blog/tags/debian/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged debian</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="debian.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         12th July 2018
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
  32 my projector connected to Kodi.  I sadly had to admit that I had no
  33 idea, as it was a task I never had tried.  Since then, I have been
  34 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
  35 install on either side.  Today I found a way that seem to kind of
  36 work.  Not great, but it is a start.</p>
  37
  38 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
  39 <a href="https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
  40 DLNA as described in 2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
  41 local storage enough to store the stream locally.  This is not going
  42 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
  43 impossible for my friend to get working.</p>
  44
  45 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
  46 video stream that Kodi could play.  Preferably using
  47 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
  48 side when starting such stream.  Unfortunately, the only recipe I
  49 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
  50 seem to not be supported by Kodi.</p>
  51
  52 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working!  Unfortunately I
  53 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
  54 sending command and the file on the Kodi server.  But it is showing my
  55 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
  56 the programs I work on.</p>
  57
  58 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces.  I combined the
  59 rtp and rtsp recipes from
  60 <a href="https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
  61 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples</a>, and was able to get
  62 this working on the desktop/streaming end.</p>
  63
  64 <blockquote><pre>
  65 vlc screen:// --sout \
  66   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}'
  67 </pre></blockquote>
  68
  69 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
  70 same IP address:</p>
  71
  72 <blockquote><pre>
  73 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
  74   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
  75 </pre></blockquote>
  76
  77 <p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address.  As far
  78 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work.  In other
  79 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
  80 to update screenstream.m4u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
  81 recipe.  To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
  82 file while the VLC stream is running.  The desktop then show up in my
  83 big screen. :)</p>
  84
  85 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
  86 the audio quality is really bad.  No idea if the problem is package
  87 loss or bad parameters for the transcode.  I do not know VLC nor Kodi
  88 enough to tell.</p>
  89
  90 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  91 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  92 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
  93
  94       </div>
  95       <div class="tags">
  96
  97
  98         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/video">video</a>.
  99
 100
 101       </div>
 102     </div>
 103     <div class="padding"></div>
 104
 105     <div class="entry">
 106       <div class="title">
 107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</a>
 108       </div>
 109       <div class="date">
 110          9th July 2018
 111       </div>
 112       <div class="body">
 113         <p>Five years ago,
 114 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
 115 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was</a>, by
 116 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
 117 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
 118 the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
 119 to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
 120 unstable only this time:
 121
 122 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 123
 124 <pre>
 125   count MIME type
 126   ----- -----------------------
 127      56 image/jpeg
 128      55 image/png
 129      49 image/tiff
 130      48 image/gif
 131      39 image/bmp
 132      38 text/plain
 133      37 audio/mpeg
 134      34 application/ogg
 135      33 audio/x-flac
 136      32 audio/x-mp3
 137      30 audio/x-wav
 138      30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
 139      29 image/x-portable-pixmap
 140      27 inode/directory
 141      27 image/x-portable-bitmap
 142      27 audio/x-mpeg
 143      26 application/x-ogg
 144      25 audio/x-mpegurl
 145      25 audio/ogg
 146      24 text/html
 147 </pre>
 148
 149 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
 150 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
 151 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"</p>
 152
 153 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
 154 as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
 155 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
 156 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
 157 MIME type of the file using "file --mime &lt;filename&gt;", and then
 158 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
 159 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
 160 what-provides mimetype &lt;mime-type&gt;.  For example if you, like
 161 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
 162 list like this:</p>
 163
 164 <p><blockquote><pre>
 165 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
 166 Package: anjuta
 167 Package: audacious
 168 Package: baobab
 169 Package: cervisia
 170 Package: chirp
 171 Package: dolphin
 172 Package: doublecmd-common
 173 Package: easytag
 174 Package: enlightenment
 175 Package: ephoto
 176 Package: filelight
 177 Package: gwenview
 178 Package: k4dirstat
 179 Package: kaffeine
 180 Package: kdesvn
 181 Package: kid3
 182 Package: kid3-qt
 183 Package: nautilus
 184 Package: nemo
 185 Package: pcmanfm
 186 Package: pcmanfm-qt
 187 Package: qweborf
 188 Package: ranger
 189 Package: sirikali
 190 Package: spacefm
 191 Package: spacefm
 192 Package: vifm
 193 %
 194 </pre></blockquote></p>
 195
 196 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
 197 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:</p>
 198
 199 <p><blockquote><pre>
 200 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
 201 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
 202 %
 203 </pre></blockquote></p>
 204
 205 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
 206 format:</p>
 207
 208 <p><blockquote><pre>
 209 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
 210 Package: cura
 211 Package: meshlab
 212 Package: printrun
 213 %
 214 </pre></blockquote></p>
 215
 216 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.</p>
 217
 218 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 219 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 220 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 221
 222       </div>
 223       <div class="tags">
 224
 225
 226         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>.
 227
 228
 229       </div>
 230     </div>
 231     <div class="padding"></div>
 232
 233     <div class="entry">
 234       <div class="title">
 235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</a>
 236       </div>
 237       <div class="date">
 238          8th July 2018
 239       </div>
 240       <div class="body">
 241         <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
 242 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
 243 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'.  I normally
 244 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install &lt;somepackages&gt;' to
 245 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
 246 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
 247 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
 248 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually.  I concluded
 249 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
 250 decided to see if I could automate it.  I came up with this small
 251 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
 252
 253 <p><blockquote><pre>
 254 #!/bin/sh
 255 #
 256 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
 257 # upgradable package in one lump.  Fetching packages to upgrade using
 258 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
 259 # flag for manual/automatic.
 260
 261 set -e
 262
 263 ignore() {
 264     if [ "$1" ]; then
 265         grep -v "$1"
 266     else
 267         cat
 268     fi
 269 }
 270
 271 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
 272     echo "Upgrading $p"
 273     apt clean
 274     apt install --download-only -y $p
 275     for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
 276         if [ -e "$f" ]; then
 277             dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
 278             break
 279         fi
 280     done
 281 done
 282 </pre></blockquote></p>
 283
 284 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
 285 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
 286 downloaded packages using dpkg.  The idea is to upgrade packages
 287 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
 288 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency).  To
 289 use it, simply run it as root from the command line.  If it fail, try
 290 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again.  This
 291 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
 292 packages.  dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
 293
 294 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
 295 upgrade.  The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
 296 the packages that are simply too large to unpack.  Today this was
 297 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
 298 problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
 299
 300 <p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
 301 alternative ways to handle this.  The "unattended-upgrades
 302 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
 303 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
 304 first.  It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
 305 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
 306 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
 307
 308 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 309 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 310 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 311
 312       </div>
 313       <div class="tags">
 314
 315
 316         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>.
 317
 318
 319       </div>
 320     </div>
 321     <div class="padding"></div>
 322
 323     <div class="entry">
 324       <div class="title">
 325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html">Version 3.1 of Cura, the 3D print slicer, is now in Debian</a>
 326       </div>
 327       <div class="date">
 328         13th February 2018
 329       </div>
 330       <div class="body">
 331         <p>A new version of the
 332 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
 333 software Cura</a>, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
 334 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid).  I hope you find it
 335 useful.  It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
 336 enter testing tomorrow.  See the
 337 <a href="https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
 338 notes</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features.  Version 3.2
 339 was announced 6 days ago.  We will try to get it into Debian as
 340 well.</p>
 341
 342 <p>More information related to 3D printing is available on the
 343 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing</a> and
 344 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer</a> wiki pages
 345 in Debian.</p>
 346
 347 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 348 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 349 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 350
 351       </div>
 352       <div class="tags">
 353
 354
 355         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>.
 356
 357
 358       </div>
 359     </div>
 360     <div class="padding"></div>
 361
 362     <div class="entry">
 363       <div class="title">
 364         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html">Cura, the nice 3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable</a>
 365       </div>
 366       <div class="date">
 367         17th December 2017
 368       </div>
 369       <div class="body">
 370         <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
 371 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
 372 entered Debian Unstable.  It consist of five packages,
 373 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura</a>,
 374 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine</a>,
 375 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus</a>,
 376 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials</a>,
 377 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar</a> and
 378 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium</a>.  The last
 379 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday.  This should make
 380 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
 381 3D printers.  My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
 382 make life easier for at least me. :)</p>
 383
 384 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
 385 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages.  With the introduction
 386 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
 387 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa.  If you own or have access to a 3D
 388 printer, give it a go. :)</p>
 389
 390 <p>The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
 391 team, flocking together on the
 392 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general</a>
 393 mailing list and the
 394 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-3dprinting</a>
 395 IRC channel.</p>
 396
 397 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
 398 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
 399 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.</p>
 400
 401       </div>
 402       <div class="tags">
 403
 404
 405         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>.
 406
 407
 408       </div>
 409     </div>
 410     <div class="padding"></div>
 411
 412     <div class="entry">
 413       <div class="title">
 414         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
 415       </div>
 416       <div class="date">
 417          9th October 2017
 418       </div>
 419       <div class="body">
 420         <p>At my nearby maker space,
 421 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
 422 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
 423 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
 424 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
 425 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
 426 as the software involved,
 427 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
 428 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
 429 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
 430 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
 431 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
 432 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
 433 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
 434
 435 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
 436 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
 437 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
 438 on
 439 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 440 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
 441
 442 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
 443 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
 444 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
 445 upstream version.</p>
 446
 447 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
 448 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
 449 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
 450 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
 451 Debian, check out
 452 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
 453 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
 454 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
 455
 456 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 457 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 458 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 459
 460       </div>
 461       <div class="tags">
 462
 463
 464         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>.
 465
 466
 467       </div>
 468     </div>
 469     <div class="padding"></div>
 470
 471     <div class="entry">
 472       <div class="title">
 473         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
 474       </div>
 475       <div class="date">
 476         29th September 2017
 477       </div>
 478       <div class="body">
 479         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
 480 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
 481 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
 482 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
 483 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
 484 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
 485 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
 486 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
 487 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
 488 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
 489 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
 490 listen.</p>
 491
 492 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
 493 visualizing this information up and running for
 494 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
 495 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
 496 library.  The solution is based on the
 497 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
 498 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
 499 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
 500 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
 501 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
 502 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
 503 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
 504 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
 505
 506 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
 507 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
 508 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
 509 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
 510 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
 511 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
 512 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
 513 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
 514
 515 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
 516 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
 517 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
 518 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
 519 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
 520 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
 521 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
 522 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
 523 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
 524 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
 525 mentioned in
 526 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
 527 issue for the topic</a>.
 528
 529 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
 530
 531       </div>
 532       <div class="tags">
 533
 534
 535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 536
 537
 538       </div>
 539     </div>
 540     <div class="padding"></div>
 541
 542     <div class="entry">
 543       <div class="title">
 544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
 545       </div>
 546       <div class="date">
 547         24th September 2017
 548       </div>
 549       <div class="body">
 550         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
 551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
 552 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
 553 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
 554 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
 555 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
 556 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
 557 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
 558 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
 559
 560 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
 561 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
 562 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
 563 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
 564
 565 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
 566 clone of two python scripts:</p>
 567
 568 <ol>
 569
 570 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
 571   testing).</li>
 572
 573 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
 574   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
 575
 576 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
 577   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
 578
 579 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
 580
 581 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 582   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
 583   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
 584
 585 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 586   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
 587
 588 </ol>
 589
 590 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
 591 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
 592 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
 593 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
 594 very cheaply
 595 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
 596 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
 597 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
 598
 599 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
 600 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
 601 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
 602 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
 603 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
 604 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
 605 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
 606 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
 607
 608 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
 609 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
 610 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
 611 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
 612 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
 613 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
 614 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
 615 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
 616 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
 617 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
 618 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
 619 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
 620
 621       </div>
 622       <div class="tags">
 623
 624
 625         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 626
 627
 628       </div>
 629     </div>
 630     <div class="padding"></div>
 631
 632     <div class="entry">
 633       <div class="title">
 634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
 635       </div>
 636       <div class="date">
 637          9th August 2017
 638       </div>
 639       <div class="body">
 640         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
 641 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
 642 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
 643 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
 644 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
 645 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
 646 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
 647
 648 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
 649 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
 650 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
 651 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
 652 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
 653 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
 654 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
 655 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
 656 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
 657 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
 658 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
 659 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
 660 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
 661
 662 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
 663 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
 664 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
 665 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
 666 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
 667 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
 668 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
 669 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
 670 collector for a few days now.</p>
 671
 672 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
 673
 674 <ol>
 675
 676 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
 677
 678 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
 679 <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
 680
 681 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
 682
 683 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
 684 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
 685 found a GSM station).</li>
 686
 687 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
 688
 689 </ol>
 690
 691 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
 692 running, I decided to package
 693 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
 694 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
 695 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
 696 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
 697 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
 698
 699 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
 700 commercial tools like
 701 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
 702 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
 703 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
 704 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
 705 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
 706 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
 707 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
 708 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
 709 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
 710 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
 711 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
 712 of government officials...</p>
 713
 714 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
 715 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
 716 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
 717 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
 718 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
 719 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
 720 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
 721 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
 722 one frequency?</p>
 723
 724       </div>
 725       <div class="tags">
 726
 727
 728         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 729
 730
 731       </div>
 732     </div>
 733     <div class="padding"></div>
 734
 735     <div class="entry">
 736       <div class="title">
 737         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
 738       </div>
 739       <div class="date">
 740         25th July 2017
 741       </div>
 742       <div class="body">
 743         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
 744
 745 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
 746 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
 747 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
 748 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
 749 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
 750 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
 751 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
 752 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
 753 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
 754 as a web page</a>.</p>
 755
 756 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
 757 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
 758 in
 759 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
 760 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
 761 and
 762 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
 763 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
 764 project.  I hope
 765 "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
 766 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
 767
 768       </div>
 769       <div class="tags">
 770
 771
 772         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 773
 774
 775       </div>
 776     </div>
 777     <div class="padding"></div>
 778
 779     <div class="entry">
 780       <div class="title">
 781         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
 782       </div>
 783       <div class="date">
 784          3rd June 2017
 785       </div>
 786       <div class="body">
 787         <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
 788 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
 789 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
 790 like.  Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
 791 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
 792 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
 793 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet.  Det kan se slik ut.</p>
 794
 795 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
 796
 797 <blockquote>
 798 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
 799 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
 800 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
 801
 802 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
 803 på temaet:</p>
 804 <ol>
 805 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
 806 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
 807 </ol>
 808
 809 </blockquote>
 810
 811 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
 812
 813 <blockquote>
 814 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
 815 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
 816 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
 817
 818 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
 819 temaet:</p>
 820
 821 <ol>
 822 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
 823 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
 824 </ol>
 825
 826 </blockquote>
 827
 828 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
 829 ekstra språksjekk.  Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
 830 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen.  Jeg mistenker dog at
 831 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
 832 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
 833 det er kanskje flisespikking.  Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
 834 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.</p>
 835
 836       </div>
 837       <div class="tags">
 838
 839
 840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
 841
 842
 843       </div>
 844     </div>
 845     <div class="padding"></div>
 846
 847     <div class="entry">
 848       <div class="title">
 849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
 850       </div>
 851       <div class="date">
 852          9th March 2017
 853       </div>
 854       <div class="body">
 855         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
 856 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
 857 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
 858 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
 859 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
 860 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
 861 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
 862 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
 863
 864 <p><blockquote>
 865 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
 866 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
 867 </blockquote></p>
 868
 869 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
 870 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
 871 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
 872 are noticed.</p>
 873
 874 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
 875 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
 876 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
 877 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
 878 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
 879 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
 880
 881 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
 882 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
 883 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
 884 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
 885 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
 886 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
 887
 888 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
 889
 890 <p><blockquote><pre>
 891 [...]
 892 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
 893 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
 894         opts:   rw,vers=3,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,acregmin=3,acregmax=60,acdirmin=30,acdirmax=60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=129.240.3.145,mountvers=3,mountport=4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
 895         age:    7863311
 896         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
 897         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
 898         events: 61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
 899         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
 900         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
 901         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
 902         per-op statistics
 903                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 904              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
 905              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
 906               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
 907               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
 908             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
 909                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
 910                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
 911               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
 912                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
 913              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
 914                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
 915               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
 916                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
 917               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
 918                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
 919              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
 920          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
 921               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
 922               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
 923             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
 924               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 925
 926 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
 927 [...]
 928 </pre></blockquote></p>
 929
 930 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
 931 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
 932 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
 933 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
 934 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
 935 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
 936 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
 937 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
 938 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
 939 mount options.</p>
 940
 941 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
 942 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
 943 But according to
 944 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
 945 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
 946 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
 947 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
 948 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
 949 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
 950
 951 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
 952 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
 953 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
 954 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
 955 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
 956
 957       </div>
 958       <div class="tags">
 959
 960
 961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
 962
 963
 964       </div>
 965     </div>
 966     <div class="padding"></div>
 967
 968     <div class="entry">
 969       <div class="title">
 970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
 971       </div>
 972       <div class="date">
 973          3rd March 2017
 974       </div>
 975       <div class="body">
 976         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
 977 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
 978 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
 979 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
 980 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
 981 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
 982 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
 983 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
 984 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
 985
 986 <p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
 987
 988 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
 989 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
 990 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
 991 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
 992 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
 993 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
 994 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
 995 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
 996
 997       </div>
 998       <div class="tags">
 999
1000
1001         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1002
1003
1004       </div>
1005     </div>
1006     <div class="padding"></div>
1007
1008     <div class="entry">
1009       <div class="title">
1010         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
1011       </div>
1012       <div class="date">
1013          1st March 2017
1014       </div>
1015       <div class="body">
1016         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
1017 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
1018 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
1019 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
1020 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
1021 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
1022 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
1023 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
1024 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
1025 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
1026 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1027
1028 <blockquote><pre>
1029 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1030   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1031   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1032      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1033      sleep 1; \
1034   done
1035 300
1036 0+1 oppføringer inn
1037 0+1 oppføringer ut
1038 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
1039 4
1040 8
1041 12
1042 17
1043 21
1044 %
1045 </pre></blockquote>
1046
1047 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
1048 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
1049 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
1050 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1051
1052 <blockquote><pre>
1053 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1054   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1055   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1056      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1057      sleep 1; \
1058   done
1059 1079
1060 0+1 oppføringer inn
1061 0+1 oppføringer ut
1062 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
1063 433
1064 1028
1065 1031
1066 1035
1067 1038
1068 %
1069 </pre></blockquote>
1070
1071 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
1072 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
1073
1074 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
1075 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
1076 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
1077 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
1078 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
1079 post.</p>
1080
1081       </div>
1082       <div class="tags">
1083
1084
1085         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>.
1086
1087
1088       </div>
1089     </div>
1090     <div class="padding"></div>
1091
1092     <div class="entry">
1093       <div class="title">
1094         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
1095       </div>
1096       <div class="date">
1097          9th January 2017
1098       </div>
1099       <div class="body">
1100         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
1101 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
1102 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
1103 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
1104 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
1105 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
1106 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
1107 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
1108 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
1109 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
1110 this:
1111
1112 <p><pre>
1113 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1114  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
1115  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
1116  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
1117  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
1118  5  he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48)  3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.857 ms
1119  6  ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39)  0.662 ms  0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23)  0.622 ms
1120  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
1121  8  * * *
1122  9  * * *
1123 [...]
1124 </pre></p>
1125
1126 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
1127 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
1128 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
1129 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
1130 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
1131 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
1132 traceroute request.</p>
1133
1134 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
1135 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
1136 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
1137 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
1138 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
1139
1140 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
1141 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
1142 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
1143 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
1144 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
1145 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
1146 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
1147 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
1148 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
1149
1150 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
1151 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
1152 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
1153 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
1154 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
1155 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
1156 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
1157 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
1158 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
1159 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
1160 render the page (in HAR format using
1161 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
1162 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
1163 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
1164 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
1165 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
1166
1167 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
1168 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
1169
1170 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
1171 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
1172 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
1173 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
1174 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
1175 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
1176 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
1177 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
1178 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
1179 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
1180 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
1181 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
1182 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
1183 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
1184
1185 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
1186 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1187
1188 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
1189 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
1190 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
1191 question.
1192 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
1193 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
1194 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
1195 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
1196 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
1197 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
1198 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
1199
1200 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
1201 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1202
1203 <p>In the process, I came across the
1204 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
1205 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
1206 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
1207 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
1208 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
1209 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
1210 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
1211 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
1212 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
1213 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
1214 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
1215 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
1216 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
1217 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
1218
1219 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
1220 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
1221
1222 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
1223 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
1224 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
1225 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
1226
1227 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
1228 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
1229 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
1230 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
1231 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
1232 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
1233 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
1234
1235 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
1236 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
1237 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
1238 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
1239 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
1240 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
1241 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
1242
1243 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
1244 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
1245 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
1246 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
1247
1248 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1249 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1250 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1251
1252       </div>
1253       <div class="tags">
1254
1255
1256         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
1257
1258
1259       </div>
1260     </div>
1261     <div class="padding"></div>
1262
1263     <div class="entry">
1264       <div class="title">
1265         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
1266       </div>
1267       <div class="date">
1268         23rd December 2016
1269       </div>
1270       <div class="body">
1271         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
1272 readers probably know, I have been working on the
1273 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
1274 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
1275 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
1276 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
1277 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
1278 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
1279 metadata format.  And today,
1280 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
1281 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
1282 ie using fnmatch():</p>
1283
1284 <p><pre>
1285 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
1286   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1287 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
1288 Name: pymissile
1289 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
1290 Package: pymissile
1291 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
1292 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
1293 Name: libnxt
1294 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
1295 Package: libnxt
1296 ---
1297 Identifier: t2n [generic]
1298 Name: t2n
1299 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
1300 Package: t2n
1301 ---
1302 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
1303 Name: python-nxt
1304 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
1305 Package: python-nxt
1306 ---
1307 Identifier: nbc [generic]
1308 Name: nbc
1309 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
1310 Package: nbc
1311 %
1312 </pre></p>
1313
1314 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
1315 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
1316
1317 <p><pre>
1318 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1319 pymissile
1320 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
1321 libnxt
1322 nbc
1323 python-nxt
1324 t2n
1325 %
1326 </pre></p>
1327
1328 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
1329 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
1330
1331 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
1332 make the most of the hardware they have, please
1333 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
1334 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
1335 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
1336 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
1337 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
1338 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
1339 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
1340 part of my involvement in
1341 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
1342 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
1343 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
1344 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
1345 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
1346 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
1347 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
1348 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
1349 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
1350
1351 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1352 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1353 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1354
1355       </div>
1356       <div class="tags">
1357
1358
1359         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>.
1360
1361
1362       </div>
1363     </div>
1364     <div class="padding"></div>
1365
1366     <div class="entry">
1367       <div class="title">
1368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
1369       </div>
1370       <div class="date">
1371         20th December 2016
1372       </div>
1373       <div class="body">
1374         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
1375 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
1376 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
1377 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
1378 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
1379 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
1380 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
1381 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
1382 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
1383 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
1384
1385 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
1386
1387 <p><pre>
1388 % isenkram-lookup
1389 bluez
1390 cheese
1391 ethtool
1392 fprintd
1393 fprintd-demo
1394 gkrellm-thinkbat
1395 hdapsd
1396 libpam-fprintd
1397 pidgin-blinklight
1398 thinkfan
1399 tlp
1400 tp-smapi-dkms
1401 tp-smapi-source
1402 tpb
1403 %
1404 </pre></p>
1405
1406 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
1407 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
1408 I have all the firmware my machine need:
1409
1410 <p><pre>
1411 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1412 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
1413 %
1414 </pre></p>
1415
1416 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
1417 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
1418 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
1419 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
1420 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
1421 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
1422 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
1423 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
1424
1425 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
1426 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
1427 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
1428
1429 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
1430 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
1431 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
1432 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
1433 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
1434 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
1435 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
1436 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
1437 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
1438 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
1439 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
1440 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
1441 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
1442 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
1443 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
1444 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
1445 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
1446 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
1447 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
1448 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
1449 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
1450 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
1451 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
1452 zd1211-firmware</p>
1453
1454 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
1455 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
1456 maintainer to
1457 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
1458 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
1459 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
1460 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
1461
1462 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
1463 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
1464 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
1465 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
1466 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
1467
1468       </div>
1469       <div class="tags">
1470
1471
1472         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>.
1473
1474
1475       </div>
1476     </div>
1477     <div class="padding"></div>
1478
1479     <div class="entry">
1480       <div class="title">
1481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
1482       </div>
1483       <div class="date">
1484         11th December 2016
1485       </div>
1486       <div class="body">
1487         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
1488
1489 <p>In my early years, I played
1490 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
1491 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
1492 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
1493 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
1494 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
1495 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
1496 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
1497 small.</p>
1498
1499 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
1500 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
1501 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
1502 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
1503 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
1504 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
1505 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
1506 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
1507 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
1508
1509 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
1510 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
1511 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
1512 advantages of the
1513 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
1514 where information about each planet is easily available with common
1515 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
1516 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
1517 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
1518 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
1519 after less then a week.</p>
1520
1521 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
1522 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
1523 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
1524
1525 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1526 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1527 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1528
1529       </div>
1530       <div class="tags">
1531
1532
1533         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1534
1535
1536       </div>
1537     </div>
1538     <div class="padding"></div>
1539
1540     <div class="entry">
1541       <div class="title">
1542         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
1543       </div>
1544       <div class="date">
1545         25th November 2016
1546       </div>
1547       <div class="body">
1548         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
1549 installation system, observing how using
1550 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
1551 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
1552 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
1553 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
1554 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
1555 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
1556 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
1557 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
1558 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
1559 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
1560 up the process make perfect sense.
1561
1562 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
1563 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
1564 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
1565 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
1566 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
1567 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
1568 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
1569 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
1570 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
1571 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
1572
1573 <blockquote><pre>
1574 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
1575 </pre></blockquote>
1576
1577 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
1578 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
1579 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
1580 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
1581 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
1582 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
1583 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
1584 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
1585 tested its impact.</p>
1586
1587
1588       </div>
1589       <div class="tags">
1590
1591
1592         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>.
