
13830 <pre>
13831 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
13832 info: testing symlink creation
13833 info: testing subdirectory creation
13834 info: sqlite worked
13835 info: testing fcntl locking
13836   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13837   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13838   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
13839   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
13840   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
13841   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
13842 </pre>
13843
13844 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
13845 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
13846 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
13847 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
13848 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
13849 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
13850 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
13851 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
13852
13853 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
13854 it. :)</p>
13855
13856 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
13857 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
13858 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
13859
13860       </div>
13861       <div class="tags">
13862
13863
13864         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13865
13866
13867       </div>
13868     </div>
13869     <div class="padding"></div>
13870
13871     <div class="entry">
13872       <div class="title">
13873         <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>
13874       </div>
13875       <div class="date">
13876          7th August 2010
13877       </div>
13878       <div class="body">
13879         <p>A few days ago, I
13880 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
13881 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
13882 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
13883 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
13884 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
13885 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
13886 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
13887 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
13888 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
13889
13890 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
13891 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
13892 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
13893 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
13894 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
13895 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
13896 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
13897 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
13898 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
13899 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
13900 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
13901 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
13902 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
13903 gave it a IP address.</p>
13904
13905 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
13906 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
13907 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
13908 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
13909 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
13910 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
13911 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
13912 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
13913
13914 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
13915 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
13916 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
13917 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
13918 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
13919 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
13920
13921 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
13922 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
13923 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
13924 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
13925 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
13926 with UID and GID values.</p>
13927
13928 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
13929 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
13930
13931       </div>
13932       <div class="tags">
13933
13934
13935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13936
13937
13938       </div>
13939     </div>
13940     <div class="padding"></div>
13941
13942     <div class="entry">
13943       <div class="title">
13944         <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>
13945       </div>
13946       <div class="date">
13947          3rd August 2010
13948       </div>
13949       <div class="body">
13950         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
13951 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
13952 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
13953 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
13954 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
13955 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
13956 servers.</p>
13957
13958 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
13959 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
13960 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
13961 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
13962 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
13963 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
13964 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
13965 .uio.no.</p>
13966
13967 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
13968 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
13969 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
13970 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
13971 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
13972 university servers.</p>
13973
13974 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
13975 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
13976 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
13977 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
13978 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
13979 uses.</p>
13980
13981       </div>
13982       <div class="tags">
13983
13984
13985         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13986
13987
13988       </div>
13989     </div>
13990     <div class="padding"></div>
13991
13992     <div class="entry">
13993       <div class="title">
13994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
13995       </div>
13996       <div class="date">
13997         27th July 2010
13998       </div>
13999       <div class="body">
14000         <p>I discovered this while doing
14001 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
14002 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
14003 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
14004 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
14005 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
14006
14007 <p>An example is from todays
14008 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
14009 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
14010 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
14011 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
14012 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
14013 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
14014 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
14015
14016 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
14017
14018 <blockquote><pre>
14019 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
14020  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
14021   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
14022 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
14023  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
14024 </pre></blockquote>
14025
14026 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
14027 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
14028 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
14029 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
14030 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
14031 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
14032 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
14033 of dependency loops.</p>
14034
14035 <p>Thanks to
14036 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
14037 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
14038 dependencies
14039 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
14040 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
14041
14042 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
14043 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
14044 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
14045 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
14046 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
14047 it.</p>
14048
14049       </div>
14050       <div class="tags">
14051
14052
14053         Tags: <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>.
14054
14055
14056       </div>
14057     </div>
14058     <div class="padding"></div>
14059
14060     <div class="entry">
14061       <div class="title">
14062         <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>
14063       </div>
14064       <div class="date">
14065         27th July 2010
14066       </div>
14067       <div class="body">
14068         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
14069 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
14070 completed.</p>
14071
14072 <blockquote>
14073 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
14074 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
14075 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
14076 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
14077 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
14078 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
14079 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
14080 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
14081
14082 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
14083 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
14084 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
14085
14086 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
14087 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
14088 much.</p>
14089
14090 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
14091
14092 <ul>
14093 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
14094 <ul>
14095   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
14096          combination with some new artwork
14097   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
14098   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
14099   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
14100   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
14101   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
14102   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
14103   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
14104   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
14105   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
14106 </ul></li>
14107 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
14108     Enabled for:
14109 <ul>
14110   <li>PAM
14111   <li>LDAP
14112   <li>IMAP
14113   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
14114 </ul>
14115 </li>
14116 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
14117 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
14118     fetched from LDAP.</li>
14119 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
14120 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
14121 </ul>
14122 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
14123
14124 <ul>
14125 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
14126     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
14127     for testing.</li>
14128 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
14129     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
14130     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
14131 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
14132 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
14133 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
14134 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
14135     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
14136 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
14137     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
14138     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
14139 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
14140     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
14141     and help out with translations.</li>
14142 </ul>
14143
14144 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
14145
14146 <ul>
14147 <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>
14148 <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>
14149 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14150 </ul>
14151 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
14152
14153 <ul>
14154 <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>
14155 <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>
14156 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14157 </ul>
14158
14159 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
14160 get closer to the final release.</p>
14161
14162 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
14163
14164 <ul>
14165 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14166 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14167 </ul>
14168
14169 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
14170 <ul>
14171 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
14172 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
14173 </ul>
14174 <p>How to report bugs:
14175 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
14176
14177 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
14178 </blockquote>
14179
14180       </div>
14181       <div class="tags">
14182
14183
14184         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
14185
14186
14187       </div>
14188     </div>
14189     <div class="padding"></div>
14190
14191     <div class="entry">
14192       <div class="title">
14193         <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>
14194       </div>
14195       <div class="date">
14196         25th July 2010
14197       </div>
14198       <div class="body">
14199         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
14200 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
14201 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
14202 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
14203 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
14204
14205 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
14206 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
14207 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
14208 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
14209 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
14210 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
14211 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
14212
14213 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
14214 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
14215 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
14216 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
14217 up. :)</p>
14218
14219 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
14220 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
14221 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
14222
14223 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
14224 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
14225 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
14226 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
14227 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
14228 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
14229 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
14230 release another day.</p>
14231
14232 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
14233 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14234
14235       </div>
14236       <div class="tags">
14237
14238
14239         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
14240
14241
14242       </div>
14243     </div>
14244     <div class="padding"></div>
14245
14246     <div class="entry">
14247       <div class="title">
14248         <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>
14249       </div>
14250       <div class="date">
14251         18th July 2010
14252       </div>
14253       <div class="body">
14254         <p>Thanks to
14255 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
14256 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
14257 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
14258 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
14259 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
14260 only available from the development server, until more experience is
14261 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
14262
14263 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
14264 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
14265 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
14266 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
14267 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
14268 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
14269 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
14270
14271       </div>
14272       <div class="tags">
14273
14274
14275         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>.
14276
14277
14278       </div>
14279     </div>
14280     <div class="padding"></div>
14281
14282     <div class="entry">
14283       <div class="title">
14284         <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>
14285       </div>
14286       <div class="date">
14287         17th July 2010
14288       </div>
14289       <div class="body">
14290         <p>This is a
14291 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
14292 on my
14293 <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
14294 work</a> on
14295 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
14296 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
14297
14298 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
14299 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
14300 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
14301 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
14302
14303 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
14304 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
14305 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
14306
14307 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
14308
14309 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
14310 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
14311 the web.