1593
1594
1595       </div>
1596     </div>
1597     <div class="padding"></div>
1598
1599     <div class="entry">
1600       <div class="title">
1601         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
1602       </div>
1603       <div class="date">
1604         24th November 2016
1605       </div>
1606       <div class="body">
1607         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
1608 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
1609 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
1610 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
1611 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
1612 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
1613 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
1614 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
1615 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
1616 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
1617 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
1618 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
1619 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
1620 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
1621 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
1622 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
1623 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
1624 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
1625 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
1626
1627 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
1628 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
1629 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
1630 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
1631 api.apertium.org.  Se
1632 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
1633 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
1634 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
1635 nynorsk.</p>
1636
1637 <hr/>
1638
1639 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
1640 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
1641 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
1642 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
1643 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
1644 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
1645 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
1646 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
1647 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
1648 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
1649 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
1650 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
1651 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
1652 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
1653 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
1654 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
1655 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
1656 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
1657 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
1658
1659 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
1660 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
1661 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
1662 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
1663 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
1664 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
1665 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
1666 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
1667 nynorsk.</p>
1668
1669       </div>
1670       <div class="tags">
1671
1672
1673         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
1674
1675
1676       </div>
1677     </div>
1678     <div class="padding"></div>
1679
1680     <div class="entry">
1681       <div class="title">
1682         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
1683       </div>
1684       <div class="date">
1685         13th November 2016
1686       </div>
1687       <div class="body">
1688         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
1689 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
1690 multi-threaded program, finally
1691 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
1692 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
1693 months since
1694 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
1695 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
1696 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
1697 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
1698 JavaScript libraries.</p>
1699
1700 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
1701
1702 <p><blockquote>
1703 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
1704 </blockquote></p>
1705
1706 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
1707 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
1708 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
1709 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
1710 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
1711
1712 <p><blockquote>
1713 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
1714 </blockquote></p>
1715
1716 <p>See the project home page and the
1717 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
1718 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
1719 working.</p>
1720
1721       </div>
1722       <div class="tags">
1723
1724
1725         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>.
1726
1727
1728       </div>
1729     </div>
1730     <div class="padding"></div>
1731
1732     <div class="entry">
1733       <div class="title">
1734         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
1735       </div>
1736       <div class="date">
1737          4th November 2016
1738       </div>
1739       <div class="body">
1740         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
1741 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
1742 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
1743 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
1744 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
1745 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
1746 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
1747 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
1748 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
1749 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
1750 and had
1751 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
1752 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
1753 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
1754 loved ones. :)</p>
1755
1756 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
1757 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
1758 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
1759 building
1760 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
1761 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
1762 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
1763 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
1764 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
1765 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
1766 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
1767 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
1768
1769 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
1770
1771 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
1772 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
1773 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
1774 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
1775 the battery status run low:</p>
1776
1777 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
1778    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
1779 </video></p>
1780
1781 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
1782 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
1783
1784 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
1785 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
1786 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
1787 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
1788 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
1789 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
1790 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
1791 should.</p>
1792
1793       </div>
1794       <div class="tags">
1795
1796
1797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1798
1799
1800       </div>
1801     </div>
1802     <div class="padding"></div>
1803
1804     <div class="entry">
1805       <div class="title">
1806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
1807       </div>
1808       <div class="date">
1809         10th October 2016
1810       </div>
1811       <div class="body">
1812         <p>In July
1813 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
1814 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
1815 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
1816 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
1817
1818 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
1819 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
1820 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
1821 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
1822 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
1823 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
1824 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
1825 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
1826 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
1827 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
1828 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
1829 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
1830 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
1831 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
1832 time.</p>
1833
1834 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
1835 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
1836 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
1837 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
1838 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
1839 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
1840 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
1841
1842 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
1843 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
1844 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
1845 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
1846 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
1847 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
1848 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
1849 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
1850 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
1851 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
1852
1853 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
1854
1855 <ol>
1856
1857 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
1858 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
1859 know, so you need to install it.
1860
1861 <pre>
1862 apt install git tor chromium
1863 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
1864 </pre></li>
1865
1866 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
1867 block below.</li>
1868
1869 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
1870 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
1871
1872 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
1873 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
1874 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
1875 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
1876 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
1877
1878 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
1879 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
1880 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
1881 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
1882 a associated contact database.</li>
1883
1884 </ol>
1885
1886 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
1887 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
1888 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
1889 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
1890 example
1891 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
1892 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
1893 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
1894 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
1895 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
1896 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
1897 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
1898 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
1899 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
1900 working on Debian Stable.</p>
1901
1902 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
1903 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
1904 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
1905
1906 <pre>
1907 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
1908 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
1909 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
1910 --- a/js/background.js
1911 +++ b/js/background.js
1912 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
1913          });
1914      });
1915
1916 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
1917 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
1918      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
1919 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
1920 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
1921      var messageReceiver;
1922      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
1923          if (messageReceiver) {
1924 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
1925 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
1926 --- a/js/expire.js
1927 +++ b/js/expire.js
1928 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
1929  ;(function() {
1930      'use strict';
1931 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
1932 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
1933
1934      window.extension = window.extension || {};
1935
1936 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
1937 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
1938 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
1939 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
1940 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
1941              return {
1942                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
1943                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
1944 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
1945 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
1946 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
1947              };
1948          },
1949          clearQR: function() {
1950 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
1951 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
1952 --- a/options.html
1953 +++ b/options.html
1954 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
1955          &lt;div class='nav'>
1956            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
1957            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
1958 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
1959 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
1960 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
1961 +
1962 +         &lt;/div>
1963            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
1964            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
1965            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
1966 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
1967 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
1968 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
1969 +#!/bin/sh
1970 +set -e
1971 +cd $(dirname $0)
1972 +mkdir -p userdata
1973 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
1974 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
1975 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
1976 +fi
1977 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
1978 +exec chromium \
1979 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
1980 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
1981 EOF
1982 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
1983 </pre>
1984
1985 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1986 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1987 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1988
1989       </div>
1990       <div class="tags">
1991
1992
1993         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1994
1995
1996       </div>
1997     </div>
1998     <div class="padding"></div>
1999
2000     <div class="entry">
2001       <div class="title">
2002         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
2003       </div>
2004       <div class="date">
2005          7th October 2016
2006       </div>
2007       <div class="body">
2008         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2009 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
2010 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
2011 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
2012 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
2013 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
2014 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
2015 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
2016 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
2017 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
2018 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
2019 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
2020 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
2021
2022 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
2023 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
2024 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
2025 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
2026 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
2027 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
2028
2029 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
2030 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
2031 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
2032 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
2033 identifiers.</p>
2034
2035 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
2036 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
2037 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
2038 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
2039 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
2040 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
2041 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
2042 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
2043 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
2044 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
2045 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
2046 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
2047 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
2048 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
2049
2050 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
2051 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
2052 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
2053 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
2054 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
2055 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
2056 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
2057
2058 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
2059 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
2060 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
2061 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
2062 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
2063 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
2064 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
2065 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
2066 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
2067 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
2068 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
2069 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
2070 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
2071 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
2072 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
2073 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
2074 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
2075
2076 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
2077 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
2078 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
2079 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
2080 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
2081 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
2082 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
2083
2084 <p><pre>
2085 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
2086     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
2087 </pre></p>
2088
2089 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
2090 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
2091 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
2092 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
2093 to detect this?</p>
2094
2095 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
2096 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
2097 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
2098 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
2099 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
2100 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
2101 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
2102 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
2103 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
2104 directly if no such class exist.</p>
2105
2106 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2107 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2108 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2109
2110 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
2111 please join us on our IRC channel
2112 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
2113 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
2114 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
2115 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
2116
2117 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2118 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2119 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2120
2121       </div>
2122       <div class="tags">
2123
2124
2125         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>.
2126
2127
2128       </div>
2129     </div>
2130     <div class="padding"></div>
2131
2132     <div class="entry">
2133       <div class="title">
2134         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
2135       </div>
2136       <div class="date">
2137         30th August 2016
2138       </div>
2139       <div class="body">
2140         <p>In April we
2141 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
2142 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
2143 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
2144 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
2145 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
2146 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
2147 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
2148 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
2149 contributing using
2150 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2151 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
2152 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2153 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
2154 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2155 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
2156 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
2157
2158 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
2159 electronic form.</p>
2160
2161       </div>
2162       <div class="tags">
2163
2164
2165         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2166
2167
2168       </div>
2169     </div>
2170     <div class="padding"></div>
2171
2172     <div class="entry">
2173       <div class="title">
2174         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
2175       </div>
2176       <div class="date">
2177         11th August 2016
2178       </div>
2179       <div class="body">
2180         <p>This summer, I read a great article
2181 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
2182 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
2183 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
2184 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
2185 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
2186 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
2187 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
2188 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
2189 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
2190 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
2191 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
2192 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
2193
2194 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
2195 get the system into Debian.  I
2196 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
2197 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
2198 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
2199 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
2200 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
2201 profiling information included in the source package.
2202 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
2203
2204 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
2205 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
2206
2207 <p><blockquote><pre>
2208 coz run --- program-to-run
2209 </pre></blockquote></p>
2210
2211 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
2212 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
2213 most, use a web browser and either point it to
2214 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
2215 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
2216 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
2217 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
2218 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
2219 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
2220 targeted experiments.</p>
2221
2222 <p>A video published by ACM
2223 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
2224 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
2225 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
2226 titled
2227 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
2228 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
2229
2230 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
2231 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
2232 because it uses a
2233 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
2234 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
2235 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
2236 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
2237
2238 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
2239 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
2240 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
2241 C++ libraries.</p>
2242
2243       </div>
2244       <div class="tags">
2245
2246
2247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2248
2249
2250       </div>
2251     </div>
2252     <div class="padding"></div>
2253
2254     <div class="entry">
2255       <div class="title">
2256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
2257       </div>
2258       <div class="date">
2259          7th July 2016
2260       </div>
2261       <div class="body">
2262         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
2263 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
2264 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
2265 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
2266 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
2267 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
2268 microphone The initial idea had been to just
2269 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
2270 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
2271 until a few days ago.</p>
2272
2273 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
2274 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
2275 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
2276 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
2277 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
2278 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
2279 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
2280
2281 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
2282 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
2283 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
2284 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
2285 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
2286 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
2287 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
2288 him.</p>
2289
2290 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
2291 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
2292 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
2293 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
2294 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
2295 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
2296 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
2297 devices it would work for.</p>
2298
2299 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
2300 followed some instructions
2301 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
2302 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
2303 machine with Debian testing:</p>
2304
2305 <p><pre>
2306 adb reboot-bootloader
2307 fastboot oem rebootRUU
2308 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
2309 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
2310 fastboot reboot
2311 </pre></p>
2312
2313 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
2314 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
2315 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
2316 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
2317 too.</p>
2318
2319 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
2320 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
2321 like this:</p>
2322
2323 <p><pre>
2324 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
2325 </pre>
2326
2327 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
2328 this:</p>
2329
2330 <p><pre>
2331 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
2332 </pre></p>
2333
2334 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
2335 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
2336 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
2337 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
2338 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
2339
2340       </div>
2341       <div class="tags">
2342
2343
2344         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2345
2346
2347       </div>
2348     </div>
2349     <div class="padding"></div>
2350
2351     <div class="entry">
2352       <div class="title">
2353         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
2354       </div>
2355       <div class="date">
2356          3rd July 2016
2357       </div>
2358       <div class="body">
2359         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
2360 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
2361 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
2362 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
2363 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
2364 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
2365 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
2366 Github source, compared it to the source in
2367 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
2368 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
2369 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
2370 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
2371 the recipe how I did it.</p>
2372
2373 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
2374
2375 <pre>
2376 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
2377 </pre>
2378
2379 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
2380 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
2381
2382 <pre>
2383 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
2384 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
2385 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
2386 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
2387 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
2388          });
2389      });
2390
2391 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
2392 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
2393 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
2394 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
2395      var messageReceiver;
2396      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
2397          if (messageReceiver) {
2398 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
2399 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
2400 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
2401 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
2402  ;(function() {
2403      'use strict';
2404 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
2405 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
2406
2407      window.extension = window.extension || {};
2408
2409 EOF
2410 </pre>
2411
2412 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
2413 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
2414 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
2415 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
2416
2417 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
2418 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
2419
2420 <pre>
2421 #!/bin/sh
2422 cd $(dirname $0)
2423 mkdir -p userdata
2424 exec chromium \
2425   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
2426   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
2427 </pre>
2428
2429 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
2430 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
2431 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
2432 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
2433 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
2434
2435 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
2436 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
2437 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
2438 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
2439 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
2440 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
2441 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
2442 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
2443 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
2444 Signal from my laptop.
2445
2446 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
2447 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
2448 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
2449 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
2450 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
2451 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
2452 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
2453 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
2454 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
2455 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
2456 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
2457 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
2458
2459 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
2460 on this topic in
2461 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
2462 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
2463 phone</a>.</p>
2464
2465       </div>
2466       <div class="tags">
2467
2468
2469         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2470
2471
2472       </div>
2473     </div>
2474     <div class="padding"></div>
2475
2476     <div class="entry">
2477       <div class="title">
2478         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
2479       </div>
2480       <div class="date">
2481          6th June 2016
2482       </div>
2483       <div class="body">
2484         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
2485 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
2486 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
2487 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
2488 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
2489 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
2490 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
2491 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
2492 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
2493
2494 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
2495 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
2496 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
2497 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
2498 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
2499 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
2500 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
2501
2502 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
2503 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
2504 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
2505 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
2506 toten and parole.</p>
2507
2508 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
2509 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
2510 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
2511 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
2512 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
2513 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
2514 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
2515 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
2516 formats.</p>
2517
2518       </div>
2519       <div class="tags">
2520
2521
2522         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>.
2523
2524
2525       </div>
2526     </div>
2527     <div class="padding"></div>
2528
2529     <div class="entry">
2530       <div class="title">
2531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
2532       </div>
2533       <div class="date">
2534          5th June 2016
2535       </div>
2536       <div class="body">
2537         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
2538 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
2539 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
2540 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
2541 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
2542 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
2543 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
2544 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
2545 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
2546 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
2547 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
2548 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
2549 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
2550 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
2551 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
2552 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
2553 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
2554 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
2555 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
2556 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
2557
2558 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
2559 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
2560 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
2561 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
2562 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
2563 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
2564 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
2565 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
2566 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
2567 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
2568 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
2569 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
2570 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
2571 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
2572
2573 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
2574 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
2575 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
2576 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
2577 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
2578 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
2579 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
2580 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
2581
2582 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
2583 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
2584 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
2585 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
2586 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
2587 information is collected from
2588 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
2589 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
2590 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
2591 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
2592 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
2593 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
2594 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
2595 type (preferably
2596 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
2597 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
2598 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
2599 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
2600
2601 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
2602 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
2603 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
2604
2605 <p><blockquote><pre>
2606 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
2607 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
2608   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
2609     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
2610     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
2611     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
2612   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
2613 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
2614 </pre></blockquote></p>
2615
2616 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
2617 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
2618 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
2619 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
2620
2621 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
2622 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
2623 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
2624
2625 <p><blockquote><pre>
2626 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
2627 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
2628 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
2629 %
2630 </pre></blockquote></p>
2631
2632 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
2633 MimeType= line.</p>
2634
2635 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
2636 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
2637 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
2638 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
2639 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
2640 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
2641 fixed. :)</p>
2642
2643       </div>
2644       <div class="tags">
2645
2646
2647         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>.
2648
2649
2650       </div>
2651     </div>
2652     <div class="padding"></div>
2653
2654     <div class="entry">
2655       <div class="title">
2656         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
2657       </div>
2658       <div class="date">
2659         25th May 2016
2660       </div>
2661       <div class="body">
2662         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
2663 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
2664 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
2665 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
2666 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
2667 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
2668 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
2669 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
2670 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
2671 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
2672 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
2673 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
2674
2675 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
2676 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
2677 is going away and is generally being replaced by
2678 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
2679 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
2680 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
2681 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
2682 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
2683 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
2684 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
2685 and see if it is recognised.</p>
2686
2687 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
2688 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
2689 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
2690
2691 <p><blockquote><pre>
2692 % isenkram-lookup
2693 bluez
2694 cheese
2695 fprintd
2696 fprintd-demo
2697 gkrellm-thinkbat
2698 hdapsd
2699 libpam-fprintd
2700 pidgin-blinklight
2701 thinkfan
2702 tleds
2703 tp-smapi-dkms
2704 tp-smapi-source
2705 tpb
2706 %p
2707 </pre></blockquote></p>
2708
2709 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
2710 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
2711 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
2712 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
2713 See
2714 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
2715 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
2716
2717       </div>
2718       <div class="tags">
2719
2720
2721         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>.
2722
2723
2724       </div>
2725     </div>
2726     <div class="padding"></div>
2727
2728     <div class="entry">
2729       <div class="title">
2730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
2731       </div>
2732       <div class="date">
2733         23rd May 2016
2734       </div>
2735       <div class="body">
2736         <p>Yesterday I updated the
2737 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
2738 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
2739 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
2740 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
2741 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
2742 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
2743 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
2744 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
2745 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
2746 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
2747
2748 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
2749 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
2750 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
2751 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
2752 capacity.</p>
2753
2754 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
2755
2756 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
2757 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
2758 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
2759 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
2760
2761 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
2762
2763 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
2764 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
2765 shrinking. :(</p>
2766
2767 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
2768 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
2769 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
2770 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
2771 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
2772 machine.</p>
2773
2774 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
2775 check out the
2776 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
2777 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
2778 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
2779 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
2780 Patches are very welcome.</p>
2781
2782 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2783 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2784 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2785
2786       </div>
2787       <div class="tags">
2788
2789
2790         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>.
2791
2792
2793       </div>
2794     </div>
2795     <div class="padding"></div>
2796
2797     <div class="entry">
2798       <div class="title">
2799         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
2800       </div>
2801       <div class="date">
2802         12th May 2016
2803       </div>
2804       <div class="body">
2805         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
2806 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
2807 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
2808 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
2809 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
2810 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
2811 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
2812 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
2813 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
2814 great if you could help out with
2815 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
2816 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
2817
2818       </div>
2819       <div class="tags">
2820
2821
2822         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>.
2823
2824
2825       </div>
2826     </div>
2827     <div class="padding"></div>
2828
2829     <div class="entry">
2830       <div class="title">
2831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
2832       </div>
2833       <div class="date">
2834          8th May 2016
2835       </div>
2836       <div class="body">
2837         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
2838 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
2839
2840 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
2841 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
2842 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
2843 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
2844 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
2845 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
2846 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
2847 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
2848 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
2849 players.</p>
2850
2851 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
2852 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
2853 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
2854 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
2855 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
2856 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
2857 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
2858 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
2859 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
2860 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
2861 support most file formats.</p>
2862
2863 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
2864 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
2865 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
2866 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
2867 listed first in the table.</p>
2868
2869 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
2870 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
2871 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
2872 support?</p>
2873
2874       </div>
2875       <div class="tags">
2876
2877
2878         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>.
2879
2880
2881       </div>
2882     </div>
2883     <div class="padding"></div>
2884
2885     <div class="entry">
2886       <div class="title">
2887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
2888       </div>
2889       <div class="date">
2890          4th May 2016
2891       </div>
2892       <div class="body">
2893         A friend of mine made me aware of
2894 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
2895 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
2896 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
2897
2898 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
2899 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
2900 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
2901 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
2902 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
2903 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
2904 production started.</p>
2905
2906 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
2907 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
2908 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
2909
2910       </div>
2911       <div class="tags">
2912
2913
2914         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>.
2915
2916
2917       </div>
2918     </div>
2919     <div class="padding"></div>
2920
2921     <div class="entry">
2922       <div class="title">
2923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
2924       </div>
2925       <div class="date">
2926         10th April 2016
2927       </div>
2928       <div class="body">
2929         <p>During this weekends
2930 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
2931 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
2932 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
2933 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
2934 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
2935 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
2936 contributing using
2937 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2938 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
2939 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2940 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
2941 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2942 contributors</a>.</p>
2943
2944 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
2945 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
2946 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
2947 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
2948 available for many more languages.</p>
2949
2950       </div>
2951       <div class="tags">
2952
2953
2954         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2955
2956
2957       </div>
2958     </div>
2959     <div class="padding"></div>
2960
2961     <div class="entry">
2962       <div class="title">
2963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
2964       </div>
2965       <div class="date">
2966          7th April 2016
2967       </div>
2968       <div class="body">
2969         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
2970 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
2971 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
2972 But I might be wrong.</p>
2973
2974 <p>According to
2975 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
2976 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
2977 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
2978 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
2979 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
2980 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
2981 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
2982 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
2983 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
2984 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
2985
2986 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
2987 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
2988 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
2989 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
2990 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
2991 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
2992 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
2993 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
2994 team status page</a>, and
2995 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
2996 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
2997
2998 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
2999 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
3000 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
3001 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
3002 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
3003 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
3004 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
3005 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
3006 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
3007 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
3008 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
3009 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
3010
3011       </div>
3012       <div class="tags">
3013
3014
3015         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>.
3016
3017
3018       </div>
3019     </div>
3020     <div class="padding"></div>
3021
3022     <div class="entry">
3023       <div class="title">
3024         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
3025       </div>
3026       <div class="date">
3027         23rd March 2016
3028       </div>
3029       <div class="body">
3030         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
3031 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
3032 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
3033 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
3034 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
3035 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
3036 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
3037 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
3038
3039 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
3040 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
3041 and lifetime prediction by running:
3042
3043 <p><pre>
3044 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
3045 </pre></p>
3046
3047 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
3048
3049 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
3050 entry yet):</p>
3051
3052 <p><pre>
3053 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
3054 </pre></p>
3055
3056 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
3057 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
3058 few years of data.</p>
3059
3060 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
3061 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
3062 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
3063 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
3064 know.  The issue is reported as
3065 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
3066 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
3067 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
3068 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
3069 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
3070
3071 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
3072 check out the
3073 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
3074 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
3075 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
3076 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3077 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
3078
3079       </div>
3080       <div class="tags">
3081
3082
3083         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>.
3084
3085
3086       </div>
3087     </div>
3088     <div class="padding"></div>
3089
3090     <div class="entry">
3091       <div class="title">
3092         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
3093       </div>
3094       <div class="date">
3095         15th March 2016
3096       </div>
3097       <div class="body">
3098         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
3099 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
3100 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
3101 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
3102 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
3103 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
3104 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
3105 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
3106 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
3107 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
3108 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
3109
3110 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
3111 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
3112 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
3113 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
3114 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
3115 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
3116 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
3117 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
3118 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
3119 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
3120 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
3121
3122 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
3123
3124 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
3125 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
3126 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
3127 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
3128 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
3129 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
3130
3131 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
3132 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
3133 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
3134 and graphing.</p>
3135
3136 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
3137 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
3138 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
3139 on
3140 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3141 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
3142
3143       </div>
3144       <div class="tags">
3145
3146
3147         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>.
3148
3149
3150       </div>
3151     </div>
3152     <div class="padding"></div>
3153
3154     <div class="entry">
3155       <div class="title">
3156         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
3157       </div>
3158       <div class="date">
3159         19th February 2016
3160       </div>
3161       <div class="body">
3162         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
3163 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
3164 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
3165 the code in the package in question, preferably in
3166 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
3167 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
3168
3169 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
3170 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
3171 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
3172 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
3173 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
3174 out what was wrong with
3175 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
3176 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
3177 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
3178 semi-automatically.</p>
3179
3180 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
3181 file based on the code in the source package,
3182 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
3183 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
3184 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
3185 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
3186 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
3187 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
3188 option in
3189 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
3190 blog posts from 2014</a>.
3191
3192 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
3193
3194 <p><pre>
3195 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
3196 </pre></p>
3197
3198 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
3199 this might not be the best option.</p>
3200
3201 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
3202 this approach in
3203 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
3204 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
3205 dpkg-copyright' option:
3206
3207 <p><pre>
3208 cme update dpkg-copyright
3209 </pre></p>
3210
3211 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
3212 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
3213
3214 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
3215 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
3216 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
3217 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
3218 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
3219 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
3220 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
3221 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
3222 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
3223 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
3224
3225 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
3226 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
3227 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
3228 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
3229
3230 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
3231 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
3232 planet.debian.org.</p>
3233
3234 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3235 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3236 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3237
3238 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
3239 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
3240
3241 <p><pre>
3242 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
3243   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
3244 </pre></p>
3245
3246 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
3247 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
3248 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
3249 with my packages in the future.</p>
3250
3251 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
3252 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
3253 command line.</p>
3254
3255       </div>
3256       <div class="tags">
3257
3258
3259         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>.
3260
3261
3262       </div>
3263     </div>
3264     <div class="padding"></div>
3265
3266     <div class="entry">
3267       <div class="title">
3268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
3269       </div>
3270       <div class="date">
3271          4th February 2016
3272       </div>
3273       <div class="body">
3274         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
3275 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
3276 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
3277 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
3278 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
3279 about. :)</p>
3280
3281 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
3282 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
3283 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
3284 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
3285 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
3286 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
3287
3288 <blockquote><pre>
3289 % apt install appstream
3290 [...]
3291 % apt update
3292 [...]
3293 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
3294   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
3295 firmware-qlogic
3296 %
3297 </pre></blockquote>
3298
3299 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
3300 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
3301 a way appstream can use.</p>
3302
3303 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
3304 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
3305 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
3306 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
3307 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
3308 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
3309
3310 <blockquote><pre>
3311 % apt install appstream
3312 [...]
3313 % apt update
3314 [...]
3315 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
3316   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
3317 bkchem
3318 phototonic
3319 inkscape
3320 shutter
3321 tetzle
3322 geeqie
3323 xia
3324 pinta
3325 gthumb
3326 karbon
3327 comix
3328 mirage
3329 viewnior
3330 postr
3331 ristretto
3332 kolourpaint4
3333 eog
3334 eom
3335 gimagereader
3336 midori
3337 %
3338 </pre></blockquote>
3339
3340 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
3341 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
3342
3343       </div>
3344       <div class="tags">
3345
3346
3347         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>.