14312
14313 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
14314 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
14315 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
14316 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
14317 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
14318 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
14319
14320 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
14321 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
14322 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
14323 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
14324 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
14325 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
14326 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
14327 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
14328 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
14329 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
14330 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
14331 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
14332 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
14333 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
14334 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
14335 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
14336
14337 <blockquote><pre>
14338 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14339   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14340   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14341   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14342   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14343   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14344   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14345
14346 ldapsearch -h ldap \
14347   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
14348   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
14349   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
14350   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
14351   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
14352 </pre></blockquote>
14353
14354 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
14355 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
14356 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
14357 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14358 also exist.</p>
14359
14360 <blockquote><pre>
14361 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14362 objectclass: top
14363 objectclass: dnsdomain
14364 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14365 dc: tjener
14366 arecord: 10.0.2.2
14367 associateddomain: tjener.intern
14368
14369 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14370 objectclass: top
14371 objectclass: dnsdomain2
14372 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14373 dc: 2
14374 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
14375 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
14376 </pre></blockquote>
14377
14378 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
14379 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
14380 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
14381 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
14382 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
14383 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
14384 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
14385 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
14386 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
14387 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
14388 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
14389 instead.</p>
14390
14391 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
14392 like this:</p>
14393
14394 <blockquote><pre>
14395 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14396   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
14397   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
14398   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
14399   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
14400   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
14401
14402 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
14403   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
14404 </pre></blockquote>
14405
14406 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
14407 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
14408 reverse lookups.</p>
14409
14410 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
14411 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
14412 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
14413 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
14414
14415 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
14416 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
14417 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
14418
14419 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
14420 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
14421 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
14422 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
14423 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
14424
14425 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
14426 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
14427 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
14428 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
14429 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
14430
14431 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
14432 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
14433 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
14434 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
14435 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
14436 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
14437
14438 <blockquote><pre>
14439 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
14440     SUP top
14441     AUXILIARY
14442     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
14443           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
14444           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
14445           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
14446           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
14447     ))
14448 </pre></blockquote>
14449
14450 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
14451 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
14452 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
14453 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
14454 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
14455 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
14456
14457 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
14458
14459 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
14460 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
14461 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
14462 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
14463 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
14464
14465 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
14466 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
14467 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
14468 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
14469
14470 <blockquote><pre>
14471 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
14472 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
14473 </pre></blockquote>
14474
14475 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
14476 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
14477 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
14478 search result is this entry:</p>
14479
14480 <blockquote><pre>
14481 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14482 cn: dhcp
14483 objectClass: top
14484 objectClass: dhcpServer
14485 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14486 </pre></blockquote>
14487
14488 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
14489 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
14490 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
14491 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
14492 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
14493 The search result is this entry:</p>
14494
14495 <blockquote><pre>
14496 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14497 cn: DHCP Config
14498 objectClass: top
14499 objectClass: dhcpService
14500 objectClass: dhcpOptions
14501 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14502 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
14503 dhcpStatements: authoritative
14504 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
14505 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
14506 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
14507 </pre></blockquote>
14508
14509 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
14510 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
14511 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
14512 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
14513 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
14514 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
14515 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
14516 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
14517 related computer objects.</p>
14518
14519 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
14520 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
14521 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
14522 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
14523 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
14524 like:</p>
14525
14526 <blockquote><pre>
14527 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14528 cn: hostname
14529 objectClass: top
14530 objectClass: dhcpHost
14531 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14532 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
14533 </pre></blockquote>
14534
14535 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
14536 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
14537 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
14538 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
14539 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
14540 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
14541 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
14542 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
14543 structural object class.
14544
14545 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
14546
14547 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
14548 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
14549 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
14550 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
14551 in the configuration.</p>
14552
14553 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
14554 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
14555 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
14556 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
14557 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
14558 structure.</p>
14559
14560 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
14561 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
14562
14563 <blockquote><pre>
14564 ou=services
14565   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
14566     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
14567     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
14568       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
14569         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
14570     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
14571       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
14572         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
14573     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
14574       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
14575 </pre></blockquote>
14576
14577 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
14578 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
14579 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
14580 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
14581
14582 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
14583 like this:</p>
14584
14585 <blockquote><pre>
14586 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14587 dc: hostname
14588 objectClass: top
14589 objectClass: dhcpHost
14590 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14591 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
14592 associateddomain: hostname.intern
14593 arecord: 10.11.12.13
14594 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14595 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
14596 </pre></blockquote>
14597
14598 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
14599 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
14600 auxiliary object class.</p>
14601
14602       </div>
14603       <div class="tags">
14604
14605
14606         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>.
14607
14608
14609       </div>
14610     </div>
14611     <div class="padding"></div>
14612
14613     <div class="entry">
14614       <div class="title">
14615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
14616       </div>
14617       <div class="date">
14618         14th July 2010
14619       </div>
14620       <div class="body">
14621         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
14622 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
14623 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
14624 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
14625 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
14626
14627 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
14628 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
14629
14630 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
14631 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
14632 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
14633 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
14634 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
14635 to a slave DNS server.</p>
14636
14637 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
14638 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
14639 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
14640 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
14641 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
14642 seem to work.</p>
14643
14644 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
14645 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
14646 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
14647 this:</p>
14648
14649 <blockquote><pre>
14650   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
14651   cn: hostname
14652   objectClass: dhcphost
14653   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
14654   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
14655   associateddomain: hostname.intern
14656   arecord: 10.11.12.13
14657   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
14658   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
14659   ldapconfigsound: Y
14660 </pre></blockquote>
14661
14662 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
14663 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
14664 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
14665 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
14666
14667 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
14668 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
14669 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
14670 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
14671 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
14672 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
14673 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
14674 might be a good place to put it.</p>
14675
14676 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14677 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14678
14679       </div>
14680       <div class="tags">
14681
14682
14683         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>.
14684
14685
14686       </div>
14687     </div>
14688     <div class="padding"></div>
14689
14690     <div class="entry">
14691       <div class="title">
14692         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
14693       </div>
14694       <div class="date">
14695         11th July 2010
14696       </div>
14697       <div class="body">
14698         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
14699 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
14700 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
14701 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
14702
14703 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
14704 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
14705 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
14706 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
14707 LTSP clients.</p>
14708
14709 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
14710 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
14711 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
14712
14713 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
14714 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
14715 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
14716
14717 <blockquote><pre>
14718 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
14719 #
14720 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
14721 #
14722 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
14723 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
14724 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
14725 #
14726 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
14727 # existence of attribute names.
14728 #
14729 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
14730 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
14731 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
14732 #
14733 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
14734 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
14735 #
14736 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
14737 #     SUP top
14738 #     AUXILIARY
14739 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
14740
14741 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
14742 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
14743     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
14744     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
14745         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
14746         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
14747             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
14748             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
14749             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
14750             # bass value on to clients
14751             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
14752         done
14753     done
14754 fi
14755 </pre></blockquote>
14756
14757 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
14758 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
14759 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
14760 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
14761 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
14762
14763 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
14764 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
14765
14766 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
14767 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
14768 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
14769 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
14770 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
14771 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
14772
14773       </div>
14774       <div class="tags">
14775
14776
14777         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>.
14778
14779
14780       </div>
14781     </div>
14782     <div class="padding"></div>
14783
14784     <div class="entry">
14785       <div class="title">
14786         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
14787       </div>
14788       <div class="date">
14789          9th July 2010
14790       </div>
14791       <div class="body">
14792         <p>Since
14793 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
14794 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
14795 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
14796 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
14797 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
14798 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
14799 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
14800 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
14801 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
14802 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
14803 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
14804 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
14805 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
14806
14807       </div>
14808       <div class="tags">
14809
14810
14811         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>.
14812
14813
14814       </div>
14815     </div>
14816     <div class="padding"></div>
14817
14818     <div class="entry">
14819       <div class="title">
14820         <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>
14821       </div>
14822       <div class="date">
14823          3rd July 2010
14824       </div>
14825       <div class="body">
14826         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
14827 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
14828 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
14829 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
14830 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
14831 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
14832 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
14833 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
14834
14835 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
14836 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
14837 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
14838 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
14839 publish the difference.</p>
14840
14841 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
14842
14843 <blockquote><p>
14844   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
14845   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
14846   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
14847   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
14848   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
14849   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
14850   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
14851   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
14852 </p></blockquote>
14853
14854 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
14855
14856 <blockquote><p>
14857   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
14858   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
14859   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
14860   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
14861   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
14862   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
14863   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
14864   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
14865   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
14866   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
14867   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
14868   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
14869   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
14870   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
14871   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
14872   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
14873   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
14874   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
14875   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
14876   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
14877 </p></blockquote>
14878
14879 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
14880
14881 <blockquote><p>
14882   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
14883   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
14884   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
14885   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
14886   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
14887   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
14888   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
14889   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
14890   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
14891   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
14892   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
14893   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
14894   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
14895   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
14896   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
14897   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
14898   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
14899   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
14900   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
14901   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
14902   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
14903 </p></blockquote>
14904
14905 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
14906
14907 <blockquote><p>
14908   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
14909   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
14910   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
14911 </p></blockquote>
14912
14913 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
14914 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
14915 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
14916 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
14917 the difference somewhat.
14918
14919       </div>
14920       <div class="tags">
14921
14922
14923         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>.
14924
14925
14926       </div>
14927     </div>
14928     <div class="padding"></div>
14929
14930     <div class="entry">
14931       <div class="title">
14932         <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>
14933       </div>
14934       <div class="date">
14935          1st July 2010
14936       </div>
14937       <div class="body">
14938         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
14939 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
14940 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
14941 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
14942 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
14943 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
14944 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
14945 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
14946 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
14947
14948 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
14949
14950 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
14951 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
14952 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
14953 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
14954 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
14955 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
14956 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
14957 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
14958 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
14959 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
14960 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
14961 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
14962 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
14963 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
14964 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
14965
14966 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
14967
14968 <blockquote><pre>
14969 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
14970 </pre></blockquote>
14971
14972 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
14973 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
14974 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
14975 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
14976 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
14977 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
14978 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
14979 on how to get this working.</p>
14980
14981 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
14982 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
14983 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
14984 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
14985 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
14986 instructions I found in the
14987 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
14988 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
14989
14990 <blockquote><pre>
14991         debug-level             0
14992         reload-count            unlimited
14993         paranoia                no
14994
14995         enable-cache            passwd          yes
14996         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
14997         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
14998         suggested-size          passwd          211
14999         check-files             passwd          yes
15000         persistent              passwd          yes
15001         shared                  passwd          yes
15002         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
15003         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
15004
15005         enable-cache            group           yes
15006         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
15007         negative-time-to-live   group           20
15008         suggested-size          group           211
15009         check-files             group           yes
15010         persistent              group           yes
15011         shared                  group           yes
15012         max-db-size             group           33554432
15013         auto-propagate          group           yes
15014
15015         enable-cache            hosts           no
15016         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
15017         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
15018         suggested-size          hosts           211
15019         check-files             hosts           yes
15020         persistent              hosts           yes
15021         shared                  hosts           yes
15022         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
15023
15024         enable-cache            services        yes
15025         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
15026         negative-time-to-live   services        20
15027         suggested-size          services        211
15028         check-files             services        yes
15029         persistent              services        yes
15030         shared                  services        yes
15031         max-db-size             services        33554432
15032 </pre></blockquote>
15033
15034 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
15035 automatically like the one provided in
15036 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
15037 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
15038 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
15039 look like this:</p>
15040
15041 <blockquote><pre>
15042 passwd:         files ldap
15043 group:          files ldap
15044 shadow:         files ldap
15045 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
15046 networks:       files
15047 protocols:      files
15048 services:       files
15049 ethers:         files
15050 rpc:            files
15051 netgroup:       files ldap
15052 </pre></blockquote>
15053
15054 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
15055 shadow and netgroup.</p>
15056
15057 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
15058 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
15059 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
15060 attributes cached.
15061
15062 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
15063   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
15064
15065 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
15066 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
15067 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
15068 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
15069 discovered sssd.</p>
15070
15071 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
15072
15073 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
15074 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
15075 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
15076 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
15077 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
15078 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
15079 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
15080 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
15081 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
15082 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
15083 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
15084 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
15085 version 1.2 is now in testing.
15086
15087 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
15088 roaming setup I want</p>
15089
15090 <blockquote><pre>
15091 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
15092 </pre></blockquote>
15093
15094 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
15095 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
15096
15097 <blockquote><pre>
15098 [sssd]
15099 config_file_version = 2
15100 reconnection_retries = 3
15101 sbus_timeout = 30
15102 services = nss, pam
15103 domains = INTERN
15104
15105 [nss]
15106 filter_groups = root
15107 filter_users = root
15108 reconnection_retries = 3
15109
15110 [pam]
15111 reconnection_retries = 3
15112
15113 [domain/INTERN]
15114 enumerate = false
15115 cache_credentials = true
15116
15117 id_provider = ldap
15118 auth_provider = ldap
15119 chpass_provider = ldap
15120
15121 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
15122 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15123 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
15124 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
15125 </pre></blockquote>
15126
15127 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
15128 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
15129
15130 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
15131 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
15132 modify it manually.</p>
15133
15134 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15135 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15136
15137       </div>
15138       <div class="tags">
15139
15140
15141         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15142
15143
15144       </div>
15145     </div>
15146     <div class="padding"></div>
15147
15148     <div class="entry">
15149       <div class="title">
15150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
15151       </div>
15152       <div class="date">
15153         28th June 2010
15154       </div>
15155       <div class="body">
15156         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
15157 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
15158 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
15159 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
15160 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
15161 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
15162 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
15163 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
15164 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
15165 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
15166
15167 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
15168 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
15169 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
15170 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
15171 released.</p>
15172
15173 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
15174 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
15175 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
15176 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
15177
15178 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
15179 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15180
15181 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
15182 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
15183 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
15184 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
15185 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
15186
15187       </div>
15188       <div class="tags">
15189
15190
15191         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>.
15192
15193
15194       </div>
15195     </div>
15196     <div class="padding"></div>
15197
15198     <div class="entry">
15199       <div class="title">
15200         <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>
15201       </div>
15202       <div class="date">
15203         24th June 2010
15204       </div>
15205       <div class="body">
15206         <p>A while back, I
15207 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
15208 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
15209 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
15210 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
15211
15212 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
15213 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
15214 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
15215 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
15216
15217 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
15218 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
15219 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
15220 Debian Edu.</p>
15221
15222 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
15223 the
15224 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
15225 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
15226 available today from IETF.</p>
15227
15228 <pre>
15229 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
15230 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
15231 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
15232  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
15233         NAME 'dhcpHost'
15234         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
15235 -       SUP top
15236 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
15237         MUST cn
15238         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
15239         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
15240 </pre>
15241
15242 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
15243 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
15244 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
15245
15246 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
15247 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
15248
15249       </div>
15250       <div class="tags">
15251
15252
15253         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>.
15254
15255
15256       </div>
15257     </div>
15258     <div class="padding"></div>
15259
15260     <div class="entry">
15261       <div class="title">
15262         <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>
15263       </div>
15264       <div class="date">
15265         16th June 2010
15266       </div>
15267       <div class="body">
15268         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
15269 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
15270 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
15271 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
15272 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
15273 this:
15274
15275 <blockquote><pre>
15276 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15277 tasksel --new-install
15278 </pre></blockquote>
15279
15280 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
15281 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
15282 any output what so ever.