3348
3349
3350       </div>
3351     </div>
3352     <div class="padding"></div>
3353
3354     <div class="entry">
3355       <div class="title">
3356         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
3357       </div>
3358       <div class="date">
3359         24th January 2016
3360       </div>
3361       <div class="body">
3362         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
3363 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
3364 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
3365 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
3366 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
3367 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
3368 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
3369 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
3370 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
3371 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
3372 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
3373 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
3374 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
3375 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
3376 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
3377 entities.</p>
3378
3379 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
3380
3381 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
3382 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
3383 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
3384 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
3385 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
3386 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
3387 tool to do so is called
3388 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
3389 discovered it when I read
3390 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
3391 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
3392 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
3393 The python program was in Debian, but
3394 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
3395 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
3396 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
3397 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
3398 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
3399 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
3400 are now included
3401 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
3402
3403 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
3404 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
3405 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
3406 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
3407 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
3408 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
3409 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
3410 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
3411 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
3412 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
3413 about yourself with the services.</p>
3414
3415 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
3416 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
3417 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
3418 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
3419 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
3420 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
3421 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
3422 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
3423 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
3424 things.  A similar technique have been
3425 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
3426 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
3427 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
3428 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
3429 public.</p>
3430
3431 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
3432 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
3433 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
3434 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
3435
3436 <p>(I have uploaded
3437 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
3438 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
3439 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
3440
3441       </div>
3442       <div class="tags">
3443
3444
3445         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3446
3447
3448       </div>
3449     </div>
3450     <div class="padding"></div>
3451
3452     <div class="entry">
3453       <div class="title">
3454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
3455       </div>
3456       <div class="date">
3457         15th January 2016
3458       </div>
3459       <div class="body">
3460         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
3461 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
3462 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
3463 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
3464 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
3465 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
3466 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
3467 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
3468 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
3469 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
3470 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
3471 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
3472 was not the first to propose this, as the
3473 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
3474 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
3475 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
3476 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
3477
3478 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
3479 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
3480 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
3481 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
3482 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
3483
3484 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
3485 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
3486 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
3487 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
3488 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
3489 done in /etc/.</p>
3490
3491 <blockquote><pre>
3492 apt install apt-transport-tor
3493 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
3494 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
3495 </pre></blockquote>
3496
3497 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
3498 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
3499 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
3500 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
3501
3502 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
3503 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
3504 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
3505 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
3506 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
3507 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
3508
3509 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
3510 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
3511 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
3512 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
3513 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
3514
3515 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
3516 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
3517 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
3518 system.</p>
3519
3520       </div>
3521       <div class="tags">
3522
3523
3524         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>.
3525
3526
3527       </div>
3528     </div>
3529     <div class="padding"></div>
3530
3531     <div class="entry">
3532       <div class="title">
3533         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
3534       </div>
3535       <div class="date">
3536         23rd December 2015
3537       </div>
3538       <div class="body">
3539         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
3540 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
3541 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
3542 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
3543 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
3544 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
3545
3546 <p>A few days I came across
3547 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
3548 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
3549 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
3550 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
3551 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
3552 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
3553 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
3554 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
3555 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
3556 discovered the developer
3557 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
3558 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
3559 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
3560 archive.</p>
3561
3562 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
3563 it into Debian, where it currently
3564 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
3565 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
3566
3567 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
3568 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
3569 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
3570 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
3571 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
3572 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
3573 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
3574 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
3575 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
3576 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
3577 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
3578 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
3579
3580 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
3581 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
3582 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
3583 package show up in unstable.</p>
3584
3585       </div>
3586       <div class="tags">
3587
3588
3589         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3590
3591
3592       </div>
3593     </div>
3594     <div class="padding"></div>
3595
3596     <div class="entry">
3597       <div class="title">
3598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
3599       </div>
3600       <div class="date">
3601         20th December 2015
3602       </div>
3603       <div class="body">
3604         <p>Around three years ago, I created
3605 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
3606 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
3607 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
3608 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
3609 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
3610 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
3611 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
3612 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
3613 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
3614 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
3615 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
3616 with.</p>
3617
3618 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
3619 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
3620 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
3621 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
3622 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
3623 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
3624 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
3625 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
3626 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
3627 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
3628 Debian version of appstream.</p>
3629
3630 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
3631 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
3632 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
3633 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
3634 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
3635 how do add the required
3636 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
3637 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
3638 this content:</p>
3639
3640 <blockquote><pre>
3641 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
3642 &lt;component&gt;
3643   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
3644   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
3645   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
3646   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
3647   &lt;description&gt;
3648     &lt;p&gt;
3649       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
3650       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
3651       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
3652       launcher.
3653     &lt;/p&gt;
3654   &lt;/description&gt;
3655   &lt;provides&gt;
3656     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
3657   &lt;/provides&gt;
3658 &lt;/component&gt;
3659 </pre></blockquote>
3660
3661 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
3662 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
3663 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
3664 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
3665 0202.</p>
3666
3667 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
3668 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
3669 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
3670 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
3671 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
3672 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
3673 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
3674 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
3675
3676 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
3677 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
3678 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
3679 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
3680 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
3681
3682 <blockquote><pre>
3683 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
3684 </pre></blockquote>
3685
3686 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
3687 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
3688 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
3689 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
3690 question.</p>
3691
3692 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
3693 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
3694
3695 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
3696 try running this command on the command line:</p>
3697
3698 <blockquote><pre>
3699 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
3700 </pre></blockquote>
3701
3702 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
3703 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
3704 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
3705
3706       </div>
3707       <div class="tags">
3708
3709
3710         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>.
3711
3712
3713       </div>
3714     </div>
3715     <div class="padding"></div>
3716
3717     <div class="entry">
3718       <div class="title">
3719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
3720       </div>
3721       <div class="date">
3722         30th November 2015
3723       </div>
3724       <div class="body">
3725         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
3726 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
3727 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
3728 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
3729 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
3730
3731 <blockquote>
3732
3733 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
3734
3735 <blockquote>
3736 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
3737
3738 The first step is to choose a
3739 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
3740 code.<br/>
3741
3742 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
3743 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
3744
3745 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
3746 work<br/>
3747
3748 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
3749 </blockquote>
3750
3751 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
3752 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
3753 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
3754 0x57</a></small></p>
3755
3756 <p>As the Debian Website
3757 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
3758 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
3759 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
3760 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
3761 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
3762 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
3763 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
3764 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
3765 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
3766 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
3767 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
3768 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
3769 Freedom">FaiF</a>
3770 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
3771 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
3772 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
3773 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
3774 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
3775 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
3776 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
3777 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
3778 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
3779 In March the SFC supported a
3780 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
3781 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
3782 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
3783 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
3784 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
3785 conferences
3786 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
3787 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
3788 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
3789 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
3790 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
3791 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
3792 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
3793 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
3794 Software.</p>
3795
3796 <p>If you support Free Software,
3797 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
3798 what the SFC do, agree with their
3799 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
3800 principles</a>, are happy about their
3801 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
3802 work on a project that is an SFC
3803 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
3804 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
3805 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
3806 Allan Webber</a>,
3807 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
3808 Smith</a>,
3809 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
3810 Bacon</a>, myself and
3811 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
3812 becoming a
3813 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
3814 next week your donation will be
3815 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
3816 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
3817 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
3818 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
3819 social media accounts.</p>
3820
3821 </blockquote>
3822
3823 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
3824 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
3825 supporter too?</p>
3826
3827       </div>
3828       <div class="tags">
3829
3830
3831         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3832
3833
3834       </div>
3835     </div>
3836     <div class="padding"></div>
3837
3838     <div class="entry">
3839       <div class="title">
3840         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
3841       </div>
3842       <div class="date">
3843         17th November 2015
3844       </div>
3845       <div class="body">
3846         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
3847 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
3848 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
3849 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
3850 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
3851 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
3852 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
3853 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
3854 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
3855 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
3856
3857 <pre>
3858 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
3859       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
3860 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
3861 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
3862 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3863 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3864 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3865 </pre>
3866
3867 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
3868 my old key.</p>
3869
3870 <p>If you signed my old key
3871 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
3872 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
3873 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
3874 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
3875
3876       </div>
3877       <div class="tags">
3878
3879
3880         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>.
3881
3882
3883       </div>
3884     </div>
3885     <div class="padding"></div>
3886
3887     <div class="entry">
3888       <div class="title">
3889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
3890       </div>
3891       <div class="date">
3892         24th September 2015
3893       </div>
3894       <div class="body">
3895         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
3896 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
3897 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
3898 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
3899 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
3900 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
3901 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
3902
3903 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
3904
3905 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
3906 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
3907 by someone else.  I found
3908 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
3909 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
3910 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
3911 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
3912 from him.  Via
3913 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
3914 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
3915 discovered
3916 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
3917 available in Debian.</p>
3918
3919 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
3920 battery stats ever since. Now my
3921 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
3922 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
3923 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
3924 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
3925
3926 <pre>
3927 #!/bin/sh
3928 # Inspired by
3929 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
3930 # See also
3931 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
3932 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
3933
3934 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
3935     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
3936
3937 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
3938     (
3939         printf "timestamp,"
3940         for f in $files; do
3941             printf "%s," $f
3942         done
3943         echo
3944     ) > "$logfile"
3945 fi
3946
3947 log_battery() {
3948     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
3949     # when several log processes run in parallel.
3950     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
3951         for f in $files; do \
3952             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
3953         done)
3954     echo "$msg"
3955 }
3956
3957 cd /sys/class/power_supply
3958
3959 for bat in BAT*; do
3960     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
3961 done
3962 </pre>
3963
3964 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
3965 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
3966 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
3967 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
3968 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
3969 The code for the Debian package
3970 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
3971 available on github</a>.</p>
3972
3973 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
3974
3975 <pre>
3976 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
3977 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
3978 [...]
3979 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
3980 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
3981 </pre>
3982
3983 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
3984 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
3985 battery.</p>
3986
3987 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
3988 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
3989 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
3990 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
3991 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
3992 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
3993 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
3994 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
3995 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
3996 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
3997 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
3998 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
3999 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
4000 Linux too.</p>
4001
4002 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
4003 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
4004 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
4005 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
4006 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
4007 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
4008 load).</p>
4009
4010 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
4011 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
4012 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
4013 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
4014 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
4015 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
4016 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
4017 those.</p>
4018
4019 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
4020 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
4021 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
4022 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
4023 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
4024 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
4025 specific.</p>
4026
4027       </div>
4028       <div class="tags">
4029
4030
4031         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>.
4032
4033
4034       </div>
4035     </div>
4036     <div class="padding"></div>
4037
4038     <div class="entry">
4039       <div class="title">
4040         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
4041       </div>
4042       <div class="date">
4043          5th July 2015
4044       </div>
4045       <div class="body">
4046         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
4047 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
4048 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
4049 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
4050 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
4051 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
4052 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
4053 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
4054 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
4055 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
4056 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
4057
4058 <p>One tip I got was to use the
4059 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
4060 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
4061 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
4062 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
4063 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
4064 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
4065
4066 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
4067 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
4068 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
4069 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
4070 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
4071 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
4072 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
4073 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
4074 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
4075 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
4076 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
4077 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
4078 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
4079 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
4080 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
4081
4082 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
4083 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
4084 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
4085 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
4086
4087 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
4088 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
4089
4090 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
4091 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
4092 different
4093 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
4094 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
4095
4096       </div>
4097       <div class="tags">
4098
4099
4100         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>.
4101
4102
4103       </div>
4104     </div>
4105     <div class="padding"></div>
4106
4107     <div class="entry">
4108       <div class="title">
4109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
4110       </div>
4111       <div class="date">
4112          3rd July 2015
4113       </div>
4114       <div class="body">
4115         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
4116 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
4117 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
4118 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
4119 flickering.</p>
4120
4121 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
4122 still as
4123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
4124 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
4125 good help from
4126 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
4127 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
4128 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
4129 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
4130 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
4131 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
4132 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
4133 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
4134 deteriorated since X41.</p>
4135
4136 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
4137 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
4138 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
4139 have suggestions.</p>
4140
4141 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
4142 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
4143 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
4144
4145       </div>
4146       <div class="tags">
4147
4148
4149         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>.
4150
4151
4152       </div>
4153     </div>
4154     <div class="padding"></div>
4155
4156     <div class="entry">
4157       <div class="title">
4158         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
4159       </div>
4160       <div class="date">
4161         22nd November 2014
4162       </div>
4163       <div class="body">
4164         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
4165 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
4166 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
4167 courtesy of
4168 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
4169 Schubert</a> and
4170 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
4171 McVittie</a>.
4172
4173 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
4174 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
4175 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
4176 you upgrade:</p>
4177
4178 <p><blockquote><pre>
4179 Package: systemd-sysv
4180 Pin: release o=Debian
4181 Pin-Priority: -1
4182 </pre></blockquote><p>
4183
4184 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
4185 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
4186 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
4187 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
4188 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
4189
4190 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
4191 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
4192 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
4193 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
4194 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
4195 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
4196
4197 <p><blockquote><pre>
4198 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
4199 </pre></blockquote><p>
4200
4201 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
4202
4203 <p><blockquote><pre>
4204 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
4205 </pre></blockquote><p>
4206
4207 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
4208 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
4209
4210 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
4211 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
4212 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
4213 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
4214 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
4215 Jessie is released.</p>
4216
4217 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
4218 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
4219 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
4220 line.</p>
4221
4222       </div>
4223       <div class="tags">
4224
4225
4226         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>.
4227
4228
4229       </div>
4230     </div>
4231     <div class="padding"></div>
4232
4233     <div class="entry">
4234       <div class="title">
4235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
4236       </div>
4237       <div class="date">
4238         10th November 2014
4239       </div>
4240       <div class="body">
4241         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
4242 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
4243 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
4244
4245 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
4246 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
4247 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
4248 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
4249 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
4250 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
4251 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
4252 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
4253 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
4254 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
4255 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
4256 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
4257 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
4258 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
4259 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
4260
4261 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
4262 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
4263 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
4264 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
4265 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
4266 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
4267 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
4268 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
4269 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
4270 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
4271 were fairly easy, and
4272 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
4273 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
4274 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
4275 useful approach.</p>
4276
4277 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
4278 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
4279 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
4280 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
4281 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
4282 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
4283 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
4284 this:</p>
4285
4286 <p><blockquote><pre>
4287 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
4288   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
4289 </pre></blockquote></p>
4290
4291 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
4292 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
4293
4294 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
4295 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
4296 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
4297 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
4298 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
4299 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
4300 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
4301 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
4302 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
4303 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
4304 system.</p>
4305
4306 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
4307 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
4308 SMTorP. :)</p>
4309
4310       </div>
4311       <div class="tags">
4312
4313
4314         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4315
4316
4317       </div>
4318     </div>
4319     <div class="padding"></div>
4320
4321     <div class="entry">
4322       <div class="title">
4323         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
4324       </div>
4325       <div class="date">
4326         22nd October 2014
4327       </div>
4328       <div class="body">
4329         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
4330 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
4331 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
4332 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
4333 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
4334 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
4335 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
4336 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
4337 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
4338 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
4339 lists I recently took over:</p>
4340
4341 <p><blockquote><pre>
4342 % time listadmin xiph
4343 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
4344 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
4345
4346 real    0m1.709s
4347 user    0m0.232s
4348 sys     0m0.012s
4349 %
4350 </pre></blockquote></p>
4351
4352 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
4353 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
4354 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
4355 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
4356 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
4357 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
4358 program.</p>
4359
4360 <p>If you install
4361 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
4362 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
4363 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
4364
4365 <p><blockquote><pre>
4366 username username@example.org
4367 spamlevel 23
4368 default discard
4369 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
4370
4371 password secret
4372 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
4373 mailman-list@lists.example.com
4374
4375 password hidden
4376 other-list@otherserver.example.org
4377 </pre></blockquote></p>
4378
4379 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
4380 learn the details.</p>
4381
4382 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
4383 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
4384 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
4385 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
4386
4387 <p><blockquote><pre>
4388 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
4389 </pre></blockquote></p>
4390
4391 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
4392 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
4393 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
4394 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
4395 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
4396 email.</p>
4397
4398 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
4399 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
4400 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
4401 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
4402 software.</p>
4403
4404 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4405 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4406 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4407
4408 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
4409 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
4410 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
4411 sure why.</p>
4412
4413       </div>
4414       <div class="tags">
4415
4416
4417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4418
4419
4420       </div>
4421     </div>
4422     <div class="padding"></div>
4423
4424     <div class="entry">
4425       <div class="title">
4426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
4427       </div>
4428       <div class="date">
4429         17th October 2014
4430       </div>
4431       <div class="body">
4432         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
4433 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
4434 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
4435 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
4436 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
4437 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
4438 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
4439
4440 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
4441 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
4442 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
4443 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
4444 of this story.)</p>
4445
4446 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
4447 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
4448 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
4449 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
4450 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
4451 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
4452 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
4453 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
4454 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
4455 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
4456
4457 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
4458 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
4459 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
4460 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
4461
4462 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
4463 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
4464
4465 <p><blockquote><pre>
4466 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
4467 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
4468 </pre></blockquote></p>
4469
4470 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
4471 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
4472 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
4473 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
4474 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
4475 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
4476 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
4477 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
4478
4479 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
4480 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
4481
4482 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
4483 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
4484 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
4485 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
4486 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
4487
4488 <p><blockquote><pre>
4489 Task: isenkram-packages
4490 Section: hardware
4491 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4492  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
4493  proposed.
4494 Test-new-install: show show
4495 Relevance: 8
4496 Packages: for-current-hardware
4497
4498 Task: isenkram-firmware
4499 Section: hardware
4500 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4501  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
4502  packages are proposed.
4503 Test-new-install: mark show
4504 Relevance: 8
4505 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
4506 </pre></blockquote></p>
4507
4508 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
4509 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
4510 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
4511 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
4512 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
4513
4514 <p><blockquote><pre>
4515 #!/bin/sh
4516 #
4517 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
4518 export PATH
4519 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4520 </pre></blockquote></p>
4521
4522 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
4523 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
4524
4525 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
4526 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
4527 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
4528 install.</p>
4529
4530 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
4531 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
4532 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
4533
4534       </div>
4535       <div class="tags">
4536
4537
4538         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
4539
4540
4541       </div>
4542     </div>
4543     <div class="padding"></div>
4544
4545     <div class="entry">
4546       <div class="title">
4547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
4548       </div>
4549       <div class="date">
4550          4th October 2014
4551       </div>
4552       <div class="body">
4553         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
4554 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
4555 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
4556 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
4557
4558 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
4559
4560 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
4561 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
4562 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
4563
4564       </div>
4565       <div class="tags">
4566
4567
4568         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>.
4569
4570
4571       </div>
4572     </div>
4573     <div class="padding"></div>
4574
4575     <div class="entry">
4576       <div class="title">
4577         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
4578       </div>
4579       <div class="date">
4580          4th October 2014
4581       </div>
4582       <div class="body">
4583         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
4584 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
4585 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
4586 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
4587 Dibb.</p>
4588
4589 <p>I just wrapped up
4590 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
4591 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
4592 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
4593 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
4594 0.17.</p>
4595
4596 <ul>
4597
4598  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
4599  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
4600    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
4601  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
4602  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
4603  <li>Fix include orders</li>
4604  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
4605  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
4606  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
4607    the palette size is the same.</li>
4608  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
4609  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
4610  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
4611  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
4612    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
4613
4614 </ul>
4615
4616 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
4617 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
4618 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
4619
4620       </div>
4621       <div class="tags">
4622
4623
4624         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
4625
4626
4627       </div>
4628     </div>
4629     <div class="padding"></div>
4630
4631     <div class="entry">
4632       <div class="title">
4633         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
4634       </div>
4635       <div class="date">
4636         26th September 2014
4637       </div>
4638       <div class="body">
4639         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4640 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
4641 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
4642 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
4643 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
4644 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
4645 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
4646 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
4647 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
4648 future.  The
4649 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
4650 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
4651 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
4652 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
4653 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
4654
4655 <p>First, download the test ISO via
4656 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
4657 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
4658 or rsync (use
4659 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
4660 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
4661 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
4662 install with some tweaking.</p>
4663
4664 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
4665 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
4666
4667 <p><blockquote><pre>
4668 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
4669 </pre></blockquote></p>
4670
4671 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
4672 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
4673 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
4674 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
4675
4676 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
4677 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
4678 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
4679 your need.</p>
4680
4681 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
4682 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
4683 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
4684 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
4685 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
4686 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
4687 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
4688 days.</p>
4689
4690 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
4691 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
4692 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
4693 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
4694 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
4695 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
4696 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
4697 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
4698 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
4699
4700 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
4701 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
4702 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
4703
4704       </div>
4705       <div class="tags">
4706
4707
4708         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>.
4709
4710
4711       </div>
4712     </div>
4713     <div class="padding"></div>
4714
4715     <div class="entry">
4716       <div class="title">
4717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
4718       </div>
4719       <div class="date">
4720         25th September 2014
4721       </div>
4722       <div class="body">
4723         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
4724 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
4725 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
4726 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
4727 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
4728 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
4729 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
4730 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
4731 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
4732 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
4733 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
4734 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
4735 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
4736
4737 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
4738 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
4739 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
4740 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
4741 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
4742 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
4743 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
4744 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
4745 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
4746 list</a>. :)</p>
4747
4748       </div>
4749       <div class="tags">
4750
4751
4752         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
4753
4754
4755       </div>
4756     </div>
4757     <div class="padding"></div>
4758
4759     <div class="entry">
4760       <div class="title">
4761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
4762       </div>
4763       <div class="date">
4764         16th September 2014
4765       </div>
4766       <div class="body">
4767         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
4768 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
4769 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
4770 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
4771 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
4772 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
4773 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
4774 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
4775 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
4776 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
4777 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
4778 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
4779 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
4780 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
4781
4782 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
4783 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
4784 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
4785 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
4786 depend on the small and clever package
4787 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
4788 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
4789 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
4790 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
4791 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
4792 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
4793 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
4794 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
4795 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
4796 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
4797 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
4798
4799 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
4800 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
4801 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
4802 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
4803 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
4804 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
4805 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
4806 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
4807 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
4808 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
4809 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
4810 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
4811 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
4812 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
4813 dialog.</p>
4814
4815 <p><table>
4816
4817 <tr>
4818 <th>Machine/setup</th>
4819 <th>Original tasksel</th>
4820 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
4821 <th>Reduction</th>
4822 </tr>
4823
4824 <tr>
4825 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
4826 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
4827 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
4828 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
4829 </tr>
4830
4831 <tr>
4832 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
4833 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
4834 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
4835 <td>23 min 40%</td>
4836 </tr>
4837
4838 <tr>
4839 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
4840 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
4841 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
4842 <td>11 min 50%</td>
4843 </tr>
4844
4845 <tr>
4846 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
4847 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
4848 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
4849 <td>2 min 33%</td>
4850 </tr>
4851
4852 <tr>
4853 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
4854 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
4855 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
4856 <td>4 min 21%</td>
4857 </tr>
4858
4859 </table></p>
4860
4861 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
4862 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
4863 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
4864 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
4865 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
4866 installed.</p>
4867
4868 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
4869 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
4870 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
4871 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
4872 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
4873 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
4874 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
4875 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
4876 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
4877 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
4878 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
4879 for the entire installation.</p>
4880
4881 <p>I've implemented this in the
4882 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
4883 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
4884 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
4885 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
4886 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
4887
4888 <p><blockquote><pre>
4889 #!/bin/sh
4890 set -e
4891 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
4892 info() {
4893     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
4894 }
4895 error() {
4896     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
4897 }
4898 override_install() {
4899     apt-install eatmydata || true
4900     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
4901         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
4902             file=/usr/bin/$bin
4903             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
4904             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
4905                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
4906                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
4907                     > /target$file.edu
4908                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
4909                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
4910                     --rename --quiet --add $file
4911                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
4912             else
4913                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
4914             fi
4915         done
4916     else
4917         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
4918     fi
4919 }
4920
4921 override_install
4922 </pre></blockquote></p>
4923
4924 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
4925 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
4926
4927 <p><blockquote><pre>
4928 #! /bin/sh -e
4929 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
4930 error() {
4931     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
4932 }
4933 remove_install_override() {
4934     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
4935         file=/usr/bin/$bin
4936         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
4937             rm /target$file
4938             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
4939                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
4940             rm /target$file.edu
4941         else
4942             error "Missing divert for $file."