15283
15284 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
15285 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
15286 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
15287 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
15288 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
15289 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
15290 code like this:
15291
15292 <blockquote><pre>
15293 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15294 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
15295 $cmd
15296 </pre></blockquote>
15297
15298 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
15299 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
15300 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
15301 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
15302 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
15303 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
15304 installation.</p>
15305
15306 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
15307 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
15308 like this.</p>
15309
15310       </div>
15311       <div class="tags">
15312
15313
15314         Tags: <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>.
15315
15316
15317       </div>
15318     </div>
15319     <div class="padding"></div>
15320
15321     <div class="entry">
15322       <div class="title">
15323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
15324       </div>
15325       <div class="date">
15326         13th June 2010
15327       </div>
15328       <div class="body">
15329         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
15330 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
15331 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
15332 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
15333 pages.</p>
15334
15335 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
15336 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
15337 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
15338 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
15339 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
15340 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
15341 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
15342 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
15343 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
15344 see how the project is doing.</p>
15345
15346 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
15347 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
15348 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
15349 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
15350 Windows.  This is great.</p>
15351
15352       </div>
15353       <div class="tags">
15354
15355
15356         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>.
15357
15358
15359       </div>
15360     </div>
15361     <div class="padding"></div>
15362
15363     <div class="entry">
15364       <div class="title">
15365         <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>
15366       </div>
15367       <div class="date">
15368         13th June 2010
15369       </div>
15370       <div class="body">
15371         <p>My
15372 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
15373 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
15374 finally made the upgrade logs available from
15375 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
15376 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
15377 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
15378 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
15379
15380 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
15381 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
15382 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
15383 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
15384 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
15385 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
15386 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
15387 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
15388
15389 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
15390 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
15391 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
15392 too surprising.</p>
15393
15394 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
15395 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
15396 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
15397 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
15398 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
15399 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
15400 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
15401 continue.</p>
15402
15403 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
15404 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
15405   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
15406   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
15407   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
15408   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
15409   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
15410   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15411   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15412   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15413   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15414   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15415   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15416   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15417   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15418   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15419   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15420   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15421   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15422   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15423   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15424   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15425   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15426   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15427   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15428   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15429   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15430   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15431   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
15432   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
15433
15434 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
15435
15436 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
15437   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
15438   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
15439   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
15440   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15441   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
15442   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
15443   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
15444   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
15445   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
15446   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
15447   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
15448   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
15449   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
15450   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
15451   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
15452   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
15453   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
15454   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
15455   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
15456   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
15457   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
15458   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
15459   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
15460   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
15461   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
15462   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
15463   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
15464   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
15465   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15466   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15467   zip</p>
15468
15469 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
15470
15471 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
15472   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
15473   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
15474   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
15475   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
15476   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
15477   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
15478   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
15479   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
15480   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
15481   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
15482   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
15483   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
15484   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
15485   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15486   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
15487   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
15488   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
15489   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
15490   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
15491   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
15492   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
15493   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
15494   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
15495   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
15496   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
15497   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
15498   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
15499
15500 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
15501 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
15502   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
15503   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
15504   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
15505   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
15506   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
15507   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
15508   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
15509   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
15510   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
15511   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
15512   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
15513   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
15514   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
15515   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
15516   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
15517   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
15518   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
15519   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
15520   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
15521   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
15522   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
15523   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
15524   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
15525   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
15526   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
15527   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
15528   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
15529   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
15530   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
15531   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
15532   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
15533   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
15534   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
15535   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
15536   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
15537   xulrunner-1.9</p>
15538
15539
15540       </div>
15541       <div class="tags">
15542
15543
15544         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>.
15545
15546
15547       </div>
15548     </div>
15549     <div class="padding"></div>
15550
15551     <div class="entry">
15552       <div class="title">
15553         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
15554       </div>
15555       <div class="date">
15556         11th June 2010
15557       </div>
15558       <div class="body">
15559         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
15560 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
15561 have been discovered and reported in the process
15562 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
15563 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
15564 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
15565 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
15566 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
15567
15568 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
15569 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
15570 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
15571 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
15572 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
15573 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
15574
15575 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
15576 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
15577 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
15578 is created.  The bug report
15579 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
15580 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
15581 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
15582 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
15583 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
15584 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
15585 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
15586 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
15587 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
15588 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
15589 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
15590 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
15591 Debian Squeeze.</p>
15592
15593 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
15594 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
15595 trick:</p>
15596
15597 <blockquote><pre>
15598 #!/bin/sh
15599 set -ex
15600
15601 if [ "$1" ] ; then
15602     desktop=$1
15603 else
15604     desktop=gnome
15605 fi
15606
15607 from=lenny
15608 to=squeeze
15609
15610 exec &lt; /dev/null
15611 unset LANG
15612 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
15613 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
15614 fuser -mv .
15615 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
15616 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
15617 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
15618 #!/bin/sh
15619 exit 101
15620 EOF
15621 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
15622 exit_cleanup() {
15623     umount $tmpdir/proc
15624 }
15625 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
15626 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
15627 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
15628
15629 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
15630
15631 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
15632 # to return the correct answers.
15633 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
15634     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
15635
15636 # Include the desktop and laptop task
15637 for test in desktop laptop ; do
15638     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
15639 #!/bin/sh
15640 exit 2
15641 EOF
15642     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
15643 done
15644
15645 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
15646 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
15647 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
15648 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
15649
15650 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
15651 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
15652 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
15653 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
15654 fuser -mv
15655 </pre></blockquote>
15656
15657 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
15658 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
15659 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
15660 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
15661 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
15662 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
15663
15664 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
15665 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
15666 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
15667 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
15668 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
15669 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
15670 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
15671
15672 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
15673 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
15674 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
15675 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
15676 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
15677 packages.</p>
15678
15679       </div>
15680       <div class="tags">
15681
15682
15683         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>.
15684
15685
15686       </div>
15687     </div>
15688     <div class="padding"></div>
15689
15690     <div class="entry">
15691       <div class="title">
15692         <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>
15693       </div>
15694       <div class="date">
15695          6th June 2010
15696       </div>
15697       <div class="body">
15698         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
15699 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
15700 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
15701 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
15702 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
15703 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
15704 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
15705
15706 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
15707 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
15708 COLUMNS):</p>
15709
15710 <blockquote><pre>
15711 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
15712 previous=N
15713 PREVLEVEL=
15714 RUNLEVEL=
15715 runlevel=S
15716 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
15717 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
15718 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
15719 </pre></blockquote>
15720
15721 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
15722 script.</p>
15723
15724 <blockquote><pre>
15725 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
15726 previous=N
15727 PREVLEVEL=N
15728 RUNLEVEL=S
15729 runlevel=S
15730 </pre></blockquote>
15731
15732 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
15733 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
15734 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
15735
15736 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
15737 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
15738 choice.</p>
15739
15740       </div>
15741       <div class="tags">
15742
15743
15744         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>.
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/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
15754       </div>
15755       <div class="date">
15756          6th June 2010
15757       </div>
15758       <div class="body">
15759         <p>Via the
15760 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
15761 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
15762 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
15763 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
15764 following the standards wars of today.</p>
15765
15766       </div>
15767       <div class="tags">
15768
15769
15770         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>.
15771
15772
15773       </div>
15774     </div>
15775     <div class="padding"></div>
15776
15777     <div class="entry">
15778       <div class="title">
15779         <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>
15780       </div>
15781       <div class="date">
15782          3rd June 2010
15783       </div>
15784       <div class="body">
15785         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
15786 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
15787 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
15788 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
15789 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
15790
15791 <blockquote><pre>
15792 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
15793   vendor                    count
15794   Dell Computer Corporation     1
15795     PowerEdge 1750              1
15796   IBM                           1
15797     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
15798   Intel                         2
15799   [no-dmi-info]                 3
15800 maintainer:~#
15801 </pre></blockquote>
15802
15803 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
15804 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
15805 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
15806 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
15807 option to list the individual machines.</p>
15808
15809 <p>A larger list is
15810 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
15811 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
15812 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
15813 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
15814 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
15815 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
15816 collector.</p>
15817
15818       </div>
15819       <div class="tags">
15820
15821
15822         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>.
15823
15824
15825       </div>
15826     </div>
15827     <div class="padding"></div>
15828
15829     <div class="entry">
15830       <div class="title">
15831         <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>
15832       </div>
15833       <div class="date">
15834          1st June 2010
15835       </div>
15836       <div class="body">
15837         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
15838 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
15839 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
15840 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
15841 wait.</p>
15842
15843 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
15844 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
15845 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
15846 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
15847 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
15848 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
15849
15850 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
15851 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
15852 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
15853 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
15854 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
15855 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
15856 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
15857 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
15858
15859 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
15860
15861       </div>
15862       <div class="tags">
15863
15864
15865         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>.
15866
15867
15868       </div>
15869     </div>
15870     <div class="padding"></div>
15871
15872     <div class="entry">
15873       <div class="title">
15874         <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>
15875       </div>
15876       <div class="date">
15877         27th May 2010
15878       </div>
15879       <div class="body">
15880         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
15881 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
15882 issues are known and should be solved:
15883
15884 <p><ul>
15885
15886 <li>The wicd package seen to
15887 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
15888 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
15889 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
15890 seem to be on the case.</li>
15891
15892 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
15893 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
15894 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
15895 maintainer is on the case.</li>
15896
15897 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
15898 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
15899 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
15900 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
15901 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
15902 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
15903 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
15904 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
15905
15906 </ul></p>
15907
15908 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
15909 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
15910 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
15911 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
15912
15913 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
15914 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
15915 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
15916 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
15917
15918 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
15919
15920       </div>
15921       <div class="tags">
15922
15923
15924         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>.
15925
15926
15927       </div>
15928     </div>
15929     <div class="padding"></div>
15930
15931     <div class="entry">
15932       <div class="title">
15933         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
15934       </div>
15935       <div class="date">
15936         22nd May 2010
15937       </div>
15938       <div class="body">
15939         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
15940 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
15941 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
15942 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
15943
15944 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
15945 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
15946 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
15947 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
15948 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
15949 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
15950 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
15951 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
15952 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
15953 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
15954 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
15955 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
15956 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
15957 going to work.</p>
15958
15959 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
15960 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
15961 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
15962 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
15963 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
15964 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
15965 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
15966 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
15967 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
15968 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
15969 Edu.</p>
15970
15971 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
15972 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
15973 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
15974 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
15975 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
15976 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
15977
15978 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
15979 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
15980
15981       </div>
15982       <div class="tags">
15983
15984
15985         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>.
15986
15987
15988       </div>
15989     </div>
15990     <div class="padding"></div>
15991
15992     <div class="entry">
15993       <div class="title">
15994         <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>
15995       </div>
15996       <div class="date">
15997         19th May 2010
15998       </div>
15999       <div class="body">
16000         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
16001 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
16002 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
16003 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
16004 into unstable.  The
16005 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
16006 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
16007 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
16008 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
16009 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
16010 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
16011 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
16012
16013 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
16014 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
16015 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
16016 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
16017 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
16018 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
16019 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
16020 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
16021
16022 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
16023 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
16024 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
16025 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
16026 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
16027 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
16028 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
16029
16030 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
16031 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
16032 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
16033 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
16034 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
16035 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
16036 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
16037 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
16038 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
16039 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
16040 on the home directory servers.</p>
16041
16042 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
16043 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
16044 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
16045 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
16046 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
16047 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
16048
16049 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16050 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16051
16052       </div>
16053       <div class="tags">
16054
16055
16056         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16057
16058
16059       </div>
16060     </div>
16061     <div class="padding"></div>
16062
16063     <div class="entry">
16064       <div class="title">
16065         <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>
16066       </div>
16067       <div class="date">
16068         14th May 2010
16069       </div>
16070       <div class="body">
16071         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
16072 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
16073 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
16074 expected, if I am to believe the
16075 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16076 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
16077 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
16078 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
16079 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
16080 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
16081 version.</p>
16082
16083 More information about
16084 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16085 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
16086 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
16087 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
16088
16089 <blockquote><pre>
16090 CONCURRENCY=none
16091 </pre></blockquote>
16092
16093 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16094 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16095 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16096 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16097
16098       </div>
16099       <div class="tags">
16100
16101
16102         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>.
16103
16104
16105       </div>
16106     </div>
16107     <div class="padding"></div>
16108
16109     <div class="entry">
16110       <div class="title">
16111         <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>
16112       </div>
16113       <div class="date">
16114         14th May 2010
16115       </div>
16116       <div class="body">
16117         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
16118 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
16119 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
16120 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
16121 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
16122 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
16123 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
16124 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
16125
16126 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
16127 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
16128 this on the collector host:</p>
16129
16130 <blockquote><pre>
16131 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
16132 </pre></blockquote>
16133
16134 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
16135 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
16136
16137 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
16138 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
16139 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
16140 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
16141 written yet.</p>
16142
16143       </div>
16144       <div class="tags">
16145
16146
16147         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>.
16148
16149
16150       </div>
16151     </div>
16152     <div class="padding"></div>
16153
16154     <div class="entry">
16155       <div class="title">
16156         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
16157       </div>
16158       <div class="date">
16159         13th May 2010
16160       </div>
16161       <div class="body">
16162         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
16163 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
16164 has been
16165 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
16166
16167 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
16168 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
16169 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
16170 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
16171 based boot system.  Tollef is
16172 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
16173 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
16174 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
16175 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
16176 at the moment do not.</p>
16177
16178 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
16179 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
16180 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
16181 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
16182 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
16183 way forward.</p>
16184
16185 <p>In the mean time, based on the
16186 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
16187 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
16188 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
16189 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
16190 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
16191 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
16192 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
16193 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
16194
16195       </div>
16196       <div class="tags">
16197
16198
16199         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>.
16200
16201
16202       </div>
16203     </div>
16204     <div class="padding"></div>
16205
16206     <div class="entry">
16207       <div class="title">
16208         <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>
16209       </div>
16210       <div class="date">
16211          6th May 2010
16212       </div>
16213       <div class="body">
16214         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
16215 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
16216 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
16217 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
16218 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16219 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
16220 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
16221
16222 <blockquote><pre>
16223 CONCURRENCY=makefile
16224 </pre></blockquote>
16225
16226 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
16227 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
16228 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
16229 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
16230 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
16231 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
16232 make this happen.</p>
16233
16234 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
16235 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
16236 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
16237 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
16238 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
16239
16240 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
16241 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
16242 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
16243 fix the remaining issues.</p>
16244
16245 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
16246 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
16247 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
16248 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
16249
16250       </div>
16251       <div class="tags">
16252
16253
16254         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>.