4943         fi
4944     done
4945     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
4946 }
4947
4948 remove_install_override
4949 </pre></blockquote></p>
4950
4951 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
4952 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
4953 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
4954
4955 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
4956 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
4957 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
4958 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
4959 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
4960 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
4961 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
4962 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
4963 everyone.</p>
4964
4965 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
4966 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
4967 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
4968 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
4969
4970 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
4971 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
4972 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
4973 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
4974 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
4975
4976 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
4977 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
4978 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
4979 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
4980 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
4981
4982       </div>
4983       <div class="tags">
4984
4985
4986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4987
4988
4989       </div>
4990     </div>
4991     <div class="padding"></div>
4992
4993     <div class="entry">
4994       <div class="title">
4995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
4996       </div>
4997       <div class="date">
4998         10th September 2014
4999       </div>
5000       <div class="body">
5001         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
5002 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
5003 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
5004 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
5005 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
5006 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
5007 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
5008 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
5009 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
5010 those problems are gone now.</p>
5011
5012 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
5013 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
5014 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
5015 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
5016 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
5017
5018 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
5019 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
5020 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
5021
5022 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
5023 line:</p>
5024
5025 <p><blockquote><pre>
5026 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
5027 </pre></blockquote></p>
5028
5029 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
5030 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
5031 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
5032 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
5033
5034 <p><blockquote><pre>
5035 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
5036 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
5037 %
5038 </pre></blockquote></p>
5039
5040 <p>Now if only
5041 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
5042 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
5043 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
5044 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
5045 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
5046 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
5047 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
5048 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
5049 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
5050
5051       </div>
5052       <div class="tags">
5053
5054
5055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5056
5057
5058       </div>
5059     </div>
5060     <div class="padding"></div>
5061
5062     <div class="entry">
5063       <div class="title">
5064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
5065       </div>
5066       <div class="date">
5067         17th June 2014
5068       </div>
5069       <div class="body">
5070         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5071 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
5072 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
5073 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
5074 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
5075
5076 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
5077 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
5078 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
5079 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
5080 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
5081 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
5082 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
5083 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
5084 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
5085 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
5086 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
5087 goals.</p>
5088
5089 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
5090 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
5091 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
5092 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
5093 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
5094 chapters together into one large web page (aka
5095 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
5096 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
5097 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
5098 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
5099 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
5100 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
5101 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
5102 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
5103 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
5104 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
5105 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
5106 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
5107 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
5108 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
5109 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
5110 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
5111 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
5112 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
5113
5114 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
5115 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
5116 track the English original.  For this we use the
5117 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
5118 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
5119 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
5120 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
5121 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
5122 files), which the translations update with the native language
5123 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
5124 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
5125 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
5126 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
5127 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
5128 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
5129 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
5130 of the documentation.</p>
5131
5132 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
5133 recommend using
5134 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
5135 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
5136 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
5137 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
5138 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
5139 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
5140 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
5141 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
5142
5143 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
5144 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
5145 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
5146 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
5147 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
5148 translated images by storing translated versions in
5149 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
5150 package maintainers know more.</p>
5151
5152 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
5153 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
5154 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
5155 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
5156 PDF version</a> or the
5157 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
5158 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
5159 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
5160
5161 <p>To learn more, check out
5162 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
5163 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
5164 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
5165 manual on the wiki</a> and
5166 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
5167 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
5168
5169       </div>
5170       <div class="tags">
5171
5172
5173         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5174
5175
5176       </div>
5177     </div>
5178     <div class="padding"></div>
5179
5180     <div class="entry">
5181       <div class="title">
5182         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
5183       </div>
5184       <div class="date">
5185         23rd April 2014
5186       </div>
5187       <div class="body">
5188         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
5189 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
5190 So I implemented one, using
5191 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
5192 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
5193 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
5194 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
5195 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
5196 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
5197
5198 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
5199 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
5200 packages to install.  The first part is in
5201 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
5202 this:</p>
5203
5204 <p><blockquote><pre>
5205 Task: isenkram
5206 Section: hardware
5207 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
5208  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
5209  proposed.
5210 Test-new-install: mark show
5211 Relevance: 8
5212 Packages: for-current-hardware
5213 </pre></blockquote></p>
5214
5215 <p>The second part is in
5216 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
5217 this:</p>
5218
5219 <p><blockquote><pre>
5220 #!/bin/sh
5221 #
5222 (
5223     isenkram-lookup
5224     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
5225 ) | sort -u
5226 </pre></blockquote></p>
5227
5228 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
5229 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
5230 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
5231 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
5232 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
5233 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
5234
5235 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
5236 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
5237 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
5238 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
5239 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
5240 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
5241 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
5242 the python-apt code (bug
5243 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
5244 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
5245 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
5246 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
5247 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
5248 unstable today.</p>
5249
5250 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
5251 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
5252 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
5253 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
5254 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
5255 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
5256 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
5257 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
5258 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
5259
5260 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
5261 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
5262 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
5263 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
5264 package.  See also
5265 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
5266 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
5267 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
5268 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
5269
5270       </div>
5271       <div class="tags">
5272
5273
5274         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>.
5275
5276
5277       </div>
5278     </div>
5279     <div class="padding"></div>
5280
5281     <div class="entry">
5282       <div class="title">
5283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
5284       </div>
5285       <div class="date">
5286         15th April 2014
5287       </div>
5288       <div class="body">
5289         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5290 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
5291 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
5292 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
5293 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
5294 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
5295
5296 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
5297 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
5298 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
5299 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
5300 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
5301 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
5302 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
5303
5304 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
5305 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
5306 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
5307 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
5308 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
5309 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
5310 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
5311 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
5312 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
5313 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
5314 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
5315 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
5316
5317 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
5318 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
5319 become root:</p>
5320
5321 <p><pre>
5322 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
5323   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
5324   u-boot-tools
5325 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
5326   freedom-maker
5327 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
5328 </pre></p>
5329
5330 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
5331 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
5332 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
5333 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
5334 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
5335 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
5336 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
5337 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
5338
5339 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
5340 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
5341 the preseed values:</p>
5342
5343 <p><pre>
5344 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
5345 </pre></p>
5346
5347 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
5348 it still work.</p>
5349
5350 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
5351 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
5352 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
5353 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
5354 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
5355 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
5356 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
5357
5358 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
5359 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
5360 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
5361 irc.debian.org)</a> and
5362 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5363 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5364
5365       </div>
5366       <div class="tags">
5367
5368
5369         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>.
5370
5371
5372       </div>
5373     </div>
5374     <div class="padding"></div>
5375
5376     <div class="entry">
5377       <div class="title">
5378         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
5379       </div>
5380       <div class="date">
5381          9th April 2014
5382       </div>
5383       <div class="body">
5384         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
5385 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
5386 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
5387 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
5388 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
5389 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
5390 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
5391 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
5392 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
5393 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
5394 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
5395 have looked at a system called
5396 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
5397 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
5398
5399 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
5400 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
5401 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
5402 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
5403 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
5404 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
5405 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
5406 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
5407 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
5408 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
5409 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
5410 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
5411 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
5412
5413 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
5414 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
5415 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
5416 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
5417 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
5418 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
5419 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
5420 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
5421 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
5422 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
5423 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
5424 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
5425 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
5426 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
5427 account.</p>
5428
5429 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
5430 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
5431 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
5432 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
5433 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
5434 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
5435 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
5436
5437 <p><blockquote><pre>
5438 [s3c]
5439 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5440 backend-login: API-login
5441 backend-password: API-password
5442 fs-passphrase: local-password
5443 </pre></blockquote></p>
5444
5445 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
5446 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
5447 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
5448 details and password to create it:</p>
5449
5450 <p><blockquote><pre>
5451 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
5452 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5453   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5454 Enter backend login:
5455 Enter backend password:
5456 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
5457 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
5458 Enter encryption password:
5459 Confirm encryption password:
5460 Generating random encryption key...
5461 Creating metadata tables...
5462 Dumping metadata...
5463 ..objects..
5464 ..blocks..
5465 ..inodes..
5466 ..inode_blocks..
5467 ..symlink_targets..
5468 ..names..
5469 ..contents..
5470 ..ext_attributes..
5471 Compressing and uploading metadata...
5472 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
5473 # </pre></blockquote></p>
5474
5475 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
5476
5477 <p><blockquote><pre>
5478 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5479   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
5480 Using 4 upload threads.
5481 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
5482 Reading metadata...
5483 ..objects..
5484 ..blocks..
5485 ..inodes..
5486 ..inode_blocks..
5487 ..symlink_targets..
5488 ..names..
5489 ..contents..
5490 ..ext_attributes..
5491 Mounting filesystem...
5492 # df -h /s3ql
5493 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
5494 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
5495 #
5496 </pre></blockquote></p>
5497
5498 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
5499 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
5500 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
5501 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
5502 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
5503 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
5504
5505 <p><blockquote><pre>
5506 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
5507 #
5508 </pre></blockquote></p>
5509
5510 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
5511 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
5512 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
5513 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
5514 file system:</p>
5515
5516 <p><blockquote><pre>
5517 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5518 Using cached metadata.
5519 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
5520 Checking DB integrity...
5521 Creating temporary extra indices...
5522 Checking lost+found...
5523 Checking cached objects...
5524 Checking names (refcounts)...
5525 Checking contents (names)...
5526 Checking contents (inodes)...
5527 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
5528 Checking objects (reference counts)...
5529 Checking objects (backend)...
5530 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
5531 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
5532 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
5533 Checking objects (sizes)...
5534 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
5535 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
5536 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
5537 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
5538 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
5539 Checking inodes (sizes)...
5540 Checking extended attributes (names)...
5541 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
5542 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
5543 Checking directory reachability...
5544 Checking unix conventions...
5545 Checking referential integrity...
5546 Dropping temporary indices...
5547 Backing up old metadata...
5548 Dumping metadata...
5549 ..objects..
5550 ..blocks..
5551 ..inodes..
5552 ..inode_blocks..
5553 ..symlink_targets..
5554 ..names..
5555 ..contents..
5556 ..ext_attributes..
5557 Compressing and uploading metadata...
5558 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
5559 #
5560 </pre></blockquote></p>
5561
5562 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
5563 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
5564 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
5565 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
5566 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
5567 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
5568 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
5569 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
5570 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
5571 working set.</p>
5572
5573 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
5574 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
5575 busy:</p>
5576
5577 <p><blockquote><pre>
5578 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5579   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
5580 Using 8 upload threads.
5581 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
5582 #
5583 </pre></blockquote></p>
5584
5585 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
5586 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
5587 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
5588 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
5589 s3qlctrl:
5590
5591 <p><blockquote><pre>
5592 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
5593 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
5594 #
5595 </pre></blockquote></p>
5596
5597 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
5598 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
5599 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
5600 a report:</p>
5601
5602 <p><blockquote><pre>
5603 # s3qlstat /s3ql
5604 Directory entries:    9141
5605 Inodes:               9143
5606 Data blocks:          8851
5607 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
5608 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
5609 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
5610 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
5611 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
5612 #
5613 </pre></blockquote></p>
5614
5615 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
5616 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
5617 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
5618 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
5619 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
5620 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
5621 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
5622 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
5623 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
5624 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
5625 best.</p>
5626
5627 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
5628 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
5629 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
5630 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
5631 poster is titled
5632 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
5633 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
5634 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
5635 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
5636 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
5637
5638 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
5639 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
5640 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
5641 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
5642 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
5643 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
5644 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
5645 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
5646
5647 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
5648 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
5649 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
5650 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
5651 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
5652 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
5653 only read from it.</p>
5654
5655 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5656 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5657 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5658
5659       </div>
5660       <div class="tags">
5661
5662
5663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5664
5665
5666       </div>
5667     </div>
5668     <div class="padding"></div>
5669
5670     <div class="entry">
5671       <div class="title">
5672         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
5673       </div>
5674       <div class="date">
5675         14th March 2014
5676       </div>
5677       <div class="body">
5678         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5679 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
5680 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
5681 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
5682 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
5683 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
5684 release (0.2).</p>
5685
5686 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
5687 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
5688 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
5689 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
5690 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
5691 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
5692 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
5693 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
5694 and build using
5695 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
5696 with a user with sudo access to become root:
5697
5698 <pre>
5699 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
5700   freedom-maker
5701 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
5702   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
5703   u-boot-tools
5704 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
5705 </pre>
5706
5707 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
5708 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
5709 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
5710 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
5711 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
5712 kpartx call.</p>
5713
5714 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
5715 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
5716 the preseed values:</p>
5717
5718 <pre>
5719 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
5720 </pre>
5721
5722 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
5723 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
5724 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
5725 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
5726 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
5727 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
5728
5729 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
5730 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
5731 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
5732 irc.debian.org)</a> and
5733 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5734 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5735
5736       </div>
5737       <div class="tags">
5738
5739
5740         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>.
5741
5742
5743       </div>
5744     </div>
5745     <div class="padding"></div>
5746
5747     <div class="entry">
5748       <div class="title">
5749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
5750       </div>
5751       <div class="date">
5752         22nd February 2014
5753       </div>
5754       <div class="body">
5755         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
5756 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
5757 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
5758 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
5759 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
5760 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
5761 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
5762 proper home since then.</p>
5763
5764 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
5765 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
5766 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
5767 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
5768 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
5769
5770 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
5771 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
5772 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
5773 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
5774 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
5775 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
5776 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
5777 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
5778 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
5779
5780       </div>
5781       <div class="tags">
5782
5783
5784         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>.
5785
5786
5787       </div>
5788     </div>
5789     <div class="padding"></div>
5790
5791     <div class="entry">
5792       <div class="title">
5793         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
5794       </div>
5795       <div class="date">
5796          3rd February 2014
5797       </div>
5798       <div class="body">
5799         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
5800 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
5801 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
5802 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
5803 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
5804 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
5805 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
5806 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
5807 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
5808
5809 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
5810 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
5811 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
5812 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
5813 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
5814 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
5815
5816 <p><blockquote><pre>
5817 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
5818 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
5819 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
5820 dhclient /dev/eth0
5821 </pre></blockquote></p>
5822
5823 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
5824 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
5825 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
5826
5827 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
5828 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
5829 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
5830 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
5831 side.</p>
5832
5833 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
5834 stuff:</p>
5835
5836 <p><blockquote><pre>
5837 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
5838 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
5839 EOF
5840 apt-get update
5841 apt-get dist-upgrade
5842 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
5843     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
5844 update-alternatives --config runsystem
5845 </pre></blockquote></p>
5846
5847 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
5848 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
5849 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
5850 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
5851 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
5852 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
5853 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
5854 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
5855 ssh instead.
5856
5857 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
5858 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
5859 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
5860 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
5861 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
5862 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
5863
5864 <p><blockquote><pre>
5865 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
5866 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
5867 EOF
5868 </pre></blockquote></p>
5869
5870 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
5871 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
5872 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
5873 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
5874
5875 <p><blockquote><pre>
5876 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
5877 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
5878 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
5879 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
5880 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
5881 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
5882 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
5883 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
5884 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
5885 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
5886 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
5887 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
5888 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
5889 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
5890 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
5891 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
5892 #
5893 </pre></blockquote></p>
5894
5895 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
5896 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
5897 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
5898 command line stuff.<p>
5899
5900       </div>
5901       <div class="tags">
5902
5903
5904         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>.
5905
5906
5907       </div>
5908     </div>
5909     <div class="padding"></div>
5910
5911     <div class="entry">
5912       <div class="title">
5913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
5914       </div>
5915       <div class="date">
5916         14th January 2014
5917       </div>
5918       <div class="body">
5919         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
5920 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5921 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5922 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5923 the source.  The company behind it provide
5924 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5925 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5926 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
5927 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
5928 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
5929 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
5930 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
5931 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
5932 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
5933 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
5934 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
5935 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
5936 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
5937 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
5938 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
5939 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
5940 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
5941 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
5942 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
5943
5944 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
5945
5946 <ul>
5947
5948   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
5949   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
5950   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
5951
5952 </ul>
5953
5954 <p>You can
5955 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5956 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5957 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5958 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5959 include a test suite check.</p>
5960
5961       </div>
5962       <div class="tags">
5963
5964
5965         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5966
5967
5968       </div>
5969     </div>
5970     <div class="padding"></div>
5971
5972     <div class="entry">
5973       <div class="title">
5974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
5975       </div>
5976       <div class="date">
5977         24th November 2013
5978       </div>
5979       <div class="body">
5980         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
5981 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
5982 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
5983 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
5984 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
5985 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
5986 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
5987 is working on.  I checked the
5988 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
5989 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
5990 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
5991 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
5992 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
5993 These are the release notes:</p>
5994
5995 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
5996
5997 <ul>
5998
5999   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
6000    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
6001    up.</li>
6002
6003   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
6004
6005   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
6006    Matthias Klose.</li>
6007
6008   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
6009    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
6010
6011   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
6012    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
6013    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
6014
6015 </ul>
6016
6017 <p>You can
6018 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6019 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6020 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6021 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6022 include a testsuite check.</p>
6023
6024       </div>
6025       <div class="tags">
6026
6027
6028         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6029
6030
6031       </div>
6032     </div>
6033     <div class="padding"></div>
6034
6035     <div class="entry">
6036       <div class="title">
6037         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
6038       </div>
6039       <div class="date">
6040          2nd November 2013
6041       </div>
6042       <div class="body">
6043         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
6044 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
6045 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
6046 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
6047 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
6048
6049 <p><pre>
6050 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
6051 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
6052 # Provides:          rsyslog
6053 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
6054 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
6055 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
6056 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
6057 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
6058 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
6059 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
6060 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
6061 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
6062 ### END INIT INFO
6063 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
6064 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
6065 </pre></p>
6066
6067 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
6068 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
6069 info/comments.</p>
6070
6071 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
6072 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
6073
6074 <p><pre>
6075 #!/bin/sh
6076
6077 # Define LSB log_* functions.
6078 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
6079 # and status_of_proc is working.
6080 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
6081
6082 #
6083 # Function that starts the daemon/service
6084
6085 #
6086 do_start()
6087 {
6088         # Return
6089         #   0 if daemon has been started
6090         #   1 if daemon was already running
6091         #   2 if daemon could not be started
6092         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
6093                 || return 1
6094         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
6095                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
6096                 || return 2
6097         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
6098         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
6099         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
6100 }
6101
6102 #
6103 # Function that stops the daemon/service
6104 #
6105 do_stop()
6106 {
6107         # Return
6108         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
6109         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
6110         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
6111         #   other if a failure occurred
6112         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6113         RETVAL="$?"
6114         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
6115         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
6116         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
6117         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
6118         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
6119         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
6120         # sleep for some time.
6121         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
6122         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
6123         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
6124         rm -f $PIDFILE
6125         return "$RETVAL"
6126 }
6127
6128 #
6129 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
6130 #
6131 do_reload() {
6132         #
6133         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
6134         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
6135         # then implement that here.
6136         #
6137         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6138         return 0
6139 }
6140
6141 SCRIPTNAME=$1
6142 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
6143 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
6144 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
6145     script="$1"
6146     shift
6147     . $script
6148 else
6149     exit 0
6150 fi
6151
6152 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
6153 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
6154
6155 # Exit if the package is not installed
6156 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
6157
6158 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
6159 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
6160
6161 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
6162 . /lib/init/vars.sh
6163
6164 case "$1" in
6165   start)
6166         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
6167         do_start
6168         case "$?" in
6169                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6170                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6171         esac
6172         ;;
6173   stop)
6174         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
6175         do_stop
6176         case "$?" in
6177                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6178                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6179         esac
6180         ;;
6181   status)
6182         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
6183         ;;
6184   #reload|force-reload)
6185         #
6186         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
6187         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
6188         #
6189         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
6190         #do_reload
6191         #log_end_msg $?
6192         #;;
6193   restart|force-reload)
6194         #
6195         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
6196         # 'force-reload' alias
6197         #
6198         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
6199         do_stop
6200         case "$?" in
6201           0|1)
6202                 do_start
6203                 case "$?" in
6204                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
6205                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
6206                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
6207                 esac
6208                 ;;
6209           *)
6210                 # Failed to stop
6211                 log_end_msg 1
6212                 ;;
6213         esac
6214         ;;
6215   *)
6216         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
6217         exit 3
6218         ;;
6219 esac
6220
6221 :
6222 </pre></p>
6223
6224 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
6225 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
6226 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
6227 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
6228
6229 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
6230 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
6231 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
6232 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
6233 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
6234
6235       </div>
6236       <div class="tags">
6237
6238
6239         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>.
6240
6241
6242       </div>
6243     </div>
6244     <div class="padding"></div>
6245
6246     <div class="entry">
6247       <div class="title">
6248         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
6249       </div>
6250       <div class="date">
6251          1st November 2013
6252       </div>
6253       <div class="body">
6254         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
6255 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
6256 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
6257 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
6258 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
6259 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
6260 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
6261 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
6262 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
6263 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6264 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6265 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6266
6267 <p>The source is now available from
6268 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
6269
6270       </div>
6271       <div class="tags">
6272
6273
6274         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>.
6275
6276
6277       </div>
6278     </div>
6279     <div class="padding"></div>
6280
6281     <div class="entry">
6282       <div class="title">
6283         <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>
6284       </div>
6285       <div class="date">
6286         27th October 2013
6287       </div>
6288       <div class="body">
6289         <p>The
6290 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6291 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6292 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6293 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6294 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6295 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6296 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6297 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6298 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6299 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6300 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6301 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6302
6303 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6304 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6305 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6306 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6307 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6308 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6309 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6310 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6311 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6312 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6313 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6314 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6315 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6316 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6317 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6318 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6319 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6320 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6321 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6322 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6323 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6324 available from
6325 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6326 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6327
6328 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6329 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6330 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6331 list:</p>
6332
6333 <p><pre>
6334 #!/bin/sh
6335 set -e # Exit on first error
6336 rootdir="$1"
6337 cd "$rootdir"
6338 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6339 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6340 EOF
6341 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6342 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6343 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6344     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6345 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6346 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6347 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6348 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6349 </pre></p>
6350
6351 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6352 to build the image:</p>
6353
6354 <pre>
6355 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6356     --variant minbase \
6357     --arch armel \
6358     --distribution jessie \
6359     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6360     --image test.img \
6361     --size 600M \
6362     --bootsize 64M \
6363     --boottype vfat \
6364     --log-level debug \
6365     --verbose \
6366     --no-kernel \
6367     --no-extlinux \
6368     --root-password raspberry \
6369     --hostname raspberrypi \
6370     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6371     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6372     --package netbase \
6373     --package git-core \
6374     --package binutils \
6375     --package ca-certificates \
6376     --package wget \
6377     --package kmod
6378 </pre></p>
6379
6380 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6381 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6382 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6383 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6384 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6385 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6386 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6387
6388 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6389 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6390 build dependency list.</p>
6391
6392 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6393 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6394 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6395 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6396
6397       </div>
6398       <div class="tags">
6399
6400
6401         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>.
6402
6403
6404       </div>
6405     </div>
6406     <div class="padding"></div>
6407
6408     <div class="entry">
6409       <div class="title">
6410         <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>
6411       </div>
6412       <div class="date">
6413         15th October 2013
6414       </div>
6415       <div class="body">
6416         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6417 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6418 these. :)</p>
6419
6420 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6421 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6422 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6423 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6424 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6425 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6426 hope you will to. :)</p>
6427
6428 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6429 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6430 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6431 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6432 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6433
6434 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6435 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6436 statement under the heading
6437 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6438 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6439 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6440 too.</p>
6441
6442       </div>
6443       <div class="tags">
6444
6445
6446         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>.
6447
6448
6449       </div>
6450     </div>
6451     <div class="padding"></div>
6452
6453     <div class="entry">
6454       <div class="title">
6455         <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>
6456       </div>
6457       <div class="date">
6458         27th September 2013
6459       </div>
6460       <div class="body">
6461         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6462 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6463 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6464 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6465
6466 <ul>
6467
6468 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6469 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6470
6471 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6472 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6473
6474 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6475 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6476 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6477 (Youtube)</li>
6478
6479 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6480 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6481
6482 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6483 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6484
6485 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6486 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6487 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6488
6489 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6490 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6491 (Youtube)</li>
6492
6493 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6494 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6495
6496 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6497 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6498
6499 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6500 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6501 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6502
6503 </ul>
6504
6505 <p>A larger list is available from
6506 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6507 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6508
6509 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6510 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6511 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6512 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6513 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6514 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6515 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6516 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6517 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6518 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6519 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6520
6521       </div>
6522       <div class="tags">
6523
6524
6525         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>.
6526
6527
6528       </div>
6529     </div>
6530     <div class="padding"></div>
6531
6532     <div class="entry">
6533       <div class="title">
6534         <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>
6535       </div>
6536       <div class="date">
6537         10th September 2013
6538       </div>
6539       <div class="body">
6540         <p>I was introduced to the
6541 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6542 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6543 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6544 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6545 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6546 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6547 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6548 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6549
6550 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6551 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6552 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6553 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6554 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6555
6556 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6557 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6558 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6559 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6560 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6561 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6562 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6563 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6564 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6565 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6566 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6567 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6568 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6569 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6570 missing in Debian).</p>
6571
6572 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6573 scripts
6574 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6575 and a administrative web interface
6576 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6577 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6578 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6579 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6580 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6581 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6582 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6583 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6584 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6585 this is really working yet, see
6586 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6587 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6588 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6589 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6590 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6591 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6592 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6593
6594 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6595 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6596 at.</p>
6597
6598 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6599
6600 <ol>
6601
6602 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6603 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6604 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6605 to the Debian installer:<p>
6606 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6607
6608 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6609 install on.</li>
6610
6611 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
6612 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
6613
6614 </ol>
6615
6616 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
6617
6618 <ol>
6619
6620 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
6621 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
6622 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
6623 <pre>
6624 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
6625 </pre></li>
6626 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
6627 <pre>
6628 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
6629    apt-key add -
6630 apt-get update
6631 apt-get install freedombox-setup
6632 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
6633 </pre></li>
6634 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
6635
6636 </ol>
6637
6638 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
6639 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
6640 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
6641 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
6642 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
6643
6644 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
6645 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
6646 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
6647 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
6648
6649 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
6650 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
6651 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
6652 irc.debian.org and the
6653 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
6654 mailing list</a>.</p>
6655
6656 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
6657 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
6658 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
6659 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
6660 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
6661 default password is 'secret'.</p>
6662
6663       </div>
6664       <div class="tags">
6665
6666
6667         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>.
6668
6669
6670       </div>
6671     </div>
6672     <div class="padding"></div>
6673
6674     <div class="entry">
6675       <div class="title">
6676         <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>
6677       </div>
6678       <div class="date">
6679         18th August 2013
6680       </div>
6681       <div class="body">
6682         <p>Earlier, I reported about
6683 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
6684 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
6685 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
6686 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
6687 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
6688 currently on the disk.</p>
6689
6690 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
6691 <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>
6692 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
6693 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
6694 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
6695 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
6696 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
6697 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
6698 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
6699 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
6700 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
6701 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
6702 the broken disks.</p>
6703
6704       </div>
6705       <div class="tags">
6706
6707
6708         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>.