16255
16256
16257       </div>
16258     </div>
16259     <div class="padding"></div>
16260
16261     <div class="entry">
16262       <div class="title">
16263         <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>
16264       </div>
16265       <div class="date">
16266          2nd May 2010
16267       </div>
16268       <div class="body">
16269         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
16270 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
16271 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
16272
16273 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
16274 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
16275 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
16276 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
16277 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
16278
16279 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
16280 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
16281
16282 <blockquote><pre>
16283 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
16284 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
16285 Password expires                                        : never
16286 Password inactive                                       : never
16287 Account expires                                         : never
16288 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
16289 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
16290 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
16291 root@tjener:~#
16292 </pre></blockquote>
16293
16294 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
16295 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
16296 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
16297 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
16298 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
16299 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
16300
16301 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
16302 intended:</p>
16303
16304 <blockquote><pre>
16305 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
16306 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
16307 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
16308 Password expires                                        : never
16309 Password inactive                                       : never
16310 Account expires                                         : never
16311 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
16312 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
16313 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
16314 root@tjener:~#
16315 </pre></blockquote>
16316
16317 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
16318 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
16319 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
16320
16321 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
16322 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
16323
16324 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
16325 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16326
16327 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
16328 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
16329 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
16330 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
16331 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
16332 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
16333 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
16334
16335 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
16336 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
16337 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
16338 change.</p>
16339
16340       </div>
16341       <div class="tags">
16342
16343
16344         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16345
16346
16347       </div>
16348     </div>
16349     <div class="padding"></div>
16350
16351     <div class="entry">
16352       <div class="title">
16353         <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>
16354       </div>
16355       <div class="date">
16356         28th April 2010
16357       </div>
16358       <div class="body">
16359         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
16360 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
16361 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
16362 and go.</p>
16363
16364 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
16365 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
16366 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
16367 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
16368
16369 <ul>
16370
16371  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
16372    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
16373    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
16374    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
16375    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
16376    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
16377    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
16378    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
16379    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
16380    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
16381    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
16382    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
16383
16384  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
16385    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
16386    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
16387    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
16388    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
16389    or the Fedora developed
16390    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
16391    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
16392
16393  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
16394    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
16395    directory, using unison.</li>
16396
16397  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
16398    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
16399    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
16400    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
16401    implemented.</li>
16402
16403  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
16404    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
16405
16406  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
16407    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
16408    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
16409
16410 </ul>
16411
16412 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
16413 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
16414 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
16415 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
16416 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
16417 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
16418 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
16419 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
16420 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
16421
16422 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
16423 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
16424
16425       </div>
16426       <div class="tags">
16427
16428
16429         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
16430
16431
16432       </div>
16433     </div>
16434     <div class="padding"></div>
16435
16436     <div class="entry">
16437       <div class="title">
16438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
16439       </div>
16440       <div class="date">
16441         19th April 2010
16442       </div>
16443       <div class="body">
16444         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
16445 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
16446 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
16447 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
16448 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
16449 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
16450 restrictions on the web, for example from
16451 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
16452 epub-version from
16453 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
16454 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
16455 strongly recommend this book.</p>
16456
16457       </div>
16458       <div class="tags">
16459
16460
16461         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>.
16462
16463
16464       </div>
16465     </div>
16466     <div class="padding"></div>
16467
16468     <div class="entry">
16469       <div class="title">
16470         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
16471       </div>
16472       <div class="date">
16473         14th April 2010
16474       </div>
16475       <div class="body">
16476         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
16477 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
16478 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
16479 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
16480 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
16481 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
16482 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
16483 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
16484 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
16485
16486 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
16487 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
16488 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
16489 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
16490 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
16491
16492 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
16493 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
16494
16495 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
16496 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
16497 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
16498 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
16499 to work properly.</p>
16500
16501 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
16502 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
16503 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
16504 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
16505 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
16506 time.</p>
16507
16508 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
16509 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
16510 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
16511 up in a few days.</p>
16512
16513       </div>
16514       <div class="tags">
16515
16516
16517         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16518
16519
16520       </div>
16521     </div>
16522     <div class="padding"></div>
16523
16524     <div class="entry">
16525       <div class="title">
16526         <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>
16527       </div>
16528       <div class="date">
16529          6th March 2010
16530       </div>
16531       <div class="body">
16532         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
16533 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
16534 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
16535 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
16536 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
16537 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
16538
16539 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
16540 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
16541 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
16542 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
16543
16544 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
16545 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
16546 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
16547 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
16548 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
16549 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
16550
16551       </div>
16552       <div class="tags">
16553
16554
16555         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16556
16557
16558       </div>
16559     </div>
16560     <div class="padding"></div>
16561
16562     <div class="entry">
16563       <div class="title">
16564         <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>
16565       </div>
16566       <div class="date">
16567         11th February 2010
16568       </div>
16569       <div class="body">
16570         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
16571 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
16572 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
16573 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
16574 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
16575 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
16576 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
16577
16578 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
16579
16580 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
16581 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
16582 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
16583 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
16584
16585       </div>
16586       <div class="tags">
16587
16588
16589         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16590
16591
16592       </div>
16593     </div>
16594     <div class="padding"></div>
16595
16596     <div class="entry">
16597       <div class="title">
16598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
16599       </div>
16600       <div class="date">
16601         27th January 2010
16602       </div>
16603       <div class="body">
16604         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
16605 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
16606 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
16607 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
16608 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
16609 further.</p>
16610
16611 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
16612 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
16613 configured to be a server for the
16614 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
16615 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
16616 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
16617 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
16618 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
16619 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
16620 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
16621 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
16622 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
16623 and Nagios configuration.</p>
16624
16625 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
16626 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
16627 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
16628 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
16629
16630 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
16631 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
16632 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
16633 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
16634 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
16635 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
16636 the machine.</p>
16637
16638 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
16639 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
16640 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
16641 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
16642
16643 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
16644 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
16645 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
16646 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
16647 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
16648 everything is taken care of.</p>
16649
16650       </div>
16651       <div class="tags">
16652
16653
16654         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16655
16656
16657       </div>
16658     </div>
16659     <div class="padding"></div>
16660
16661     <div class="entry">
16662       <div class="title">
16663         <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>
16664       </div>
16665       <div class="date">
16666         12th August 2009
16667       </div>
16668       <div class="body">
16669         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
16670 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
16671 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
16672 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
16673
16674 <table>
16675 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
16676 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
16677 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
16678 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
16679 </table>
16680
16681 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
16682 got these numbers:</p>
16683
16684 <table>
16685 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
16686 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
16687 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
16688 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
16689 </table>
16690
16691 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
16692
16693 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
16694 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
16695 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
16696 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
16697 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
16698
16699
16700 <table>
16701 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
16702 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
16703 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
16704 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
16705 </table>
16706
16707 <p>And with 'site:no':
16708
16709 <table>
16710 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
16711 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
16712 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
16713 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
16714 </table>
16715
16716 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
16717 numbers.</p>
16718
16719       </div>
16720       <div class="tags">
16721
16722
16723         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>.
16724
16725
16726       </div>
16727     </div>
16728     <div class="padding"></div>
16729
16730     <div class="entry">
16731       <div class="title">
16732         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
16733       </div>
16734       <div class="date">
16735          8th August 2009
16736       </div>
16737       <div class="body">
16738         <p>According to <a
16739 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
16740 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
16741 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
16742 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
16743 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
16744 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
16745 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
16746 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
16747 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
16748 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
16749
16750 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
16751 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
16752 seminar this autumn.</p>
16753
16754       </div>
16755       <div class="tags">
16756
16757
16758         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>.
16759
16760
16761       </div>
16762     </div>
16763     <div class="padding"></div>
16764
16765     <div class="entry">
16766       <div class="title">
16767         <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>
16768       </div>
16769       <div class="date">
16770         27th July 2009
16771       </div>
16772       <div class="body">
16773         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
16774 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
16775 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
16776 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
16777 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
16778 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
16779 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
16780
16781 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
16782 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
16783 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
16784
16785       </div>
16786       <div class="tags">
16787
16788
16789         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>.
16790
16791
16792       </div>
16793     </div>
16794     <div class="padding"></div>
16795
16796     <div class="entry">
16797       <div class="title">
16798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
16799       </div>
16800       <div class="date">
16801         22nd July 2009
16802       </div>
16803       <div class="body">
16804         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
16805 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
16806 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
16807 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
16808 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
16809 the package up to date.</p>
16810
16811 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
16812 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
16813 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
16814 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
16815 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
16816 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
16817 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
16818 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
16819 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
16820 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
16821 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
16822 working on the future release.</p>
16823
16824 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
16825 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
16826
16827       </div>
16828       <div class="tags">
16829
16830
16831         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>.