6709
6710
6711       </div>
6712     </div>
6713     <div class="padding"></div>
6714
6715     <div class="entry">
6716       <div class="title">
6717         <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>
6718       </div>
6719       <div class="date">
6720         17th July 2013
6721       </div>
6722       <div class="body">
6723         <p>Today I switched to
6724 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
6725 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
6726 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
6727 <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
6728 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
6729 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
6730 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
6731 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
6732 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
6733 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
6734 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
6735 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
6736 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
6737 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
6738 station from now on.</p>
6739
6740 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
6741 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
6742 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
6743 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
6744 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
6745 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
6746 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
6747 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
6748 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
6749 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
6750 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
6751 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
6752
6753 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
6754 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
6755 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
6756 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
6757 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
6758 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
6759 parameters are tuned:</p>
6760
6761 <ul>
6762
6763 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
6764     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
6765
6766 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
6767     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
6768     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
6769
6770 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
6771     systems.</li>
6772
6773 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
6774     /etc/fstab.</li>
6775
6776 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
6777
6778 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
6779     cron.daily).</li>
6780
6781 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
6782     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
6783
6784 </ul>
6785
6786 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
6787 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
6788 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
6789 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
6790 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
6791 from getting the data on the disk (see
6792 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
6793 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
6794 right thing to do.</p>
6795
6796 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
6797 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
6798 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
6799
6800 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
6801 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
6802 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
6803 instead of during my work.</p>
6804
6805 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
6806 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
6807
6808 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
6809 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
6810 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
6811
6812 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
6813 there.</p>
6814
6815 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
6816 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
6817 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
6818 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
6819 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
6820 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
6821 back.</p>
6822
6823       </div>
6824       <div class="tags">
6825
6826
6827         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>.
6828
6829
6830       </div>
6831     </div>
6832     <div class="padding"></div>
6833
6834     <div class="entry">
6835       <div class="title">
6836         <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>
6837       </div>
6838       <div class="date">
6839         10th July 2013
6840       </div>
6841       <div class="body">
6842         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
6843 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
6844 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
6845 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
6846 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
6847 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
6848 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
6849 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
6850
6851 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
6852 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
6853 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
6854 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
6855 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
6856 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
6857 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
6858 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
6859 lock up when I download a new
6860 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
6861 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
6862 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
6863
6864 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6865 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
6866 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6867 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
6868 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6869 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6870
6871 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6872 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
6873 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6874 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
6875 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6876 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6877
6878 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
6879 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
6880 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
6881 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
6882 exist).</p>
6883
6884       </div>
6885       <div class="tags">
6886
6887
6888         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>.
6889
6890
6891       </div>
6892     </div>
6893     <div class="padding"></div>
6894
6895     <div class="entry">
6896       <div class="title">
6897         <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>
6898       </div>
6899       <div class="date">
6900          9th July 2013
6901       </div>
6902       <div class="body">
6903         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
6904 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
6905 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
6906 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
6907 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6908 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
6909 Bitraf</a>.</p>
6910
6911 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
6912 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
6913 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
6914 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
6915 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
6916
6917       </div>
6918       <div class="tags">
6919
6920
6921         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>.
6922
6923
6924       </div>
6925     </div>
6926     <div class="padding"></div>
6927
6928     <div class="entry">
6929       <div class="title">
6930         <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>
6931       </div>
6932       <div class="date">
6933          5th July 2013
6934       </div>
6935       <div class="body">
6936         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
6937 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
6938 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
6939 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
6940 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
6941 ended up picking a
6942 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
6943 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
6944 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
6945 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
6946 on that below.</p>
6947
6948 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
6949 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
6950 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
6951 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
6952 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
6953 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
6954 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
6955 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
6956 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
6957
6958 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
6959 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
6960 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
6961 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
6962 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
6963 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
6964 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
6965
6966 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
6967 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
6968
6969 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
6970 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
6971 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
6972 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
6973 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
6974 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
6975 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
6976 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
6977 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
6978 kernel developers as
6979 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
6980 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
6981 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
6982 Lenovo forums, both for
6983 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
6984 2012-11-10</a> and for
6985 <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
6986 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
6987 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
6988 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
6989 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
6990 There is even a
6991 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
6992 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
6993 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
6994
6995 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
6996 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
6997 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
6998 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
6999 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7000 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7001 fixed. :)</p>
7002
7003       </div>
7004       <div class="tags">
7005
7006
7007         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>.
7008
7009
7010       </div>
7011     </div>
7012     <div class="padding"></div>
7013
7014     <div class="entry">
7015       <div class="title">
7016         <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>
7017       </div>
7018       <div class="date">
7019          4th July 2013
7020       </div>
7021       <div class="body">
7022         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7023 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7024 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7025 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7026 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7027 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7028 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7029 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7030 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7031
7032 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7033 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7034 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7035 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7036 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7037 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7038 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7039
7040 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7041 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7042 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7043 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7044 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7045 new laptop now. :)</p>
7046
7047 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7048
7049       </div>
7050       <div class="tags">
7051
7052
7053         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>.
7054
7055
7056       </div>
7057     </div>
7058     <div class="padding"></div>
7059
7060     <div class="entry">
7061       <div class="title">
7062         <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>
7063       </div>
7064       <div class="date">
7065         25th June 2013
7066       </div>
7067       <div class="body">
7068         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7069 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7070 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7071 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7072 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7073 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7074 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7075 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7076 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7077 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7078 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7079
7080 <p><pre>
7081 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7082 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7083 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7084 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7085 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7086 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7087 firmware-ipw2x00
7088 firmware-ipw2x00
7089 Preconfiguring packages ...
7090 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7091 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7092 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7093 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7094 #
7095 </pre></p>
7096
7097 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7098 printed instead:</p>
7099
7100 <p><pre>
7101 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7102 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7103 #
7104 </pre></p>
7105
7106 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7107 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7108
7109 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7110 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7111 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7112 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7113 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7114 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7115 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7116 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7117 machine.</p>
7118
7119 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7120 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7121 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7122 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7123 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7124 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7125
7126       </div>
7127       <div class="tags">
7128
7129
7130         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>.
7131
7132
7133       </div>
7134     </div>
7135     <div class="padding"></div>
7136
7137     <div class="entry">
7138       <div class="title">
7139         <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>
7140       </div>
7141       <div class="date">
7142         11th June 2013
7143       </div>
7144       <div class="body">
7145         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
7146 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
7147 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
7148 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
7149 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
7150 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
7151 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
7152 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
7153 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
7154 i915 driver used by the
7155 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7156 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
7157
7158 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
7159 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
7160 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
7161 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
7162 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
7163
7164 <pre>
7165 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
7166 update-initramfs -u -k all
7167 </pre>
7168
7169 <p>Since March 2012 there is
7170 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
7171 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
7172 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
7173 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
7174 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
7175 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
7176 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
7177 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
7178 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
7179 number.</p>
7180
7181 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
7182 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
7183
7184 <p><pre>
7185 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
7186     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
7187     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
7188  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
7189  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
7190     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
7191  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
7192     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
7193  Latency: 0
7194  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
7195  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
7196  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
7197  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
7198  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
7199  Capabilities: <access denied>
7200  Kernel driver in use: i915
7201 </pre></p>
7202
7203 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
7204
7205 <p><pre>
7206 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
7207        ...
7208         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
7209         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
7210        ...
7211 }
7212 </pre></p>
7213
7214 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
7215 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
7216 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
7217 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
7218 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
7219 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
7220 yet shown up in
7221 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
7222 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
7223 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
7224 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
7225 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
7226 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
7227
7228 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
7229 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
7230 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
7231 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
7232 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
7233 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
7234 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
7235 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
7236 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
7237 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
7238 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
7239 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
7240
7241 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
7242 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
7243 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
7244 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
7245 backlight.</p>
7246
7247       </div>
7248       <div class="tags">
7249
7250
7251         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>.
7252
7253
7254       </div>
7255     </div>
7256     <div class="padding"></div>
7257
7258     <div class="entry">
7259       <div class="title">
7260         <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>
7261       </div>
7262       <div class="date">
7263         27th May 2013
7264       </div>
7265       <div class="body">
7266         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7267 <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
7268 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7269 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7270 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7271 and Windows 8.</p>
7272
7273 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7274 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7275 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7276 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7277 enough to tell.</p>
7278
7279 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7280 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7281 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7282 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7283 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7284 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
7285 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
7286 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
7287 to follow.</p>
7288
7289 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
7290 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
7291 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
7292 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
7293 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
7294 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
7295 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
7296 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
7297
7298 <p>I've updated the
7299 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
7300 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
7301 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
7302 machine.</p>
7303
7304 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
7305 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
7306
7307       </div>
7308       <div class="tags">
7309
7310
7311         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>.
7312
7313
7314       </div>
7315     </div>
7316     <div class="padding"></div>
7317
7318     <div class="entry">
7319       <div class="title">
7320         <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>
7321       </div>
7322       <div class="date">
7323         25th May 2013
7324       </div>
7325       <div class="body">
7326         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
7327 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
7328 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
7329 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
7330 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
7331 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
7332
7333 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
7334 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
7335 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
7336 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
7337 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
7338 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
7339 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
7340 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
7341 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
7342 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
7343
7344 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
7345 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7346 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
7347 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
7348 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
7349 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
7350
7351 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
7352 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
7353 on new Laptops?</p>
7354
7355       </div>
7356       <div class="tags">
7357
7358
7359         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>.
7360
7361
7362       </div>
7363     </div>
7364     <div class="padding"></div>
7365
7366     <div class="entry">
7367       <div class="title">
7368         <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>
7369       </div>
7370       <div class="date">
7371         17th May 2013
7372       </div>
7373       <div class="body">
7374         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
7375 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
7376 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
7377 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
7378 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
7379 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
7380 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
7381 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
7382 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
7383 donate some money</a>.
7384
7385 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
7386 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
7387 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
7388 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
7389 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
7390
7391 <p>The script,
7392 <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/>
7393 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
7394 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
7395 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
7396
7397 <ol>
7398
7399 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
7400 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
7401 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
7402     our configuration.</li>
7403 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
7404     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
7405     according to the profile specified in the config above,
7406     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
7407 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
7408     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
7409 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
7410
7411 </ol>
7412
7413 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
7414 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
7415 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
7416 the needed packages.</p>
7417
7418 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
7419 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
7420 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
7421 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
7422 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
7423 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
7424
7425 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
7426 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
7427 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
7428
7429 <p><pre>
7430 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
7431 DESKTOP="lxde"
7432 </pre></p>
7433
7434 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
7435 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
7436 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
7437 boot.</p>
7438
7439       </div>
7440       <div class="tags">
7441
7442
7443         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>.
7444
7445
7446       </div>
7447     </div>
7448     <div class="padding"></div>
7449
7450     <div class="entry">
7451       <div class="title">
7452         <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>
7453       </div>
7454       <div class="date">
7455         11th May 2013
7456       </div>
7457       <div class="body">
7458         <P>In January,
7459 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
7460 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
7461 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
7462 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
7463 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
7464 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
7465 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
7466 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
7467 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
7468 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
7469 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
7470 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
7471
7472 <p><table>
7473 <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>
7474 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
7475 <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>
7476 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
7477 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
7478 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
7479 <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>
7480 <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>
7481 <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>
7482 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
7483 </table></p>
7484
7485 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
7486 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
7487 available in experimental.</p>
7488
7489 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
7490 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
7491 for LEGO designers.</p>
7492
7493       </div>
7494       <div class="tags">
7495
7496
7497         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7498
7499
7500       </div>
7501     </div>
7502     <div class="padding"></div>
7503
7504     <div class="entry">
7505       <div class="title">
7506         <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>
7507       </div>
7508       <div class="date">
7509          5th May 2013
7510       </div>
7511       <div class="body">
7512         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
7513 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
7514 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
7515 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
7516 soon.</p>
7517
7518 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
7519 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
7520 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
7521 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
7522 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
7523 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
7524 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
7525 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
7526 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
7527 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
7528 Edu.</a>
7529
7530 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
7531 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
7532 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
7533 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
7534 follow.<p>
7535
7536       </div>
7537       <div class="tags">
7538
7539
7540         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>.
7541
7542
7543       </div>
7544     </div>
7545     <div class="padding"></div>
7546
7547     <div class="entry">
7548       <div class="title">
7549         <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>
7550       </div>
7551       <div class="date">
7552          3rd April 2013
7553       </div>
7554       <div class="body">
7555         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
7556 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
7557 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
7558 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
7559
7560 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
7561 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
7562 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
7563 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
7564 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
7565 BTS. :)</p>
7566
7567       </div>
7568       <div class="tags">
7569
7570
7571         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>.
7572
7573
7574       </div>
7575     </div>
7576     <div class="padding"></div>
7577
7578     <div class="entry">
7579       <div class="title">
7580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
7581       </div>
7582       <div class="date">
7583          2nd February 2013
7584       </div>
7585       <div class="body">
7586         <p>My
7587 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
7588 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
7589 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
7590 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
7591 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
7592 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
7593 version too.</p>
7594
7595 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
7596 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
7597 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
7598 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
7599 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
7600 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
7601 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
7602 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
7603
7604 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
7605 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
7606 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
7607 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
7608 it. :)</p>
7609
7610 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7611 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7612 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7613
7614       </div>
7615       <div class="tags">
7616
7617
7618         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>.
7619
7620
7621       </div>
7622     </div>
7623     <div class="padding"></div>
7624
7625     <div class="entry">
7626       <div class="title">
7627         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
7628       </div>
7629       <div class="date">
7630         22nd January 2013
7631       </div>
7632       <div class="body">
7633         <p>Yesterday, I
7634 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
7635 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
7636 pluggable hardware devices, which I
7637 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
7638 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
7639 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
7640 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
7641 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
7642 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
7643 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
7644 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
7645 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
7646 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
7647
7648 <pre>
7649 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
7650 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
7651 </pre>
7652
7653 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
7654 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
7655 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
7656 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
7657
7658 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
7659 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
7660 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
7661 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
7662 word.</p>
7663
7664 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
7665 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
7666 process.</p>
7667
7668 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
7669 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
7670
7671       </div>
7672       <div class="tags">
7673
7674
7675         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>.
7676
7677
7678       </div>
7679     </div>
7680     <div class="padding"></div>
7681
7682     <div class="entry">
7683       <div class="title">
7684         <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>
7685       </div>
7686       <div class="date">
7687         21st January 2013
7688       </div>
7689       <div class="body">
7690         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
7691 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
7692 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
7693 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
7694 it, fetch the
7695 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
7696 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
7697 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
7698 autostart script.</p>
7699
7700 <p>The design is simple:</p>
7701
7702 <ul>
7703
7704 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
7705 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
7706
7707 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
7708 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
7709 initially did.</li>
7710
7711 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
7712 the APT database, a database
7713 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
7714 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
7715
7716 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
7717 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
7718 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
7719 package or packages.</li>
7720
7721 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
7722 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
7723
7724 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
7725 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
7726
7727 </ul>
7728
7729 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
7730 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
7731 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
7732 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
7733
7734 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
7735 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
7736 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
7737 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
7738 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
7739
7740 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
7741 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
7742 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
7743 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
7744 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
7745 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
7746 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
7747 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
7748
7749 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
7750 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
7751 '<tt>svn checkout
7752 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
7753 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
7754 devscripts package.</p>
7755
7756 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
7757 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
7758 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
7759 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
7760 instructions</a> for details.</p>
7761
7762       </div>
7763       <div class="tags">
7764
7765
7766         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>.
7767
7768
7769       </div>
7770     </div>
7771     <div class="padding"></div>
7772
7773     <div class="entry">
7774       <div class="title">
7775         <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>
7776       </div>
7777       <div class="date">
7778         19th January 2013
7779       </div>
7780       <div class="body">
7781         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
7782 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
7783 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
7784 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
7785 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
7786 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
7787 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
7788 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
7789 not a durable solution.
7790
7791 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
7792 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
7793
7794 <ul>
7795
7796 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
7797   than A4).</li>
7798 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
7799 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
7800 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
7801 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
7802 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
7803 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
7804 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
7805 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
7806 size).</li>
7807 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
7808   X.org packages.</li>
7809 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
7810   the time).
7811
7812 </ul>
7813
7814 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
7815 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
7816 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
7817 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
7818 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
7819 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
7820 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
7821 still be useful.</p>
7822
7823 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
7824 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
7825 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
7826 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
7827 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
7828 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
7829
7830       </div>
7831       <div class="tags">
7832
7833
7834         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>.
7835
7836
7837       </div>
7838     </div>
7839     <div class="padding"></div>
7840
7841     <div class="entry">
7842       <div class="title">
7843         <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>
7844       </div>
7845       <div class="date">
7846         18th January 2013
7847       </div>
7848       <div class="body">
7849         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
7850 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
7851 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
7852 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
7853 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
7854 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
7855 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
7856
7857 <pre>
7858 #!/usr/bin/python
7859 import sys
7860 import apt
7861 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7862     cache = apt.Cache()
7863     cache.open(None)
7864     thepkgs = []
7865     for pkg in cache:
7866         version = pkg.candidate
7867         if version is None:
7868             version = pkg.installed
7869         if version is None:
7870             continue
7871         record = version.record
7872         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
7873             continue
7874         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
7875         for t in mime_types:
7876             t = t.rstrip().strip()
7877             if t == mimetype:
7878                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
7879     return thepkgs
7880 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
7881 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
7882     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
7883 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
7884 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7885     print "  %s" %pkg
7886 </pre>
7887
7888 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
7889
7890 <pre>
7891 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
7892 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
7893   gecko-mediaplayer
7894 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
7895 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
7896   browser-plugin-gnash
7897 %
7898 </pre>
7899
7900 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
7901 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
7902 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
7903 anyone working on adding it?</p>
7904
7905 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
7906 request for icweasel support for this feature is
7907 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
7908 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
7909 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
7910 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
7911
7912       </div>
7913       <div class="tags">
7914
7915
7916         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>.
7917
7918
7919       </div>
7920     </div>
7921     <div class="padding"></div>
7922
7923     <div class="entry">
7924       <div class="title">
7925         <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>
7926       </div>
7927       <div class="date">
7928         16th January 2013
7929       </div>
7930       <div class="body">
7931         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
7932 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
7933 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
7934 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
7935 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
7936 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
7937 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
7938 downloaded by the browser.</p>
7939
7940 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
7941 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
7942 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
7943 can be found on the
7944 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
7945 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
7946 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
7947 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
7948 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
7949
7950 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
7951
7952 <pre>
7953   count MIME type
7954   ----- -----------------------
7955      32 text/plain
7956      30 audio/mpeg
7957      29 image/png
7958      28 image/jpeg
7959      27 application/ogg
7960      26 audio/x-mp3
7961      25 image/tiff
7962      25 image/gif
7963      22 image/bmp
7964      22 audio/x-wav
7965      20 audio/x-flac
7966      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7967      18 video/x-ms-asf
7968      18 audio/x-musepack
7969      18 audio/x-mpeg
7970      18 application/x-ogg
7971      17 video/mpeg
7972      17 audio/x-scpls
7973      17 audio/ogg
7974      16 video/x-ms-wmv
7975 </pre>
7976
7977 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
7978
7979 <pre>
7980   count MIME type
7981   ----- -----------------------
7982      33 text/plain
7983      32 image/png
7984      32 image/jpeg
7985      29 audio/mpeg
7986      27 image/gif
7987      26 image/tiff
7988      26 application/ogg
7989      25 audio/x-mp3
7990      22 image/bmp
7991      21 audio/x-wav
7992      19 audio/x-mpegurl
7993      19 audio/x-mpeg
7994      18 video/mpeg
7995      18 audio/x-scpls
7996      18 audio/x-flac
7997      18 application/x-ogg
7998      17 video/x-ms-asf
7999      17 text/html
8000      17 audio/x-musepack
8001      16 image/x-xbitmap
8002 </pre>
8003
8004 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
8005
8006 <pre>
8007   count MIME type
8008   ----- -----------------------
8009      31 text/plain
8010      31 image/png
8011      31 image/jpeg
8012      29 audio/mpeg
8013      28 application/ogg
8014      27 image/gif
8015      26 image/tiff
8016      26 audio/x-mp3
8017      23 audio/x-wav
8018      22 image/bmp
8019      21 audio/x-flac
8020      20 audio/x-mpegurl
8021      19 audio/x-mpeg
8022      18 video/x-ms-asf
8023      18 video/mpeg
8024      18 audio/x-scpls
8025      18 application/x-ogg
8026      17 audio/x-musepack
8027      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8028      16 video/x-msvideo
8029 </pre>
8030
8031 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
8032 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
8033 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
8034 issues.</p>
8035
8036 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
8037 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
8038
8039       </div>
8040       <div class="tags">
8041
8042
8043         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>.
8044
8045
8046       </div>
8047     </div>
8048     <div class="padding"></div>
8049
8050     <div class="entry">
8051       <div class="title">
8052         <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>
8053       </div>
8054       <div class="date">
8055         15th January 2013
8056       </div>
8057       <div class="body">
8058         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
8059 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
8060 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
8061 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
8062 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
8063 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
8064 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
8065 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
8066 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
8067 packages.</p>
8068
8069 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
8070 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
8071 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
8072 modalias.</p>
8073
8074 <p><blockquote>
8075 Package: package-name
8076 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
8077 </blockquote></p>
8078
8079 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
8080 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
8081
8082 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
8083 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
8084
8085 <p><blockquote>
8086 Package: cheese
8087 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
8088 </blockquote></p>
8089
8090 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
8091 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
8092
8093 <p><blockquote>
8094 Package: pcmciautils
8095 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
8096 </blockquote></p>
8097
8098 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
8099 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
8100
8101 <p><blockquote>
8102 Package: colorhug-client
8103 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
8104 </blockquote></p>
8105
8106 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8107 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8108 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
8109
8110 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8111 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8112 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8113 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8114 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
8115 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8116 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
8117 Raring.</p>
8118
8119 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8120 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8121 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
8122 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
8123 try the
8124 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
8125 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8126 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8127 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
8128
8129 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8130 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
8131
8132 <p><blockquote>
8133 % ./hw-support-lookup
8134 <br>yubikey-personalization
8135 <br>%
8136 </blockquote></p>
8137
8138 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8139 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
8140
8141 <p><blockquote>
8142 % ./hw-support-lookup
8143 <br>pcmciautils
8144 <br>%
8145 </blockquote></p>
8146
8147 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
8148 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
8149 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
8150
8151 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
8152 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
8153 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
8154 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
8155 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
8156 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
8157 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
8158 see if it work.</p>
8159
8160 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8161 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8162 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8163 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8164
8165       </div>
8166       <div class="tags">
8167
8168
8169         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>.
8170
8171
8172       </div>
8173     </div>
8174     <div class="padding"></div>
8175
8176     <div class="entry">
8177       <div class="title">
8178         <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>
8179       </div>
8180       <div class="date">
8181         14th January 2013
8182       </div>
8183       <div class="body">
8184         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
8185 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
8186 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
8187 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
8188 in
8189 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8190 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
8191
8192 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
8193
8194 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
8195 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
8196 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
8197 &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;,
8198 &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
8199 &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;.
8200
8201 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
8202 this shell script:</p>
8203
8204 <pre>
8205 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
8206 </pre>
8207
8208 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
8209 using modinfo:</p>
8210
8211 <pre>
8212 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
8213 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
8214 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
8215 %
8216 </pre>
8217
8218 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
8219
8220 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
8221 Bridge memory controller:</p>
8222
8223 <p><blockquote>
8224 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
8225 </blockquote></p>
8226
8227 <p>This represent these values:</p>
8228
8229 <pre>
8230  v   00008086  (vendor)
8231  d   00002770  (device)
8232  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
8233  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
8234  bc  06        (bus class)
8235  sc  00        (bus subclass)
8236  i   00        (interface)
8237 </pre>
8238
8239 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
8240 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
8241 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
8242 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
8243
8244 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
8245 means.</p>
8246
8247 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
8248
8249 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
8250 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
8251
8252 <p><blockquote>
8253 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
8254 </blockquote></p>
8255
8256 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
8257
8258 <pre>
8259  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
8260  p    0001  (device product)
8261  d    0206  (bcddevice)
8262  dc     09  (device class)
8263  dsc    00  (device subclass)
8264  dp     00  (device protocol)
8265  ic     09  (interface class)
8266  isc    00  (interface subclass)
8267  ip     00  (interface protocol)
8268 </pre>
8269
8270 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
8271 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
8272 these alias entries show up:</p>
8273
8274 <p><blockquote>
8275 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
8276 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
8277 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
8278 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
8279 </blockquote></p>
8280
8281 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
8282 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
8283 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
8284
8285 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
8286
8287 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
8288 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
8289
8290 <p><blockquote>
8291 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8292 </blockquote></p>
8293
8294 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
8295
8296 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
8297
8298 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
8299 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
8300 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
8301
8302 <p><blockquote>
8303 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
8304 </blockquote></p>
8305
8306 <p>The values present are</p>
8307
8308 <pre>
8309  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
8310  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
8311  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
8312  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
8313  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
8314  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
8315  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
8316  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
8317  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
8318  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
8319  ct   10             (chassis type)
8320  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
8321 </pre>
8322
8323 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
8324 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
8325
8326 <pre>
8327   3 Desktop
8328   4 Low Profile Desktop
8329   5 Pizza Box
8330   6 Mini Tower
8331   7 Tower
8332   8 Portable
8333   9 Laptop
8334  10 Notebook
8335  11 Hand Held
8336  12 Docking Station
8337  13 All In One
8338  14 Sub Notebook
8339  15 Space-saving
8340  16 Lunch Box
8341  17 Main Server Chassis
8342  18 Expansion Chassis
8343  19 Sub Chassis
8344  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
8345  21 Peripheral Chassis
8346  22 RAID Chassis
8347  23 Rack Mount Chassis
8348  24 Sealed-case PC
8349  25 Multi-system
8350  26 CompactPCI
8351  27 AdvancedTCA
8352  28 Blade
8353  29 Blade Enclosing
8354 </pre>
8355
8356 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
8357 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
8358 claim it is a desktop.</p>
8359
8360 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
8361
8362 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
8363 test machine:</p>
8364
8365 <p><blockquote>
8366 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
8367 </blockquote></p>
8368
8369 <p>The values present are</p>
8370
8371 <pre>
8372   ty  01  (type)
8373   pr  00  (prototype)
8374   id  00  (id)
8375   ex  00  (extra)
8376 </pre>
8377
8378 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
8379 the valid values are.</p>
8380
8381 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
8382
8383 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
8384 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
8385 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
8386 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
8387 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
8388 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
8389 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
8390
8391 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
8392
8393 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
8394 one can use the following shell script:</p>
8395
8396 <pre>
8397   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
8398     echo "$id" ; \
8399     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
8400   done
8401 </pre>
8402
8403 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
8404 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
8405
8406 <pre>
8407   acpi:ACPI0003:
8408     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
8409   acpi:device:
8410   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
8411   acpi:IBM0068:
8412     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
8413     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
8414     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
8415     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
8416   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8417     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
8418     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
8419     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
8420   [...]
8421 </pre>
8422
8423 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8424 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8425 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8426 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8427
8428 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
8429 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
8430 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
8431
8432       </div>
8433       <div class="tags">
8434
8435
8436         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>.
8437
8438
8439       </div>
8440     </div>
8441     <div class="padding"></div>
8442
8443     <div class="entry">
8444       <div class="title">
8445         <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>
8446       </div>
8447       <div class="date">
8448         10th January 2013
8449       </div>
8450       <div class="body">
8451         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
8452 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
8453 Launcher and updated the Debian package
8454 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
8455 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
8456 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
8457 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
8458 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
8459 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
8460 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
8461 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
8462 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
8463 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
8464 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
8465 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
8466 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
8467 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
8468 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
8469
8470       </div>
8471       <div class="tags">
8472
8473
8474         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8475
8476
8477       </div>
8478     </div>
8479     <div class="padding"></div>
8480
8481     <div class="entry">
8482       <div class="title">
8483         <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>
8484       </div>
8485       <div class="date">
8486          9th January 2013
8487       </div>
8488       <div class="body">
8489         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
8490 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
8491 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
8492 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
8493 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
8494 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
8495 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
8496 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
8497 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
8498 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
8499 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
8500
8501 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
8502 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
8503 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
8504 simple:
8505
8506 <ul>
8507
8508 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
8509   starting when a user log in.</li>
8510
8511 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
8512   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
8513
8514 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
8515   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
8516   packages.</li>
8517
8518 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
8519   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
8520
8521 </ul>
8522
8523 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
8524 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
8525 discover database to find packages and
8526 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
8527 packages.</p>
8528
8529 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
8530 draft package is now checked into
8531 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8532 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
8533 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
8534 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
8535 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
8536 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
8537 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
8538 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
8539 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
8540 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
8541 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
8542 because of the freeze).</p>
8543
8544 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
8545 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
8546 inserted):</p>
8547
8548 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
8549
8550 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
8551 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
8552 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
8553
8554 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
8555 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
8556 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
8557 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
8558 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
8559 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
8560 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
8561
8562 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
8563 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
8564 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
8565 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
8566 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
8567 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
8568 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
8569 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
8570 not be installed?</p>
8571
8572 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
8573 please send me an email. :)</p>
8574
8575       </div>
8576       <div class="tags">
8577
8578
8579         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>.
8580
8581
8582       </div>
8583     </div>
8584     <div class="padding"></div>
8585
8586     <div class="entry">
8587       <div class="title">
8588         <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>
8589       </div>
8590       <div class="date">
8591          2nd January 2013
8592       </div>
8593       <div class="body">
8594         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
8595 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
8596 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
8597 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
8598 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
8599 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
8600 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
8601 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
8602 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
8603 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
8604
8605 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
8606 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
8607 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
8608
8609       </div>
8610       <div class="tags">
8611
8612
8613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8614
8615
8616       </div>
8617     </div>
8618     <div class="padding"></div>
8619
8620     <div class="entry">
8621       <div class="title">
8622         <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>
8623       </div>
8624       <div class="date">
8625         25th December 2012
8626       </div>
8627       <div class="body">
8628         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
8629 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
8630
8631 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
8632 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
8633 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
8634 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
8635 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
8636 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
8637 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
8638 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
8639 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
8640 name.</p>
8641
8642 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
8643 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
8644 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
8645
8646 <blockquote><pre>
8647 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
8648 cd bitcoin
8649 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
8650 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
8651 </pre></blockquote>
8652
8653 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
8654 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
8655 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
8656 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
8657 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
8658 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
8659 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
8660 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
8661 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
8662
8663 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8664 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8665 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8666
8667       </div>
8668       <div class="tags">
8669
8670
8671         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>.
8672
8673
8674       </div>
8675     </div>
8676     <div class="padding"></div>
8677
8678     <div class="entry">
8679       <div class="title">
8680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
8681       </div>
8682       <div class="date">
8683         21st December 2012
8684       </div>
8685       <div class="body">
8686         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
8687 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
8688 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
8689 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
8690 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
8691 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
8692 is now maintained by a
8693 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
8694 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
8695 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
8696 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
8697 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
8698 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
8699 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
8700 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
8701 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
8702 Corallo in a
8703 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
8704 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
8705 Debian package.</p>
8706
8707 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
8708 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
8709 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
8710 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
8711 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
8712 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
8713 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
8714 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
8715 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
8716 new version to unstable.
8717
8718 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
8719 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
8720 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
8721 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
8722 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
8723 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
8724 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
8725 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
8726 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
8727 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
8728 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
8729 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
8730 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
8731 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
8732 have not tested them.</p>
8733
8734 <p>My
8735 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
8736 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
8737 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
8738 years ago, as can be
8739 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
8740 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
8741 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
8742 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
8743 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
8744 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
8745 the same address as last time,
8746 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8747
8748       </div>
8749       <div class="tags">
8750
8751
8752         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>.
8753
8754
8755       </div>
8756     </div>
8757     <div class="padding"></div>
8758
8759     <div class="entry">
8760       <div class="title">
8761         <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>
8762       </div>
8763       <div class="date">
8764          7th September 2012
8765       </div>
8766       <div class="body">
8767         <p>As I
8768 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
8769 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
8770 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
8771 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
8772 repository for the project</a>.</p>
8773
8774 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
8775 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
8776 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
8777 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
8778
8779 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
8780 PostScript formats at
8781 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
8782 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
8783
8784       </div>
8785       <div class="tags">
8786
8787
8788         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>.
8789
8790
8791       </div>
8792     </div>
8793     <div class="padding"></div>
8794
8795     <div class="entry">
8796       <div class="title">
8797         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
8798       </div>
8799       <div class="date">
8800         16th August 2012
8801       </div>
8802       <div class="body">
8803         <p>I dag fyller
8804 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
8805 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
8806 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
8807
8808       </div>
8809       <div class="tags">
8810
8811
8812         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8813
8814
8815       </div>
8816     </div>
8817     <div class="padding"></div>
8818
8819     <div class="entry">
8820       <div class="title">
8821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
8822       </div>
8823       <div class="date">
8824         24th June 2012
8825       </div>
8826       <div class="body">
8827         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
8828 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
8829 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
8830 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
8831 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
8832 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
8833 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
8834 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
8835 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
8836 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
8837 missing in my book.</p>
8838
8839 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
8840 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
8841 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
8842 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
8843 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
8844 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
8845 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
8846
8847       </div>
8848       <div class="tags">
8849
8850
8851         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>.
8852
8853
8854       </div>
8855     </div>
8856     <div class="padding"></div>
8857
8858     <div class="entry">
8859       <div class="title">
8860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
8861       </div>
8862       <div class="date">
8863         21st November 2011
8864       </div>
8865       <div class="body">
8866         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
8867 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
8868 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
8869 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
8870 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
8871 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
8872 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
8873 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
8874 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
8875 the tools to do so.</p>
8876
8877 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
8878 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
8879 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
8880 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
8881
8882 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
8883 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
8884 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
8885 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
8886 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
8887 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
8888 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
8889 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
8890
8891 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
8892 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
8893 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
8894
8895 <p><pre>
8896 #!/usr/bin/perl
8897 use strict;
8898 use warnings;
8899 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
8900 BEGIN {
8901     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
8902     my %rhelmodules = (
8903         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
8904         );
8905     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
8906         eval "use $module;";
8907         if ($@) {
8908             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
8909             system("yum install -y $pkg");
8910             eval "use $module;";
8911         }
8912     }
8913 }
8914 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
8915
8916 upgrade_dell();
8917
8918 exit 0;
8919
8920 sub run_firmware_script {
8921     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
8922     unless ($script) {
8923         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
8924         exit 1
8925     }
8926     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
8927
8928     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
8929         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
8930     } else {
8931         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
8932     }
8933 }
8934
8935 sub run_firmware_scripts {
8936     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
8937     # Run firmware packages
8938     for my $dir (@dirs) {
8939         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
8940         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
8941         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
8942             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
8943             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
8944         }
8945         closedir $dh;
8946     }
8947 }
8948
8949 sub download {
8950     my $url = shift;
8951     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
8952     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
8953 }
8954
8955 sub upgrade_dell {
8956     my @dirs;
8957     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
8958     chomp $product;
8959
8960     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
8961
8962         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
8963         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
8964
8965         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
8966             CLEANUP => 1
8967             );
8968         chdir($tmpdir);
8969         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
8970         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
8971         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
8972         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
8973         my $fwopts = "-q";
8974         if (@paths) {
8975             for my $url (@paths) {
8976                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
8977             }
8978             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
8979         } else {
8980             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
8981             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
8982         }
8983         chdir('/');
8984     } else {
8985         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
8986         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
8987     }
8988 }
8989
8990 sub fetch_dell_fw {
8991     my $path = shift;
8992     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
8993     download($url);
8994 }
8995
8996 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
8997 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
8998 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
8999 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
9000     my $filename = shift;
9001
9002     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9003     chomp $product;
9004     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
9005
9006     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
9007
9008     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
9009     my @paths;
9010     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
9011         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
9012         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
9013         my $oscode;
9014         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
9015             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
9016         } else {
9017             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
9018         }
9019         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
9020         {
9021             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
9022         }
9023     }
9024     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
9025         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
9026
9027         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
9028         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
9029
9030         my $cpath = $component->{path};
9031         for my $path (@paths) {
9032             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
9033                 push(@paths, $cpath);
9034             }
9035         }
9036     }
9037     return @paths;
9038 }
9039 </pre>
9040
9041 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
9042 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
9043 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
9044 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
9045 outdated.</p>
9046
9047       </div>
9048       <div class="tags">
9049
9050
9051         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>.
9052
9053
9054       </div>
9055     </div>
9056     <div class="padding"></div>
9057
9058     <div class="entry">
9059       <div class="title">
9060         <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>
9061       </div>
9062       <div class="date">
9063          4th August 2011
9064       </div>
9065       <div class="body">
9066         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
9067 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
9068 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
9069 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
9070 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
9071 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
9072 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
9073 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
9074 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
9075
9076 <p><blockquote>
9077 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
9078 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
9079 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
9080 </blockquote></p>
9081
9082 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
9083 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
9084 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
9085 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
9086 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
9087 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
9088 hard to explain.</p>
9089
9090 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
9091 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
9092 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
9093 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
9094 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
9095 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
9096 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
9097 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
9098 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
9099 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
9100 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
9101 mode).</p>
9102
9103 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
9104 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
9105 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
9106 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
9107 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
9108 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
9109 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
9110 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
9111 after visiting single user mode.</p>
9112
9113 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
9114 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
9115 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
9116 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
9117 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
9118 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
9119 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
9120 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
9121
9122 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
9123 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
9124 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
9125
9126       </div>
9127       <div class="tags">
9128
9129
9130         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>.
9131
9132
9133       </div>
9134     </div>
9135     <div class="padding"></div>
9136
9137     <div class="entry">
9138       <div class="title">
9139         <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>
9140       </div>
9141       <div class="date">
9142         30th July 2011
9143       </div>
9144       <div class="body">
9145         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
9146 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
9147 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
9148 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
9149 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
9150 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
9151 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
9152 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
9153 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
9154 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
9155 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
9156 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
9157 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
9158
9159 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
9160 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
9161 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
9162 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
9163 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
9164 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
9165 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
9166 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
9167 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
9168
9169 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
9170 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
9171 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
9172 is presented.</p>
9173
9174 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
9175 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
9176 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
9177 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
9178 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
9179 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
9180 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
9181 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
9182 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
9183 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
9184 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
9185 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
9186 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
9187 find time to push this forward.</p>
9188
9189       </div>
9190       <div class="tags">
9191
9192
9193         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>.
9194
9195
9196       </div>
9197     </div>
9198     <div class="padding"></div>
9199
9200     <div class="entry">
9201       <div class="title">
9202         <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>
9203       </div>
9204       <div class="date">
9205         29th July 2011
9206       </div>
9207       <div class="body">
9208         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
9209 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
9210 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
9211 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
9212 issues.</p>
9213
9214 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
9215 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
9216 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
9217
9218 <ol>
9219
9220 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
9221 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
9222 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
9223 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
9224 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
9225 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
9226 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
9227 Debian.</li>
9228
9229 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
9230 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
9231 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
9232 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
9233 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
9234 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
9235 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
9236 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
9237 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
9238 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
9239 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
9240 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
9241 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
9242
9243 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
9244 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
9245 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
9246 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
9247 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
9248 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
9249 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
9250 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
9251 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
9252 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
9253
9254 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
9255 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
9256 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
9257 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
9258 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
9259 latter behaviour.</li>
9260
9261 </ol>
9262
9263 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
9264 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
9265 it do not matter much.</p>
9266
9267 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
9268 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
9269 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
9270
9271       </div>
9272       <div class="tags">
9273
9274
9275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9276
9277
9278       </div>
9279     </div>
9280     <div class="padding"></div>
9281
9282     <div class="entry">
9283       <div class="title">
9284         <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>
9285       </div>
9286       <div class="date">
9287         26th July 2011
9288       </div>
9289       <div class="body">
9290         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
9291 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
9292 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
9293 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
9294 security support for a few years.</p>
9295
9296 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
9297 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
9298 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
9299 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
9300 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
9301 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
9302 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
9303 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
9304 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
9305 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
9306 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
9307 easier in the future.</p>
9308
9309 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
9310 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
9311 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
9312 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
9313 do not have time for.</p>
9314
9315       </div>
9316       <div class="tags">
9317
9318
9319         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>.
9320
9321
9322       </div>
9323     </div>
9324     <div class="padding"></div>
9325
9326     <div class="entry">
9327       <div class="title">
9328         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Norwegian_FixMyStreet_have_kept_me_busy_the_last_few_weeks.html">A Norwegian FixMyStreet have kept me busy the last few weeks</a>
9329       </div>
9330       <div class="date">
9331          3rd April 2011
9332       </div>
9333       <div class="body">
9334         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
9335 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
9336 update in English.</p>
9337
9338 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
9339 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
9340 of the British service
9341 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
9342 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
9343 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
9344 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
9345 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
9346 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
9347 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
9348 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
9349 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
9350 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
9351 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
9352 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
9353 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
9354
9355 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
9356 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
9357 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
9358 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
9359 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
9360 public infrastructure.</p>
9361
9362 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
9363 such service?</p>
9364
9365       </div>
9366       <div class="tags">
9367
9368
9369         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>.
9370
9371
9372       </div>
9373     </div>
9374     <div class="padding"></div>
9375
9376     <div class="entry">
9377       <div class="title">
9378         <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>
9379       </div>
9380       <div class="date">
9381         28th January 2011
9382       </div>
9383       <div class="body">
9384         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
9385 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
9386 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
9387 available on the Internet, and check our locally
9388 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
9389 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
9390 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
9391 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
9392 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
9393 out which security holes were present in our free software
9394 collection.</p>
9395
9396 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
9397 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
9398 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
9399 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
9400 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
9401 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
9402 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
9403 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
9404 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
9405 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
9406 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
9407 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
9408 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
9409 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
9410 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
9411 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
9412
9413 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
9414 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
9415 check out, one could look up
9416 <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
9417 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
9418 The most recent one is
9419 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
9420 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
9421 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
9422
9423 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
9424 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
9425 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
9426 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
9427 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
9428 security issues out.</p>
9429
9430 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
9431 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
9432 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
9433 RHEL is providing
9434 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
9435 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
9436 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
9437
9438 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
9439 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
9440 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
9441 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
9442 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
9443 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
9444 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
9445 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
9446 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
9447 established soon.</p>
9448
9449 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
9450 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
9451 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
9452 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
9453 for their packages.</p>
9454
9455       </div>
9456       <div class="tags">
9457
9458
9459         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>.
9460
9461
9462       </div>
9463     </div>
9464     <div class="padding"></div>
9465
9466     <div class="entry">
9467       <div class="title">
9468         <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>
9469       </div>
9470       <div class="date">
9471         23rd January 2011
9472       </div>
9473       <div class="body">
9474         <p>In the
9475 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
9476 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
9477 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
9478 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
9479 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
9480 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
9481 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
9482 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
9483 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
9484 one of my machines like this:</p>
9485
9486 <pre>
9487 loaded modules:
9488 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
9489 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
9490 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
9491 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
9492 10de:03ec pata_amd
9493 10de:03f6 sata_nv
9494 1022:1103 k8temp
9495 109e:036e bttv
9496 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
9497 11ab:4364 sky2
9498 </pre>
9499
9500 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
9501 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
9502
9503 <pre>
9504 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
9505     echo loaded pci modules:
9506     (
9507         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
9508         for address in * ; do
9509             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
9510                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
9511                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
9512                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
9513                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
9514                     echo "$id $module"
9515                 fi
9516             fi
9517         done
9518     )
9519     echo
9520 fi
9521 </pre>
9522
9523 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
9524 mappings:</p>
9525
9526 <pre>
9527 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
9528     echo loaded usb modules:
9529     (
9530         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
9531         for address in * ; do
9532             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
9533                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
9534                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
9535                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
9536                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
9537                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
9538                         echo "$id $module"
9539                     fi
9540                 fi
9541             fi
9542         done
9543     )
9544     echo
9545 fi
9546 </pre>
9547
9548 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
9549 well.</p>
9550
9551       </div>
9552       <div class="tags">
9553
9554
9555         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>.
9556
9557
9558       </div>
9559     </div>
9560     <div class="padding"></div>
9561
9562     <div class="entry">
9563       <div class="title">
9564         <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>
9565       </div>
9566       <div class="date">
9567         22nd December 2010
9568       </div>
9569       <div class="body">
9570         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
9571 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
9572 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
9573 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
9574 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
9575 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
9576 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
9577 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
9578 university.</p>
9579
9580 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
9581 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
9582 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
9583 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
9584 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
9585 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
9586 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
9587 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
9588
9589 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
9590 I perform on a new model.</p>
9591
9592 <ul>
9593
9594 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
9595 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
9596 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
9597
9598 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
9599 installation, X.org is working.</li>
9600
9601 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
9602 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
9603 reported by the program.</li>
9604
9605 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
9606 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
9607 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
9608 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
9609 normally test this by playing
9610 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
9611 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
9612
9613 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
9614 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
9615
9616 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
9617 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
9618
9619 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
9620 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
9621
9622 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
9623 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
9624 few.</li>
9625
9626 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
9627 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
9628 notice this.</li>
9629
9630 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
9631 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
9632 resume.</li>
9633
9634 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
9635 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
9636 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
9637 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
9638 not.</li>
9639
9640 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
9641 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
9642 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
9643 existence.</li>
9644
9645 </ul>
9646
9647 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
9648 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
9649 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
9650 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
9651 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
9652 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
9653 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
9654 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
9655
9656       </div>
9657       <div class="tags">
9658
9659
9660         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>.
9661
9662
9663       </div>
9664     </div>
9665     <div class="padding"></div>
9666
9667     <div class="entry">
9668       <div class="title">
9669         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
9670       </div>
9671       <div class="date">
9672         11th December 2010
9673       </div>
9674       <div class="body">
9675         <p>As I continue to explore
9676 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
9677 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
9678 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
9679
9680 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
9681 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
9682 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
9683 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
9684 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
9685 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
9686 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
9687 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
9688 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
9689 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
9690 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
9691 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
9692 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
9693 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
9694 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
9695 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
9696 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
9697 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
9698 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
9699 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
9700
9701 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
9702 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
9703 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
9704 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
9705 If the Skolelinux foundation
9706 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
9707 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
9708 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
9709 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
9710 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
9711 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
9712 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
9713 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
9714
9715 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
9716 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
9717 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
9718 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
9719 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
9720 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
9721 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
9722 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
9723 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
9724 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
9725 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
9726 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
9727 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
9728 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
9729 currencies.</p>
9730
9731 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
9732 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
9733 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
9734 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
9735 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
9736 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
9737 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
9738 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
9739 BitCoins.  Check out
9740 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
9741 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
9742 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
9743 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
9744 yet.</p>
9745
9746 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
9747 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
9748 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
9749 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
9750 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
9751
9752       </div>
9753       <div class="tags">
9754
9755
9756         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>.
9757
9758
9759       </div>
9760     </div>
9761     <div class="padding"></div>
9762
9763     <div class="entry">
9764       <div class="title">
9765         <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>
9766       </div>
9767       <div class="date">
9768         10th December 2010
9769       </div>
9770       <div class="body">
9771         <p>With this weeks lawless
9772 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
9773 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
9774 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
9775 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
9776 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
9777 A blog post from
9778 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
9779 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
9780 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
9781 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
9782 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
9783 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
9784 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
9785
9786 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
9787 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
9788 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
9789 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
9790 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
9791 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
9792 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
9793 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
9794 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
9795 Debian</a> soon.</p>
9796
9797 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
9798 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
9799 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
9800 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
9801 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
9802 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
9803 you can even get
9804 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
9805 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
9806 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
9807 on the current exchange rates.</p>
9808
9809 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
9810 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
9811 donations to the address
9812 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
9813
9814       </div>
9815       <div class="tags">
9816
9817
9818         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>.
9819
9820
9821       </div>
9822     </div>
9823     <div class="padding"></div>
9824
9825     <div class="entry">
9826       <div class="title">
9827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
9828       </div>
9829       <div class="date">
9830         27th November 2010
9831       </div>
9832       <div class="body">
9833         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
9834 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
9835 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
9836 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
9837 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
9838 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
9839 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
9840 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
9841
9842 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
9843 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9844 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
9845 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
9846 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
9847 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
9848 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
9849 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
9850 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
9851 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
9852 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
9853
9854 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
9855 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
9856 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
9857 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
9858 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
9859 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
9860 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
9861 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
9862 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
9863 what is going on.</p>
9864
9865       </div>
9866       <div class="tags">
9867
9868
9869         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>.