16832
16833
16834       </div>
16835     </div>
16836     <div class="padding"></div>
16837
16838     <div class="entry">
16839       <div class="title">
16840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
16841       </div>
16842       <div class="date">
16843         24th June 2009
16844       </div>
16845       <div class="body">
16846         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
16847 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
16848 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
16849 funded
16850 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
16851 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
16852 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
16853 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
16854 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
16855 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
16856
16857 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
16858 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
16859 boot:</p>
16860
16861 <ul>
16862
16863 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
16864
16865 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
16866    clock is in UTC.</li>
16867
16868 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
16869    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
16870    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
16871
16872 </ul>
16873
16874 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
16875 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
16876 Villegas</a>.
16877
16878 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
16879 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
16880 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
16881 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
16882 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
16883 using this.</p>
16884
16885 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
16886 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
16887 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
16888 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
16889 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
16890 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
16891 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
16892
16893       </div>
16894       <div class="tags">
16895
16896
16897         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>.
16898
16899
16900       </div>
16901     </div>
16902     <div class="padding"></div>
16903
16904     <div class="entry">
16905       <div class="title">
16906         <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>
16907       </div>
16908       <div class="date">
16909          2nd May 2009
16910       </div>
16911       <div class="body">
16912         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
16913 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
16914 do not yet know them.</p>
16915
16916 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
16917 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
16918 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
16919 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
16920 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
16921 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
16922 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
16923 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
16924 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
16925 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
16926 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
16927
16928 <p>The second one is
16929 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
16930 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
16931 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
16932 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
16933 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
16934 and the company behind it is running
16935 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
16936 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
16937 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
16938 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
16939 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
16940 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
16941 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
16942 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
16943
16944 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
16945 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
16946 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
16947 surrounded by today.</p>
16948
16949       </div>
16950       <div class="tags">
16951
16952
16953         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16954
16955
16956       </div>
16957     </div>
16958     <div class="padding"></div>
16959
16960     <div class="entry">
16961       <div class="title">
16962         <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>
16963       </div>
16964       <div class="date">
16965         28th April 2009
16966       </div>
16967       <div class="body">
16968         <p>Julien Blache
16969 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
16970 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
16971 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
16972 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
16973 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
16974 properties.</p>
16975
16976       </div>
16977       <div class="tags">
16978
16979
16980         Tags: <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>.
16981
16982
16983       </div>
16984     </div>
16985     <div class="padding"></div>
16986
16987     <div class="entry">
16988       <div class="title">
16989         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
16990       </div>
16991       <div class="date">
16992          5th April 2009
16993       </div>
16994       <div class="body">
16995         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
16996 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
16997 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
16998 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
16999 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
17000 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
17001 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
17002 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
17003
17004 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
17005 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
17006 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
17007   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
17008   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
17009
17010 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
17011 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
17012 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
17013 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
17014
17015 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
17016 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
17017 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
17018 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
17019
17020 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
17021 set -e
17022 URL="$1"
17023 SAVEFILE="$2"
17024 DURATION="$3"
17025 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
17026   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
17027   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
17028 pid=$!
17029 sleep $DURATION
17030 kill $pid
17031 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
17032
17033       </div>
17034       <div class="tags">
17035
17036
17037         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>.
17038
17039
17040       </div>
17041     </div>
17042     <div class="padding"></div>
17043
17044     <div class="entry">
17045       <div class="title">
17046         <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>
17047       </div>
17048       <div class="date">
17049         30th March 2009
17050       </div>
17051       <div class="body">
17052         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
17053 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
17054 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
17055 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
17056 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
17057 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
17058 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
17059 application.</p>
17060
17061 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
17062 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
17063 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
17064 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
17065 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
17066 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
17067 blocked from doing so.</p>
17068
17069 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
17070 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
17071 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
17072 requirements change.</p>
17073
17074 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
17075 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
17076 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
17077
17078       </div>
17079       <div class="tags">
17080
17081
17082         Tags: <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>.
17083
17084
17085       </div>
17086     </div>
17087     <div class="padding"></div>
17088
17089     <div class="entry">
17090       <div class="title">
17091         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
17092       </div>
17093       <div class="date">
17094         29th March 2009
17095       </div>
17096       <div class="body">
17097         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
17098 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
17099 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
17100 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
17101 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
17102 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
17103 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
17104 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
17105 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
17106 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
17107 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
17108 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
17109 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
17110 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
17111 now. :)</p>
17112
17113       </div>
17114       <div class="tags">
17115
17116
17117         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>.
17118
17119
17120       </div>
17121     </div>
17122     <div class="padding"></div>
17123
17124     <div class="entry">
17125       <div class="title">
17126         <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>
17127       </div>
17128       <div class="date">
17129         29th March 2009
17130       </div>
17131       <div class="body">
17132         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
17133 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
17134 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
17135 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
17136 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
17137 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
17138
17139 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
17140 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
17141 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
17142 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
17143 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
17144 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
17145 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
17146 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
17147 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
17148 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
17149 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
17150 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
17151 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
17152
17153 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
17154 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
17155 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
17156 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
17157
17158 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
17159 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
17160
17161 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
17162 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
17163 new IETF work group?</p>
17164
17165       </div>
17166       <div class="tags">
17167
17168
17169         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>.
17170
17171
17172       </div>
17173     </div>
17174     <div class="padding"></div>
17175
17176     <div class="entry">
17177       <div class="title">
17178         <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>
17179       </div>
17180       <div class="date">
17181         28th February 2009
17182       </div>
17183       <div class="body">
17184         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
17185 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
17186 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
17187 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
17188 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
17189 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
17190 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
17191 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
17192 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
17193 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
17194 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
17195 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
17196 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
17197 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
17198 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
17199 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
17200 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
17201 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
17202 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
17203 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
17204 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
17205 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
17206 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
17207 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
17208 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
17209 machine.</p>
17210
17211 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
17212 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
17213 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
17214 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
17215 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
17216 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
17217 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
17218
17219 <pre>
17220 use LWP::Simple;
17221 use POSIX;
17222 use WWW::Mechanize;
17223 use Date::Parse;
17224 [...]
17225 sub get_support_info {
17226     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
17227     my $str;
17228
17229     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
17230         # fetch website from Dell support
17231         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";
17232         my $webpage = get($url);
17233         return undef unless ($webpage);
17234
17235         my $daysleft = -1;
17236         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
17237         foreach my $line (@lines) {
17238             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
17239             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17240             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
17241
17242             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
17243             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
17244             my $lastend = "";
17245             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
17246                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
17247
17248                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17249                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
17250                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17251                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
17252                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
17253                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
17254                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
17255             }
17256             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17257             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17258                 if ($lastend lt $today);
17259         }
17260     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
17261         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
17262         my $url =
17263             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
17264         $mech->get($url);
17265         my $fields = {
17266             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
17267             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
17268             'country' => 'NO',
17269             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
17270             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
17271         };
17272         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
17273                             fields      => $fields );
17274         # Next step is screen scraping
17275         my $content = $mech->content();
17276
17277         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17278         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
17279         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
17280         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
17281
17282         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17283
17284         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
17285             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
17286                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
17287             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
17288             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17289                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
17290             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
17291                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
17292
17293             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
17294
17295             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17296                 if ($end lt $today);
17297         }
17298     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
17299         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
17300         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
17301         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
17302             my $content =
17303                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
17304             if ($content) {
17305                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
17306                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
17307                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
17308                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
17309
17310                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
17311                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
17312
17313                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
17314
17315                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
17316                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
17317                     if ($end lt $today);
17318             }
17319         }
17320     }
17321     return $str;
17322 }
17323 </pre>
17324
17325 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
17326 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
17327 from dmidecode.</p>
17328
17329 <pre>
17330 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
17331                        "447707-B21");
17332 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
17333 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
17334                        "1234567");
17335 </pre>
17336
17337 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
17338 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
17339
17340 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
17341 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
17342 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
17343 do so.</p>
17344
17345       </div>
17346       <div class="tags">
17347
17348
17349         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>.
17350
17351
17352       </div>
17353     </div>
17354     <div class="padding"></div>
17355
17356     <div class="entry">
17357       <div class="title">
17358         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
17359       </div>
17360       <div class="date">
17361         20th February 2009
17362       </div>
17363       <div class="body">
17364         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
17365 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
17366 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
17367 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
17368 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
17369 the "missing" computer.</p>
17370
17371 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
17372 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
17373 code blocks as defined in the
17374 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
17375 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
17376 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
17377 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
17378 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
17379 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
17380 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
17381 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
17382 codes.</p>
17383
17384 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
17385 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
17386 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
17387 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
17388 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
17389 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
17390
17391 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
17392 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
17393 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
17394 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
17395 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
17396 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
17397 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
17398 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
17399 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
17400 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
17401
17402 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
17403 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
17404 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
17405
17406       </div>
17407       <div class="tags">
17408
17409
17410         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>.
17411
17412
17413       </div>
17414     </div>
17415     <div class="padding"></div>
17416
17417     <div class="entry">
17418       <div class="title">
17419         <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>
17420       </div>
17421       <div class="date">
17422         17th January 2009
17423       </div>
17424       <div class="body">
17425         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
17426 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
17427 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
17428 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
17429 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
17430 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
17431 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
17432 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
17433 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
17434 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
17435 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
17436 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
17437 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
17438 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
17439
17440 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
17441 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
17442 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
17443 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
17444 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
17445 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
17446 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
17447 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
17448 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
17449 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
17450 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
17451 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
17452 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
17453 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
17454 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
17455 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
17456 playing when the download is done.</p>
17457
17458 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
17459 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
17460 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
17461 too.</p>
17462
17463 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
17464 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
17465 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
17466 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
17467
17468       </div>
17469       <div class="tags">
17470
17471
17472         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>.
17473
17474
17475       </div>
17476     </div>
17477     <div class="padding"></div>
17478
17479     <div class="entry">
17480       <div class="title">
17481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
17482       </div>
17483       <div class="date">
17484         28th December 2008
17485       </div>
17486       <div class="body">
17487         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
17488 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
17489 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
17490 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
17491 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
17492 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
17493 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
17494 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
17495 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
17496 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
17497 source, sink and mixer applications and
17498 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
17499 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
17500 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
17501 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
17502 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
17503 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
17504 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
17505 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
17506 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
17507
17508 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
17509 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
17510 larger stick as well.</p>
17511
17512       </div>
17513       <div class="tags">
17514
17515
17516         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>.
17517
17518
17519       </div>
17520     </div>
17521     <div class="padding"></div>
17522
17523     <div class="entry">
17524       <div class="title">
17525         <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>
17526       </div>
17527       <div class="date">
17528          7th December 2008
17529       </div>
17530       <div class="body">
17531         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
17532 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
17533 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
17534 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
17535 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
17536 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
17537 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
17538 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
17539
17540 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
17541 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
17542 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
17543 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
17544 of these cards.</p>
17545
17546       </div>
17547       <div class="tags">
17548
17549
17550         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>.
17551
17552
17553       </div>
17554     </div>
17555     <div class="padding"></div>
17556
17557     <div class="entry">
17558       <div class="title">
17559         <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>
17560       </div>
17561       <div class="date">
17562         25th November 2008
17563       </div>
17564       <div class="body">
17565         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
17566 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
17567 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
17568 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
17569 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
17570 notes are available on
17571 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
17572 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
17573 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
17574 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
17575 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
17576 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
17577 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
17578 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
17579 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
17580
17581 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
17582 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
17583
17584       </div>
17585       <div class="tags">
17586
17587
17588         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>.
17589
17590
17591       </div>
17592     </div>
17593     <div class="padding"></div>
17594
17595     <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>
17596     <div id="sidebar">
17597
17598
17599
17600 <h2>Archive</h2>
17601 <ul>
17602
17603 <li>2013
17604 <ul>
17605
17606 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
17607
17608 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
17609
17610 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
17611
17612 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
17613
17614 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17615
17616 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
17617
17618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
17619
17620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
17621
17622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
17623
17624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
17625
17626 </ul></li>
17627
17628 <li>2012
17629 <ul>
17630
17631 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
17632
17633 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
17634
17635 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
17636
17637 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
17638
17639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
17640
17641 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
17642
17643 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
17644
17645 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
17646
17647 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
17648
17649 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
17650
17651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
17652
17653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
17654
17655 </ul></li>
17656
17657 <li>2011
17658 <ul>
17659
17660 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
17661
17662 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
17663
17664 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
17665
17666 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
17667
17668 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
17669
17670 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
17671
17672 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
17673
17674 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
17675
17676 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
17677
17678 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
17679
17680 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17681
17682 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
17683
17684 </ul></li>
17685
17686 <li>2010
17687 <ul>
17688
17689 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
17690
17691 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
17692
17693 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
17694
17695 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
17696
17697 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17698
17699 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
17700
17701 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
17702
17703 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
17704
17705 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
17706
17707 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
17708
17709 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
17710
17711 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
17712
17713 </ul></li>
17714
17715 <li>2009
17716 <ul>
17717
17718 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
17719
17720 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
17721
17722 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
17723
17724 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
17725
17726 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
17727
17728 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
17729
17730 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
17731
17732 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
17733
17734 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
17735
17736 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
17737
17738 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
17739
17740 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
17741
17742 </ul></li>
17743
17744 <li>2008
17745 <ul>
17746
17747 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
17748
17749 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
17750
17751 </ul></li>
17752
17753 </ul>
17754
17755
17756
17757 <h2>Tags</h2>
17758 <ul>
17759
17760  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
17761
17762  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
17763
17764  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
17765
17766  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
17767
17768  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (7)</a></li>
17769
17770  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
17771
17772  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
17773
17774  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (88)</a></li>
17775
17776  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (142)</a></li>
17777
17778  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
17779
17780  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (10)</a></li>
17781
17782  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
17783
17784  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (223)</a></li>
17785
17786  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
17787
17788  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
17789
17790  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (12)</a></li>
17791
17792  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (5)</a></li>
17793
17794  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (11)</a></li>
17795
17796  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (37)</a></li>
17797
17798  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (7)</a></li>
17799
17800  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (18)</a></li>
17801
17802  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
17803
17804  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
17805
17806  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
17807
17808  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (3)</a></li>
17809
17810  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
17811
17812  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (236)</a></li>
17813
17814  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (156)</a></li>
17815
17816  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (8)</a></li>
17817
17818  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
17819
17820  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (45)</a></li>
17821
17822  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (67)</a></li>
17823
17824  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
17825
17826  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
17827
17828  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
17829
17830  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (8)</a></li>
17831
17832  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
17833
17834  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
17835
17836  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
17837
17838  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (32)</a></li>
17839
17840  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
17841
17842  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
17843
17844  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (43)</a></li>
17845
17846  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
17847
17848  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
17849
17850  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (20)</a></li>
17851
17852  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
17853
17854  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
17855
17856  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (39)</a></li>
17857
17858  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
17859
17860  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (28)</a></li>
17861
17862 </ul>
17863
17864
17865     </div>
17866     <p style="text-align: right">
17867  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
17868 </p>
17869
17870   </body>
17871 </html>