9870
9871
9872       </div>
9873     </div>
9874     <div class="padding"></div>
9875
9876     <div class="entry">
9877       <div class="title">
9878         <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>
9879       </div>
9880       <div class="date">
9881         22nd November 2010
9882       </div>
9883       <div class="body">
9884         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
9885 upgrade testing of the
9886 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9887 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
9888 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
9889 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
9890
9891 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
9892
9893 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9894
9895 <blockquote><p>
9896   apache2.2-bin
9897   aptdaemon
9898   baobab
9899   binfmt-support
9900   browser-plugin-gnash
9901   cheese-common
9902   cli-common
9903   cups-pk-helper
9904   dmz-cursor-theme
9905   empathy
9906   empathy-common
9907   freedesktop-sound-theme
9908   freeglut3
9909   gconf-defaults-service
9910   gdm-themes
9911   gedit-plugins
9912   geoclue
9913   geoclue-hostip
9914   geoclue-localnet
9915   geoclue-manual
9916   geoclue-yahoo
9917   gnash
9918   gnash-common
9919   gnome
9920   gnome-backgrounds
9921   gnome-cards-data
9922   gnome-codec-install
9923   gnome-core
9924   gnome-desktop-environment
9925   gnome-disk-utility
9926   gnome-screenshot
9927   gnome-search-tool
9928   gnome-session-canberra
9929   gnome-system-log
9930   gnome-themes-extras
9931   gnome-themes-more
9932   gnome-user-share
9933   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
9934   gstreamer0.10-tools
9935   gtk2-engines
9936   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
9937   gtk2-engines-smooth
9938   hamster-applet
9939   libapache2-mod-dnssd
9940   libapr1
9941   libaprutil1
9942   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
9943   libaprutil1-ldap
9944   libart2.0-cil
9945   libboost-date-time1.42.0
9946   libboost-python1.42.0
9947   libboost-thread1.42.0
9948   libchamplain-0.4-0
9949   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
9950   libcheese-gtk18
9951   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
9952   libcryptui0
9953   libdiscid0
9954   libelf1
9955   libepc-1.0-2
9956   libepc-common
9957   libepc-ui-1.0-2
9958   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
9959   libfreerdp0
9960   libgconf2.0-cil
9961   libgdata-common
9962   libgdata7
9963   libgdu-gtk0
9964   libgee2
9965   libgeoclue0
9966   libgexiv2-0
9967   libgif4
9968   libglade2.0-cil
9969   libglib2.0-cil
9970   libgmime2.4-cil
9971   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
9972   libgnome2.24-cil
9973   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
9974   libgpod-common
9975   libgpod4
9976   libgtk2.0-cil
9977   libgtkglext1
9978   libgtksourceview2.0-common
9979   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
9980   libmono-addins0.2-cil
9981   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
9982   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
9983   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
9984   libmono-posix2.0-cil
9985   libmono-security2.0-cil
9986   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
9987   libmono-system2.0-cil
9988   libmtp8
9989   libmusicbrainz3-6
9990   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
9991   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
9992   libopal3.6.8
9993   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
9994   libpt2.6.7
9995   libpython2.6
9996   librpm1
9997   librpmio1
9998   libsdl1.2debian
9999   libsrtp0
10000   libssh-4
10001   libtelepathy-farsight0
10002   libtelepathy-glib0
10003   libtidy-0.99-0
10004   media-player-info
10005   mesa-utils
10006   mono-2.0-gac
10007   mono-gac
10008   mono-runtime
10009   nautilus-sendto
10010   nautilus-sendto-empathy
10011   p7zip-full
10012   pkg-config
10013   python-aptdaemon
10014   python-aptdaemon-gtk
10015   python-axiom
10016   python-beautifulsoup
10017   python-bugbuddy
10018   python-clientform
10019   python-coherence
10020   python-configobj
10021   python-crypto
10022   python-cupshelpers
10023   python-elementtree
10024   python-epsilon
10025   python-evolution
10026   python-feedparser
10027   python-gdata
10028   python-gdbm
10029   python-gst0.10
10030   python-gtkglext1
10031   python-gtksourceview2
10032   python-httplib2
10033   python-louie
10034   python-mako
10035   python-markupsafe
10036   python-mechanize
10037   python-nevow
10038   python-notify
10039   python-opengl
10040   python-openssl
10041   python-pam
10042   python-pkg-resources
10043   python-pyasn1
10044   python-pysqlite2
10045   python-rdflib
10046   python-serial
10047   python-tagpy
10048   python-twisted-bin
10049   python-twisted-conch
10050   python-twisted-core
10051   python-twisted-web
10052   python-utidylib
10053   python-webkit
10054   python-xdg
10055   python-zope.interface
10056   remmina
10057   remmina-plugin-data
10058   remmina-plugin-rdp
10059   remmina-plugin-vnc
10060   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10061   rhythmbox-plugins
10062   rpm-common
10063   rpm2cpio
10064   seahorse-plugins
10065   shotwell
10066   software-center
10067   system-config-printer-udev
10068   telepathy-gabble
10069   telepathy-mission-control-5
10070   telepathy-salut
10071   tomboy
10072   totem
10073   totem-coherence
10074   totem-mozilla
10075   totem-plugins
10076   transmission-common
10077   xdg-user-dirs
10078   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
10079   xserver-xephyr
10080 </p></blockquote>
10081
10082 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10083
10084 <blockquote><p>
10085   cheese
10086   ekiga
10087   eog
10088   epiphany-extensions
10089   evolution-exchange
10090   fast-user-switch-applet
10091   file-roller
10092   gcalctool
10093   gconf-editor
10094   gdm
10095   gedit
10096   gedit-common
10097   gnome-games
10098   gnome-games-data
10099   gnome-nettool
10100   gnome-system-tools
10101   gnome-themes
10102   gnuchess
10103   gucharmap
10104   guile-1.8-libs
10105   libavahi-ui0
10106   libdmx1
10107   libgalago3
10108   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10109   libgtksourceview2.0-0
10110   liblircclient0
10111   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
10112   libspeexdsp1
10113   libsvga1
10114   rhythmbox
10115   seahorse
10116   sound-juicer
10117   system-config-printer
10118   totem-common
10119   transmission-gtk
10120   vinagre
10121   vino
10122 </p></blockquote>
10123
10124 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10125
10126 <blockquote><p>
10127   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10128 </p></blockquote>
10129
10130 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10131
10132 <blockquote><p>
10133 [nothing]
10134 </p></blockquote>
10135
10136 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10137
10138 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10139
10140 <blockquote><p>
10141   ksmserver
10142 </p></blockquote>
10143
10144 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10145
10146 <blockquote><p>
10147   kwin
10148   network-manager-kde
10149 </p></blockquote>
10150
10151 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10152
10153 <blockquote><p>
10154   arts
10155   dolphin
10156   freespacenotifier
10157   google-gadgets-gst
10158   google-gadgets-xul
10159   kappfinder
10160   kcalc
10161   kcharselect
10162   kde-core
10163   kde-plasma-desktop
10164   kde-standard
10165   kde-window-manager
10166   kdeartwork
10167   kdeartwork-emoticons
10168   kdeartwork-style
10169   kdeartwork-theme-icon
10170   kdebase
10171   kdebase-apps
10172   kdebase-workspace
10173   kdebase-workspace-bin
10174   kdebase-workspace-data
10175   kdeeject
10176   kdelibs
10177   kdeplasma-addons
10178   kdeutils
10179   kdewallpapers
10180   kdf
10181   kfloppy
10182   kgpg
10183   khelpcenter4
10184   kinfocenter
10185   konq-plugins-l10n
10186   konqueror-nsplugins
10187   kscreensaver
10188   kscreensaver-xsavers
10189   ktimer
10190   kwrite
10191   libgle3
10192   libkde4-ruby1.8
10193   libkonq5
10194   libkonq5-templates
10195   libnetpbm10
10196   libplasma-ruby
10197   libplasma-ruby1.8
10198   libqt4-ruby1.8
10199   marble-data
10200   marble-plugins
10201   netpbm
10202   nuvola-icon-theme
10203   plasma-dataengines-workspace
10204   plasma-desktop
10205   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
10206   plasma-runners-addons
10207   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
10208   plasma-scriptengine-python
10209   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
10210   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
10211   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
10212   plasma-scriptengines
10213   plasma-wallpapers-addons
10214   plasma-widget-folderview
10215   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10216   ruby
10217   sweeper
10218   update-notifier-kde
10219   xscreensaver-data-extra
10220   xscreensaver-gl
10221   xscreensaver-gl-extra
10222   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10223 </p></blockquote>
10224
10225 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10226
10227 <blockquote><p>
10228   ark
10229   google-gadgets-common
10230   google-gadgets-qt
10231   htdig
10232   kate
10233   kdebase-bin
10234   kdebase-data
10235   kdepasswd
10236   kfind
10237   klipper
10238   konq-plugins
10239   konqueror
10240   ksysguard
10241   ksysguardd
10242   libarchive1
10243   libcln6
10244   libeet1
10245   libeina-svn-06
10246   libggadget-1.0-0b
10247   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
10248   libgps19
10249   libkdecorations4
10250   libkephal4
10251   libkonq4
10252   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
10253   libkscreensaver5
10254   libksgrd4
10255   libksignalplotter4
10256   libkunitconversion4
10257   libkwineffects1a
10258   libmarblewidget4
10259   libntrack-qt4-1
10260   libntrack0
10261   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
10262   libplasmaclock4a
10263   libplasmagenericshell4
10264   libprocesscore4a
10265   libprocessui4a
10266   libqalculate5
10267   libqedje0a
10268   libqtruby4shared2
10269   libqzion0a
10270   libruby1.8
10271   libscim8c2a
10272   libsmokekdecore4-3
10273   libsmokekdeui4-3
10274   libsmokekfile3
10275   libsmokekhtml3
10276   libsmokekio3
10277   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
10278   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
10279   libsmokekparts3
10280   libsmokektexteditor3
10281   libsmokekutils3
10282   libsmokenepomuk3
10283   libsmokephonon3
10284   libsmokeplasma3
10285   libsmokeqtcore4-3
10286   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
10287   libsmokeqtgui4-3
10288   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
10289   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
10290   libsmokeqtscript4-3
10291   libsmokeqtsql4-3
10292   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
10293   libsmokeqttest4-3
10294   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
10295   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
10296   libsmokeqtxml4-3
10297   libsmokesolid3
10298   libsmokesoprano3
10299   libtaskmanager4a
10300   libtidy-0.99-0
10301   libweather-ion4a
10302   libxklavier16
10303   libxxf86misc1
10304   okteta
10305   oxygencursors
10306   plasma-dataengines-addons
10307   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
10308   plasma-widget-lancelot
10309   plasma-widgets-addons
10310   plasma-widgets-workspace
10311   polkit-kde-1
10312   ruby1.8
10313   systemsettings
10314   update-notifier-common
10315 </p></blockquote>
10316
10317 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
10318 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
10319 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
10320 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
10321
10322       </div>
10323       <div class="tags">
10324
10325
10326         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>.
10327
10328
10329       </div>
10330     </div>
10331     <div class="padding"></div>
10332
10333     <div class="entry">
10334       <div class="title">
10335         <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>
10336       </div>
10337       <div class="date">
10338         22nd November 2010
10339       </div>
10340       <div class="body">
10341         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
10342 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
10343 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
10344 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
10345 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
10346 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
10347 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
10348 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
10349 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
10350
10351 <p>I found
10352 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
10353 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
10354 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
10355 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
10356 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
10357 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
10358
10359 <pre>
10360 #!/bin/sh
10361
10362 # Based on
10363 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
10364
10365 set -e
10366 set -x
10367
10368 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
10369     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
10370     exit 1
10371 else
10372     host="$1"
10373 fi
10374
10375 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
10376     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
10377     exit 1
10378 fi
10379
10380 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
10381 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
10382 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
10383 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
10384
10385 img=$host.img
10386 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
10387 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
10388
10389 parted $img mklabel msdos
10390 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
10391 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
10392 parted $img set 1 boot on
10393
10394 modprobe dm-mod
10395 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
10396 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
10397
10398 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
10399 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
10400 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
10401
10402 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
10403 losetup -d /dev/loop0
10404 </pre>
10405
10406 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
10407 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
10408
10409 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
10410 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
10411 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
10412 seem to work just fine.</p>
10413
10414       </div>
10415       <div class="tags">
10416
10417
10418         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>.
10419
10420
10421       </div>
10422     </div>
10423     <div class="padding"></div>
10424
10425     <div class="entry">
10426       <div class="title">
10427         <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>
10428       </div>
10429       <div class="date">
10430         20th November 2010
10431       </div>
10432       <div class="body">
10433         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
10434 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10435 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
10436 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
10437
10438 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
10439 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
10440 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
10441
10442 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
10443
10444 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10445
10446 <blockquote><p>
10447   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
10448   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
10449   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
10450   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
10451   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
10452   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
10453   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
10454   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
10455   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
10456   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
10457   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10458   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10459   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
10460   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
10461   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
10462   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
10463   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10464   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
10465   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10466   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
10467   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
10468   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10469   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
10470   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
10471   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
10472   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10473   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10474   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
10475   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10476   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
10477   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
10478   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10479   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
10480   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
10481   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
10482   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
10483   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
10484   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
10485   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
10486   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
10487   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
10488   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
10489   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
10490   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
10491   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
10492   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
10493   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
10494   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
10495   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
10496   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
10497   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
10498   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
10499   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10500   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
10501   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
10502   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
10503   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
10504   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
10505   zip
10506 </p></blockquote>
10507
10508 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
10509
10510 <blockquote><p>
10511   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
10512   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
10513   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
10514   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
10515   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
10516   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
10517   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
10518   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
10519   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
10520   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
10521   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
10522   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10523   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10524   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10525   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10526   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
10527   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10528   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
10529   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
10530   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
10531   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
10532   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
10533   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10534   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
10535   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
10536   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
10537   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
10538   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
10539   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
10540 </p></blockquote>
10541
10542 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10543
10544 <blockquote><p>
10545   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10546 </p></blockquote>
10547
10548 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10549
10550 <blockquote><p>
10551 [nothing]
10552 </p></blockquote>
10553
10554 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10555
10556 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10557
10558 <blockquote><p>
10559   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
10560   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10561   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
10562   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
10563   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
10564   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
10565   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10566   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
10567   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
10568   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10569   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
10570   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
10571   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
10572   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
10573   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
10574   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
10575   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
10576   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
10577   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
10578   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
10579   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
10580   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
10581   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
10582   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
10583   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
10584   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
10585   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
10586   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
10587   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
10588   ttf-sazanami-gothic
10589 </p></blockquote>
10590
10591 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10592
10593 <blockquote><p>
10594   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
10595   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
10596   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
10597   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
10598   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
10599   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
10600   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
10601   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
10602   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
10603   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
10604   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
10605   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
10606   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
10607   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
10608   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10609   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10610   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
10611   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
10612   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10613   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
10614   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10615   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
10616   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10617   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10618   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
10619   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
10620   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
10621   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
10622   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
10623   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
10624   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
10625   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
10626   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
10627 </p></blockquote>
10628
10629 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10630
10631 <blockquote><p>
10632   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
10633   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
10634   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
10635   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
10636   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10637   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
10638   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10639 </p></blockquote>
10640
10641 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10642
10643 <blockquote><p>
10644   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
10645 </p></blockquote>
10646
10647       </div>
10648       <div class="tags">
10649
10650
10651         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>.
10652
10653
10654       </div>
10655     </div>
10656     <div class="padding"></div>
10657
10658     <div class="entry">
10659       <div class="title">
10660         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
10661       </div>
10662       <div class="date">
10663         20th November 2010
10664       </div>
10665       <div class="body">
10666         <p>Answering
10667 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
10668 call from the Gnash project</a> for
10669 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
10670 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
10671 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
10672 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
10673 releases out more often.</p>
10674
10675 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
10676 I have considered setting up a <a
10677 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
10678 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
10679 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
10680 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
10681 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
10682 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
10683 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
10684 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
10685 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
10686 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
10687 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
10688 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
10689
10690       </div>
10691       <div class="tags">
10692
10693
10694         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>.
10695
10696
10697       </div>
10698     </div>
10699     <div class="padding"></div>
10700
10701     <div class="entry">
10702       <div class="title">
10703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
10704       </div>
10705       <div class="date">
10706          9th November 2010
10707       </div>
10708       <div class="body">
10709         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
10710
10711 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
10712 3D linked in from
10713 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
10714 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
10715
10716       </div>
10717       <div class="tags">
10718
10719
10720         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>.
10721
10722
10723       </div>
10724     </div>
10725     <div class="padding"></div>
10726
10727     <div class="entry">
10728       <div class="title">
10729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
10730       </div>
10731       <div class="date">
10732         24th October 2010
10733       </div>
10734       <div class="body">
10735         <p>Some updates.</p>
10736
10737 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
10738 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
10739 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
10740 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
10741 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
10742 :)</p>
10743
10744 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
10745 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
10746 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
10747 It is called
10748 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
10749 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
10750 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
10751 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
10752 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
10753 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
10754
10755 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
10756 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
10757 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
10758 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
10759 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
10760 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
10761 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
10762 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
10763 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
10764 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
10765
10766       </div>
10767       <div class="tags">
10768
10769
10770         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>.
10771
10772
10773       </div>
10774     </div>
10775     <div class="padding"></div>
10776
10777     <div class="entry">
10778       <div class="title">
10779         <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>
10780       </div>
10781       <div class="date">
10782          4th September 2010
10783       </div>
10784       <div class="body">
10785         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
10786 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
10787 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
10788 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
10789 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
10790 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
10791 installed.</p>
10792
10793 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
10794 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
10795 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
10796 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
10797 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10798 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
10799 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
10800 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
10801 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
10802
10803 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
10804 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
10805 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
10806 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
10807 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
10808 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
10809 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
10810 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
10811 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
10812 pages they want to visit.</p>
10813
10814 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
10815 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
10816 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
10817 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
10818 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
10819 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
10820 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
10821 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
10822 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
10823 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
10824 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
10825
10826       </div>
10827       <div class="tags">
10828
10829
10830         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>.
10831
10832
10833       </div>
10834     </div>
10835     <div class="padding"></div>
10836
10837     <div class="entry">
10838       <div class="title">
10839         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
10840       </div>
10841       <div class="date">
10842         27th July 2010
10843       </div>
10844       <div class="body">
10845         <p>I discovered this while doing
10846 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
10847 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
10848 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
10849 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
10850 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
10851
10852 <p>An example is from todays
10853 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
10854 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
10855 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
10856 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
10857 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
10858 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
10859 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
10860
10861 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
10862
10863 <blockquote><pre>
10864 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
10865  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
10866   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
10867 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
10868  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
10869 </pre></blockquote>
10870
10871 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
10872 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
10873 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
10874 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
10875 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
10876 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
10877 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
10878 of dependency loops.</p>
10879
10880 <p>Thanks to
10881 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
10882 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
10883 dependencies
10884 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
10885 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
10886
10887 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
10888 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
10889 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
10890 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
10891 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
10892 it.</p>
10893
10894       </div>
10895       <div class="tags">
10896
10897
10898         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>.
10899
10900
10901       </div>
10902     </div>
10903     <div class="padding"></div>
10904
10905     <div class="entry">
10906       <div class="title">
10907         <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>
10908       </div>
10909       <div class="date">
10910         17th July 2010
10911       </div>
10912       <div class="body">
10913         <p>This is a
10914 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
10915 on my
10916 <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
10917 work</a> on
10918 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
10919 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
10920
10921 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
10922 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
10923 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
10924 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
10925
10926 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
10927 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
10928 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
10929
10930 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
10931
10932 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
10933 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
10934 the web.
10935
10936 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
10937 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
10938 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
10939 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
10940 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
10941 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
10942
10943 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
10944 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
10945 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
10946 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
10947 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
10948 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
10949 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
10950 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
10951 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
10952 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
10953 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
10954 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
10955 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
10956 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
10957 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
10958 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
10959
10960 <blockquote><pre>
10961 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10962   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10963   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10964   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10965   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10966   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10967   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10968
10969 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10970   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10971   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
10972   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
10973   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
10974   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
10975 </pre></blockquote>
10976
10977 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
10978 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
10979 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
10980 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10981 also exist.</p>
10982
10983 <blockquote><pre>
10984 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10985 objectclass: top
10986 objectclass: dnsdomain
10987 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10988 dc: tjener
10989 arecord: 10.0.2.2
10990 associateddomain: tjener.intern
10991
10992 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10993 objectclass: top
10994 objectclass: dnsdomain2
10995 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10996 dc: 2
10997 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
10998 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
10999 </pre></blockquote>
11000
11001 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
11002 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
11003 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
11004 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
11005 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
11006 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
11007 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
11008 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
11009 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
11010 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
11011 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
11012 instead.</p>
11013
11014 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
11015 like this:</p>
11016
11017 <blockquote><pre>
11018 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11019   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11020   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11021   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11022   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11023   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11024
11025 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11026   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
11027 </pre></blockquote>
11028
11029 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
11030 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
11031 reverse lookups.</p>
11032
11033 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
11034 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
11035 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
11036 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
11037
11038 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
11039 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
11040 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
11041
11042 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
11043 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
11044 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
11045 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
11046 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
11047
11048 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
11049 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
11050 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
11051 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
11052 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
11053
11054 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
11055 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
11056 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
11057 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
11058 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
11059 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
11060
11061 <blockquote><pre>
11062 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
11063     SUP top
11064     AUXILIARY
11065     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
11066           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
11067           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
11068           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
11069           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
11070     ))
11071 </pre></blockquote>
11072
11073 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
11074 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
11075 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
11076 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
11077 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
11078 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
11079
11080 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
11081
11082 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
11083 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
11084 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
11085 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
11086 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
11087
11088 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
11089 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
11090 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
11091 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
11092
11093 <blockquote><pre>
11094 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
11095 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
11096 </pre></blockquote>
11097
11098 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
11099 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
11100 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
11101 search result is this entry:</p>
11102
11103 <blockquote><pre>
11104 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11105 cn: dhcp
11106 objectClass: top
11107 objectClass: dhcpServer
11108 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11109 </pre></blockquote>
11110
11111 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
11112 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
11113 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
11114 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
11115 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
11116 The search result is this entry:</p>
11117
11118 <blockquote><pre>
11119 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11120 cn: DHCP Config
11121 objectClass: top
11122 objectClass: dhcpService
11123 objectClass: dhcpOptions
11124 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11125 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
11126 dhcpStatements: authoritative
11127 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
11128 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
11129 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
11130 </pre></blockquote>
11131
11132 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
11133 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
11134 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
11135 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
11136 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
11137 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
11138 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
11139 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
11140 related computer objects.</p>
11141
11142 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
11143 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
11144 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
11145 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
11146 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
11147 like:</p>
11148
11149 <blockquote><pre>
11150 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11151 cn: hostname
11152 objectClass: top
11153 objectClass: dhcpHost
11154 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11155 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
11156 </pre></blockquote>
11157
11158 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
11159 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
11160 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
11161 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
11162 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
11163 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
11164 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
11165 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
11166 structural object class.
11167
11168 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11169
11170 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
11171 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
11172 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
11173 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
11174 in the configuration.</p>
11175
11176 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
11177 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
11178 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
11179 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
11180 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
11181 structure.</p>
11182
11183 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
11184 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
11185
11186 <blockquote><pre>
11187 ou=services
11188   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
11189     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
11190     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11191       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11192         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11193     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11194       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11195         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11196     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
11197       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
11198 </pre></blockquote>
11199
11200 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
11201 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
11202 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
11203 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
11204
11205 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
11206 like this:</p>
11207
11208 <blockquote><pre>
11209 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11210 dc: hostname
11211 objectClass: top
11212 objectClass: dhcpHost
11213 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11214 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
11215 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11216 arecord: 10.11.12.13
11217 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11218 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
11219 </pre></blockquote>
11220
11221 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
11222 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
11223 auxiliary object class.</p>
11224
11225       </div>
11226       <div class="tags">
11227
11228
11229         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>.
11230
11231
11232       </div>
11233     </div>
11234     <div class="padding"></div>
11235
11236     <div class="entry">
11237       <div class="title">
11238         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
11239       </div>
11240       <div class="date">
11241         14th July 2010
11242       </div>
11243       <div class="body">
11244         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
11245 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
11246 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
11247 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
11248 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
11249
11250 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
11251 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
11252
11253 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
11254 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
11255 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
11256 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
11257 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
11258 to a slave DNS server.</p>
11259
11260 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
11261 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
11262 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
11263 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
11264 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
11265 seem to work.</p>
11266
11267 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
11268 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
11269 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
11270 this:</p>
11271
11272 <blockquote><pre>
11273   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11274   cn: hostname
11275   objectClass: dhcphost
11276   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11277   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
11278   associateddomain: hostname.intern
11279   arecord: 10.11.12.13
11280   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11281   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
11282   ldapconfigsound: Y
11283 </pre></blockquote>
11284
11285 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
11286 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
11287 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
11288 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
11289
11290 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
11291 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
11292 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
11293 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
11294 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
11295 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
11296 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
11297 might be a good place to put it.</p>
11298
11299 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11300 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11301
11302       </div>
11303       <div class="tags">
11304
11305
11306         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>.
11307
11308
11309       </div>
11310     </div>
11311     <div class="padding"></div>
11312
11313     <div class="entry">
11314       <div class="title">
11315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
11316       </div>
11317       <div class="date">
11318         11th July 2010
11319       </div>
11320       <div class="body">
11321         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
11322 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
11323 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
11324 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
11325
11326 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
11327 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
11328 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
11329 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
11330 LTSP clients.</p>
11331
11332 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
11333 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
11334 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
11335
11336 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
11337 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
11338 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
11339
11340 <blockquote><pre>
11341 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
11342 #
11343 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
11344 #
11345 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
11346 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
11347 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
11348 #
11349 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
11350 # existence of attribute names.
11351 #
11352 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
11353 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
11354 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
11355 #
11356 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
11357 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
11358 #
11359 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
11360 #     SUP top
11361 #     AUXILIARY
11362 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
11363
11364 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
11365 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
11366     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
11367     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
11368         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
11369         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
11370             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
11371             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
11372             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
11373             # bass value on to clients
11374             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
11375         done
11376     done
11377 fi
11378 </pre></blockquote>
11379
11380 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
11381 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
11382 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
11383 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
11384 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
11385
11386 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11387 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11388
11389 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
11390 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
11391 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
11392 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
11393 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
11394 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
11395
11396       </div>
11397       <div class="tags">
11398
11399
11400         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>.
11401
11402
11403       </div>
11404     </div>
11405     <div class="padding"></div>
11406
11407     <div class="entry">
11408       <div class="title">
11409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11410       </div>
11411       <div class="date">
11412          9th July 2010
11413       </div>
11414       <div class="body">
11415         <p>Since
11416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
11417 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
11418 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
11419 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
11420 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
11421 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
11422 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
11423 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
11424 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
11425 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
11426 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
11427 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
11428 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
11429
11430       </div>
11431       <div class="tags">
11432
11433
11434         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>.
11435
11436
11437       </div>
11438     </div>
11439     <div class="padding"></div>
11440
11441     <div class="entry">
11442       <div class="title">
11443         <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>
11444       </div>
11445       <div class="date">
11446          3rd July 2010
11447       </div>
11448       <div class="body">
11449         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
11450 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
11451 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
11452 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
11453 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
11454 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
11455 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
11456 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
11457
11458 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
11459 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
11460 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
11461 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
11462 publish the difference.</p>
11463
11464 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11465
11466 <blockquote><p>
11467   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11468   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
11469   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
11470   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11471   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
11472   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11473   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
11474   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
11475 </p></blockquote>
11476
11477 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11478
11479 <blockquote><p>
11480   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
11481   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
11482   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
11483   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
11484   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
11485   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
11486   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11487   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
11488   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11489   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11490   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
11491   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
11492   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
11493   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
11494   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
11495   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
11496   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
11497   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
11498   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
11499   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
11500 </p></blockquote>
11501
11502 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11503
11504 <blockquote><p>
11505   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
11506   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
11507   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11508   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11509   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
11510   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
11511   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
11512   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11513   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11514   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11515   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11516   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
11517   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
11518   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
11519   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
11520   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
11521   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
11522   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
11523   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
11524   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
11525   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
11526 </p></blockquote>
11527
11528 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11529
11530 <blockquote><p>
11531   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
11532   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
11533   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
11534 </p></blockquote>
11535
11536 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
11537 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
11538 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
11539 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
11540 the difference somewhat.
11541
11542       </div>
11543       <div class="tags">
11544
11545
11546         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>.
11547
11548
11549       </div>
11550     </div>
11551     <div class="padding"></div>
11552
11553     <div class="entry">
11554       <div class="title">
11555         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11556       </div>
11557       <div class="date">
11558         28th June 2010
11559       </div>
11560       <div class="body">
11561         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
11562 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
11563 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
11564 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
11565 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
11566 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
11567 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
11568 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
11569 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
11570 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
11571
11572 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
11573 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
11574 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
11575 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
11576 released.</p>
11577
11578 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
11579 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
11580 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
11581 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
11582
11583 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
11584 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11585
11586 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
11587 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
11588 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
11589 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
11590 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
11591
11592       </div>
11593       <div class="tags">
11594
11595
11596         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>.
11597
11598
11599       </div>
11600     </div>
11601     <div class="padding"></div>
11602
11603     <div class="entry">
11604       <div class="title">
11605         <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>
11606       </div>
11607       <div class="date">
11608         24th June 2010
11609       </div>
11610       <div class="body">
11611         <p>A while back, I
11612 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
11613 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
11614 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
11615 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
11616
11617 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
11618 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
11619 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
11620 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
11621
11622 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
11623 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
11624 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
11625 Debian Edu.</p>
11626
11627 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
11628 the
11629 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
11630 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
11631 available today from IETF.</p>
11632
11633 <pre>
11634 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
11635 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
11636 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
11637  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
11638         NAME 'dhcpHost'
11639         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
11640 -       SUP top
11641 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
11642         MUST cn
11643         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
11644         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
11645 </pre>
11646
11647 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
11648 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
11649 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
11650
11651 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11652 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11653
11654       </div>
11655       <div class="tags">
11656
11657
11658         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>.
11659
11660
11661       </div>
11662     </div>
11663     <div class="padding"></div>
11664
11665     <div class="entry">
11666       <div class="title">
11667         <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>
11668       </div>
11669       <div class="date">
11670         16th June 2010
11671       </div>
11672       <div class="body">
11673         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
11674 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
11675 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
11676 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
11677 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
11678 this:
11679
11680 <blockquote><pre>
11681 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11682 tasksel --new-install
11683 </pre></blockquote>
11684
11685 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
11686 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
11687 any output what so ever.
11688
11689 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
11690 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
11691 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
11692 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
11693 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
11694 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
11695 code like this:
11696
11697 <blockquote><pre>
11698 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11699 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
11700 $cmd
11701 </pre></blockquote>
11702
11703 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
11704 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
11705 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
11706 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
11707 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
11708 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
11709 installation.</p>
11710
11711 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
11712 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
11713 like this.</p>
11714
11715       </div>
11716       <div class="tags">
11717
11718
11719         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>.
11720
11721
11722       </div>
11723     </div>
11724     <div class="padding"></div>
11725
11726     <div class="entry">
11727       <div class="title">
11728         <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>
11729       </div>
11730       <div class="date">
11731         13th June 2010
11732       </div>
11733       <div class="body">
11734         <p>My
11735 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
11736 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
11737 finally made the upgrade logs available from
11738 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
11739 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
11740 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
11741 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
11742
11743 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
11744 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
11745 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
11746 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
11747 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
11748 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
11749 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
11750 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
11751
11752 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
11753 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
11754 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
11755 too surprising.</p>
11756
11757 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11758 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
11759 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
11760 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11761 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11762 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
11763 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
11764 continue.</p>
11765
11766 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
11767 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11768   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11769   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11770   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11771   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11772   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11773   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11774   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11775   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11776   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11777   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11778   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11779   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11780   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11781   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11782   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11783   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11784   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11785   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11786   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11787   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11788   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11789   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11790   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11791   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11792   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11793   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11794   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11795   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
11796
11797 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
11798
11799 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11800   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11801   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11802   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11803   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11804   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11805   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11806   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11807   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11808   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11809   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11810   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11811   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11812   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11813   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11814   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11815   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11816   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11817   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11818   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11819   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11820   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11821   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11822   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11823   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11824   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11825   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11826   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11827   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11828   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11829   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11830   zip</p>
11831
11832 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
11833
11834 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11835   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11836   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11837   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11838   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11839   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11840   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11841   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11842   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11843   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11844   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11845   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11846   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11847   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11848   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11849   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11850   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11851   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11852   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11853   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11854   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11855   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11856   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11857   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11858   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11859   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11860   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11861   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
11862
11863 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
11864 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11865   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11866   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11867   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11868   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11869   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11870   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11871   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11872   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11873   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11874   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11875   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11876   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11877   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11878   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11879   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11880   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11881   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11882   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11883   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11884   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11885   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11886   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11887   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11888   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11889   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11890   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11891   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11892   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11893   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11894   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11895   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11896   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11897   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11898   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11899   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11900   xulrunner-1.9</p>
11901
11902
11903       </div>
11904       <div class="tags">
11905
11906
11907         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>.
11908
11909
11910       </div>
11911     </div>
11912     <div class="padding"></div>
11913
11914     <div class="entry">
11915       <div class="title">
11916         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
11917       </div>
11918       <div class="date">
11919         11th June 2010
11920       </div>
11921       <div class="body">
11922         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
11923 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
11924 have been discovered and reported in the process
11925 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
11926 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
11927 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
11928 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
11929 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
11930
11931 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
11932 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
11933 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
11934 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
11935 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
11936 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
11937
11938 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
11939 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
11940 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11941 is created.  The bug report
11942 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
11943 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
11944 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
11945 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
11946 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
11947 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
11948 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
11949 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
11950 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
11951 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
11952 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
11953 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
11954 Debian Squeeze.</p>
11955
11956 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
11957 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
11958 trick:</p>
11959
11960 <blockquote><pre>
11961 #!/bin/sh
11962 set -ex
11963
11964 if [ "$1" ] ; then
11965     desktop=$1
11966 else
11967     desktop=gnome
11968 fi
11969
11970 from=lenny
11971 to=squeeze
11972
11973 exec &lt; /dev/null
11974 unset LANG
11975 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
11976 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
11977 fuser -mv .
11978 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
11979 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11980 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
11981 #!/bin/sh
11982 exit 101
11983 EOF
11984 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
11985 exit_cleanup() {
11986     umount $tmpdir/proc
11987 }
11988 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
11989 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
11990 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
11991
11992 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
11993
11994 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
11995 # to return the correct answers.
11996 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
11997     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
11998
11999 # Include the desktop and laptop task
12000 for test in desktop laptop ; do
12001     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
12002 #!/bin/sh
12003 exit 2
12004 EOF
12005     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
12006 done
12007
12008 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12009 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
12010 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
12011 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
12012
12013 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
12014 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12015 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12016 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
12017 fuser -mv
12018 </pre></blockquote>
12019
12020 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
12021 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
12022 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
12023 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
12024 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
12025 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
12026
12027 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
12028 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
12029 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
12030 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
12031 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
12032 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
12033 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
12034
12035 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
12036 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
12037 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
12038 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
12039 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
12040 packages.</p>
12041
12042       </div>
12043       <div class="tags">
12044
12045
12046         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>.
12047
12048
12049       </div>
12050     </div>
12051     <div class="padding"></div>
12052
12053     <div class="entry">
12054       <div class="title">
12055         <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>
12056       </div>
12057       <div class="date">
12058          6th June 2010
12059       </div>
12060       <div class="body">
12061         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
12062 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
12063 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
12064 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
12065 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
12066 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
12067 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
12068
12069 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
12070 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
12071 COLUMNS):</p>
12072
12073 <blockquote><pre>
12074 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
12075 previous=N
12076 PREVLEVEL=
12077 RUNLEVEL=
12078 runlevel=S
12079 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
12080 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
12081 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
12082 </pre></blockquote>
12083
12084 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
12085 script.</p>
12086
12087 <blockquote><pre>
12088 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
12089 previous=N
12090 PREVLEVEL=N
12091 RUNLEVEL=S
12092 runlevel=S
12093 </pre></blockquote>
12094
12095 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
12096 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
12097 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
12098
12099 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
12100 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
12101 choice.</p>
12102
12103       </div>
12104       <div class="tags">
12105
12106
12107         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>.
12108
12109
12110       </div>
12111     </div>
12112     <div class="padding"></div>
12113
12114     <div class="entry">
12115       <div class="title">
12116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
12117       </div>
12118       <div class="date">
12119          6th June 2010
12120       </div>
12121       <div class="body">
12122         <p>Via the
12123 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
12124 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
12125 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
12126 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
12127 following the standards wars of today.</p>
12128
12129       </div>
12130       <div class="tags">
12131
12132
12133         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>.
12134
12135
12136       </div>
12137     </div>
12138     <div class="padding"></div>
12139
12140     <div class="entry">
12141       <div class="title">
12142         <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>
12143       </div>
12144       <div class="date">
12145          3rd June 2010
12146       </div>
12147       <div class="body">
12148         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
12149 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
12150 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
12151 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
12152 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
12153
12154 <blockquote><pre>
12155 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
12156   vendor                    count
12157   Dell Computer Corporation     1
12158     PowerEdge 1750              1
12159   IBM                           1
12160     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
12161   Intel                         2
12162   [no-dmi-info]                 3
12163 maintainer:~#
12164 </pre></blockquote>
12165
12166 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
12167 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
12168 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
12169 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
12170 option to list the individual machines.</p>
12171
12172 <p>A larger list is
12173 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
12174 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
12175 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
12176 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
12177 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
12178 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
12179 collector.</p>
12180
12181       </div>
12182       <div class="tags">
12183
12184
12185         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>.
12186
12187
12188       </div>
12189     </div>
12190     <div class="padding"></div>
12191
12192     <div class="entry">
12193       <div class="title">
12194         <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>
12195       </div>
12196       <div class="date">
12197          1st June 2010
12198       </div>
12199       <div class="body">
12200         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
12201 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
12202 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
12203 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
12204 wait.</p>
12205
12206 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
12207 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
12208 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
12209 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
12210 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
12211 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
12212
12213 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
12214 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
12215 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
12216 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
12217 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
12218 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
12219 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
12220 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
12221
12222 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
12223
12224       </div>
12225       <div class="tags">
12226
12227
12228         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>.
12229
12230
12231       </div>
12232     </div>
12233     <div class="padding"></div>
12234
12235     <div class="entry">
12236       <div class="title">
12237         <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>
12238       </div>
12239       <div class="date">
12240         27th May 2010
12241       </div>
12242       <div class="body">
12243         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
12244 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
12245 issues are known and should be solved:
12246
12247 <p><ul>
12248
12249 <li>The wicd package seen to
12250 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
12251 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
12252 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
12253 seem to be on the case.</li>
12254
12255 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
12256 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
12257 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
12258 maintainer is on the case.</li>
12259
12260 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
12261 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
12262 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
12263 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
12264 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
12265 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
12266 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
12267 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
12268
12269 </ul></p>
12270
12271 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
12272 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
12273 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
12274 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
12275
12276 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12277 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12278 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12279 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12280
12281 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
12282
12283       </div>
12284       <div class="tags">
12285
12286
12287         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>.
12288
12289
12290       </div>
12291     </div>
12292     <div class="padding"></div>
12293
12294     <div class="entry">
12295       <div class="title">
12296         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
12297       </div>
12298       <div class="date">
12299         22nd May 2010
12300       </div>
12301       <div class="body">
12302         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
12303 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
12304 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
12305 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
12306
12307 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
12308 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
12309 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
12310 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
12311 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
12312 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
12313 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
12314 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
12315 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
12316 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
12317 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
12318 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
12319 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
12320 going to work.</p>
12321
12322 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
12323 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
12324 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
12325 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
12326 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
12327 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
12328 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
12329 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
12330 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
12331 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
12332 Edu.</p>
12333
12334 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
12335 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
12336 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
12337 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
12338 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
12339 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
12340
12341 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
12342 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
12343
12344       </div>
12345       <div class="tags">
12346
12347
12348         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>.
12349
12350
12351       </div>
12352     </div>
12353     <div class="padding"></div>
12354
12355     <div class="entry">
12356       <div class="title">
12357         <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>
12358       </div>
12359       <div class="date">
12360         14th May 2010
12361       </div>
12362       <div class="body">
12363         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
12364 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
12365 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
12366 expected, if I am to believe the
12367 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12368 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
12369 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
12370 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
12371 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
12372 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
12373 version.</p>
12374
12375 More information about
12376 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12377 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
12378 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
12379 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12380
12381 <blockquote><pre>
12382 CONCURRENCY=none
12383 </pre></blockquote>
12384
12385 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12386 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12387 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12388 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12389
12390       </div>
12391       <div class="tags">
12392
12393
12394         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>.
12395
12396
12397       </div>
12398     </div>
12399     <div class="padding"></div>
12400
12401     <div class="entry">
12402       <div class="title">
12403         <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>
12404       </div>
12405       <div class="date">
12406         14th May 2010
12407       </div>
12408       <div class="body">
12409         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
12410 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
12411 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
12412 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
12413 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
12414 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
12415 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
12416 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
12417
12418 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
12419 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
12420 this on the collector host:</p>
12421
12422 <blockquote><pre>
12423 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
12424 </pre></blockquote>
12425
12426 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
12427 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
12428
12429 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
12430 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
12431 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
12432 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
12433 written yet.</p>
12434
12435       </div>
12436       <div class="tags">
12437
12438
12439         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>.
12440
12441
12442       </div>
12443     </div>
12444     <div class="padding"></div>
12445
12446     <div class="entry">
12447       <div class="title">
12448         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
12449       </div>
12450       <div class="date">
12451         13th May 2010
12452       </div>
12453       <div class="body">
12454         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
12455 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
12456 has been
12457 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
12458
12459 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
12460 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
12461 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
12462 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
12463 based boot system.  Tollef is
12464 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
12465 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
12466 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
12467 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
12468 at the moment do not.</p>
12469
12470 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
12471 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
12472 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
12473 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
12474 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
12475 way forward.</p>
12476
12477 <p>In the mean time, based on the
12478 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12479 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
12480 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
12481 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
12482 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
12483 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
12484 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
12485 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
12486
12487       </div>
12488       <div class="tags">
12489
12490
12491         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>.
12492
12493
12494       </div>
12495     </div>
12496     <div class="padding"></div>
12497
12498     <div class="entry">
12499       <div class="title">
12500         <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>
12501       </div>
12502       <div class="date">
12503          6th May 2010
12504       </div>
12505       <div class="body">
12506         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
12507 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
12508 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
12509 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
12510 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12511 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
12512 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12513
12514 <blockquote><pre>
12515 CONCURRENCY=makefile
12516 </pre></blockquote>
12517
12518 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
12519 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
12520 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
12521 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
12522 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
12523 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
12524 make this happen.</p>
12525
12526 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
12527 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
12528 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
12529 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
12530 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
12531
12532 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
12533 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
12534 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
12535 fix the remaining issues.</p>
12536
12537 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12538 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12539 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12540 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12541
12542       </div>
12543       <div class="tags">
12544
12545
12546         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>.
12547
12548
12549       </div>
12550     </div>
12551     <div class="padding"></div>
12552
12553     <div class="entry">
12554       <div class="title">
12555         <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>
12556       </div>
12557       <div class="date">
12558         27th July 2009
12559       </div>
12560       <div class="body">
12561         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
12562 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
12563 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
12564 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
12565 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
12566 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
12567 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
12568
12569 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
12570 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
12571 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
12572
12573       </div>
12574       <div class="tags">
12575
12576
12577         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>.
12578
12579
12580       </div>
12581     </div>
12582     <div class="padding"></div>
12583
12584     <div class="entry">
12585       <div class="title">
12586         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
12587       </div>
12588       <div class="date">
12589         22nd July 2009
12590       </div>
12591       <div class="body">
12592         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
12593 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
12594 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
12595 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
12596 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
12597 the package up to date.</p>
12598
12599 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
12600 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
12601 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
12602 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
12603 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
12604 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
12605 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
12606 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
12607 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
12608 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
12609 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
12610 working on the future release.</p>
12611
12612 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
12613 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
12614
12615       </div>
12616       <div class="tags">
12617
12618
12619         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>.
12620
12621
12622       </div>
12623     </div>
12624     <div class="padding"></div>
12625
12626     <div class="entry">
12627       <div class="title">
12628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
12629       </div>
12630       <div class="date">
12631         24th June 2009
12632       </div>
12633       <div class="body">
12634         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
12635 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
12636 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
12637 funded
12638 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
12639 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
12640 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
12641 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
12642 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
12643 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
12644
12645 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
12646 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
12647 boot:</p>
12648
12649 <ul>
12650
12651 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
12652
12653 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
12654    clock is in UTC.</li>
12655
12656 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
12657    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12658    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
12659
12660 </ul>
12661
12662 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
12663 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
12664 Villegas</a>.
12665
12666 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
12667 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
12668 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
12669 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
12670 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
12671 using this.</p>
12672
12673 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
12674 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
12675 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
12676 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
12677 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
12678 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
12679 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
12680
12681       </div>
12682       <div class="tags">
12683
12684
12685         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>.
12686
12687
12688       </div>
12689     </div>
12690     <div class="padding"></div>
12691
12692     <div class="entry">
12693       <div class="title">
12694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
12695       </div>
12696       <div class="date">
12697         17th May 2009
12698       </div>
12699       <div class="body">
12700         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
12701 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
12702 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
12703 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
12704 dager siden kom
12705 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
12706 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
12707 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
12708 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
12709 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
12710
12711 <blockquote>
12712 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
12713 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
12714 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
12715 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
12716 </blockquote>
12717
12718 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
12719 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
12720 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
12721 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
12722 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
12723
12724 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
12725 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
12726 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
12727
12728       </div>
12729       <div class="tags">
12730
12731
12732         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
12733
12734
12735       </div>
12736     </div>
12737     <div class="padding"></div>
12738
12739     <div class="entry">
12740       <div class="title">
12741         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
12742       </div>
12743       <div class="date">
12744          7th May 2009
12745       </div>
12746       <div class="body">
12747         <p>Kom over
12748 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
12749 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
12750 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
12751 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
12752 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
12753 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
12754 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
12755
12756       </div>
12757       <div class="tags">
12758
12759
12760         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12761
12762
12763       </div>
12764     </div>
12765     <div class="padding"></div>
12766
12767     <div class="entry">
12768       <div class="title">
12769         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
12770       </div>
12771       <div class="date">
12772          2nd May 2009
12773       </div>
12774       <div class="body">
12775         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
12776 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
12777 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
12778 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
12779 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
12780 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
12781 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
12782 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
12783 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
12784 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
12785 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
12786 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
12787 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
12788 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
12789 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
12790 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
12791 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
12792 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
12793 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
12794 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
12795
12796 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
12797 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
12798 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
12799 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
12800 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
12801 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
12802 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
12803 betydelige.</p>
12804
12805       </div>
12806       <div class="tags">
12807
12808
12809         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
12810
12811
12812       </div>
12813     </div>
12814     <div class="padding"></div>
12815
12816     <div class="entry">
12817       <div class="title">
12818         <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>
12819       </div>
12820       <div class="date">
12821          2nd May 2009
12822       </div>
12823       <div class="body">
12824         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
12825 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
12826 do not yet know them.</p>
12827
12828 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
12829 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
12830 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
12831 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
12832 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
12833 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
12834 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
12835 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
12836 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
12837 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
12838 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
12839
12840 <p>The second one is
12841 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
12842 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
12843 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
12844 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
12845 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
12846 and the company behind it is running
12847 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
12848 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
12849 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
12850 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
12851 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
12852 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
12853 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
12854 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
12855
12856 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
12857 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
12858 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
12859 surrounded by today.</p>
12860
12861       </div>
12862       <div class="tags">
12863
12864
12865         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>.
12866
12867
12868       </div>
12869     </div>
12870     <div class="padding"></div>
12871
12872     <div class="entry">
12873       <div class="title">
12874         <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>
12875       </div>
12876       <div class="date">
12877         28th April 2009
12878       </div>
12879       <div class="body">
12880         <p>Julien Blache
12881 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
12882 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
12883 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
12884 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
12885 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
12886 properties.</p>
12887
12888       </div>
12889       <div class="tags">
12890
12891
12892         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>.
12893
12894
12895       </div>
12896     </div>
12897     <div class="padding"></div>
12898
12899     <div class="entry">
12900       <div class="title">
12901         <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>
12902       </div>
12903       <div class="date">
12904         30th March 2009
12905       </div>
12906       <div class="body">
12907         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
12908 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
12909 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
12910 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
12911 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
12912 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
12913 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
12914 application.</p>
12915
12916 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
12917 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
12918 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
12919 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
12920 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
12921 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
12922 blocked from doing so.</p>
12923
12924 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
12925 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
12926 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
12927 requirements change.</p>
12928
12929 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
12930 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
12931 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
12932
12933       </div>
12934       <div class="tags">
12935
12936
12937         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>.
12938
12939
12940       </div>
12941     </div>
12942     <div class="padding"></div>
12943
12944     <div class="entry">
12945       <div class="title">
12946         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
12947       </div>
12948       <div class="date">
12949         29th March 2009
12950       </div>
12951       <div class="body">
12952         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
12953 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
12954 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
12955 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
12956 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
12957 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
12958 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
12959 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
12960 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
12961 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
12962 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
12963 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
12964 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
12965 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
12966 now. :)</p>
12967
12968       </div>
12969       <div class="tags">
12970
12971
12972         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>.
12973
12974
12975       </div>
12976     </div>
12977     <div class="padding"></div>
12978
12979     <div class="entry">
12980       <div class="title">
12981         <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>
12982       </div>
12983       <div class="date">
12984         29th March 2009
12985       </div>
12986       <div class="body">
12987         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
12988 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
12989 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
12990 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
12991 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
12992 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
12993
12994 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
12995 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
12996 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
12997 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
12998 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
12999 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
13000 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
13001 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
13002 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
13003 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
13004 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
13005 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
13006 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
13007
13008 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
13009 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
13010 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
13011 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
13012
13013 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
13014 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
13015
13016 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
13017 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
13018 new IETF work group?</p>
13019
13020       </div>
13021       <div class="tags">
13022
13023
13024         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>.
13025
13026
13027       </div>
13028     </div>
13029     <div class="padding"></div>
13030
13031     <div class="entry">
13032       <div class="title">
13033         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
13034       </div>
13035       <div class="date">
13036         15th February 2009
13037       </div>
13038       <div class="body">
13039         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
13040 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
13041 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
13042 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
13043 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
13044 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
13045 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
13046 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
13047 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
13048 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
13049 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
13050 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
13051
13052       </div>
13053       <div class="tags">
13054
13055
13056         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
13057
13058
13059       </div>
13060     </div>
13061     <div class="padding"></div>
13062
13063     <div class="entry">
13064       <div class="title">
13065         <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>
13066       </div>
13067       <div class="date">
13068          7th December 2008
13069       </div>
13070       <div class="body">
13071         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13072 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13073 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13074 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
13075 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13076 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
13077 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13078 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
13079
13080 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13081 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13082 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13083 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
13084 of these cards.</p>
13085
13086       </div>
13087       <div class="tags">
13088
13089
13090         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>.
13091
13092
13093       </div>
13094     </div>
13095     <div class="padding"></div>
13096
13097     <div class="entry">
13098       <div class="title">
13099         <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>
13100       </div>
13101       <div class="date">
13102         25th November 2008
13103       </div>
13104       <div class="body">
13105         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
13106 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
13107 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
13108 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
13109 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
13110 notes are available on
13111 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
13112 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
13113 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
13114 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
13115 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
13116 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
13117 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
13118 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
13119 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
13120
13121 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
13122 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
13123
13124       </div>
13125       <div class="tags">
13126
13127
13128         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>.
13129
13130
13131       </div>
13132     </div>
13133     <div class="padding"></div>
13134
13135     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
13136     <div id="sidebar">
13137
13138
13139
13140 <h2>Archive</h2>
13141 <ul>
13142
13143 <li>2018
13144 <ul>
13145
13146 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (1)</a></li>
13147
13148 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (5)</a></li>
13149
13150 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (5)</a></li>
13151
13152 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13153
13154 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13155
13156 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (3)</a></li>
13157
13158 </ul></li>
13159
13160 <li>2017
13161 <ul>
13162
13163 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
13164
13165 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13166
13167 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
13168
13169 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
13170
13171 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
13172
13173 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
13174
13175 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
13176
13177 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
13178
13179 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
13180
13181 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13182
13183 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (4)</a></li>
13184
13185 </ul></li>
13186
13187 <li>2016
13188 <ul>
13189
13190 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
13191
13192 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
13193
13194 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13195
13196 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
13197
13198 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
13199
13200 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13201
13202 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13203
13204 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
13205
13206 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
13207
13208 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
13209
13210 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
13211
13212 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
13213
13214 </ul></li>
13215
13216 <li>2015
13217 <ul>
13218
13219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13220
13221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13222
13223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
13224
13225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
13226
13227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13228
13229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
13230
13231 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
13232
13233 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
13234
13235 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
13236
13237 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13238
13239 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
13240
13241 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13242
13243 </ul></li>
13244
13245 <li>2014
13246 <ul>
13247
13248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13249
13250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13251
13252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
13253
13254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13255
13256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
13257
13258 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13259
13260 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13261
13262 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
13263
13264 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
13265
13266 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
13267
13268 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13269
13270 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
13271
13272 </ul></li>
13273
13274 <li>2013
13275 <ul>
13276
13277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
13278
13279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
13280
13281 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
13282
13283 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
13284
13285 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13286
13287 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
13288
13289 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13290
13291 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13292
13293 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
13294
13295 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
13296
13297 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
13298
13299 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13300
13301 </ul></li>
13302
13303 <li>2012
13304 <ul>
13305
13306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13307
13308 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
13309
13310 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
13311
13312 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
13313
13314 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
13315
13316 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
13317
13318 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
13319
13320 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13321
13322 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
13323
13324 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
13325
13326 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
13327
13328 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13329
13330 </ul></li>
13331
13332 <li>2011
13333 <ul>
13334
13335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
13336
13337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13338
13339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
13340
13341 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13342
13343 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13344
13345 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13346
13347 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13348
13349 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13350
13351 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
13352
13353 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13354
13355 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13356
13357 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
13358
13359 </ul></li>
13360
13361 <li>2010
13362 <ul>
13363
13364 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13365
13366 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
13367
13368 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13369
13370 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13371
13372 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13373
13374 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
13375
13376 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
13377
13378 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
13379
13380 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
13381
13382 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13383
13384 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
13385
13386 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
13387
13388 </ul></li>
13389
13390 <li>2009
13391 <ul>
13392
13393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
13394
13395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
13396
13397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
13398
13399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
13400
13401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13402
13403 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
13404
13405 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
13406
13407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13408
13409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
13410
13411 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13412
13413 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13414
13415 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13416
13417 </ul></li>
13418
13419 <li>2008
13420 <ul>
13421
13422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
13423
13424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13425
13426 </ul></li>
13427
13428 </ul>
13429
13430
13431
13432 <h2>Tags</h2>
13433 <ul>
13434
13435  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (16)</a></li>
13436
13437  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
13438
13439  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
13440
13441  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
13442
13443  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
13444
13445  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (17)</a></li>
13446
13447  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
13448
13449  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
13450
13451  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (159)</a></li>
13452
13453  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
13454
13455  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (4)</a></li>
13456
13457  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
13458
13459  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (17)</a></li>
13460
13461  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (25)</a></li>
13462
13463  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
13464
13465  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (377)</a></li>
13466
13467  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
13468
13469  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (13)</a></li>
13470
13471  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (32)</a></li>
13472
13473  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
13474
13475  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
13476
13477  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
13478
13479  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
13480
13481  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (16)</a></li>
13482
13483  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (20)</a></li>
13484
13485  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
13486
13487  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (4)</a></li>
13488
13489  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
13490
13491  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
13492
13493  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
13494
13495  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
13496
13497  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (41)</a></li>
13498
13499  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (10)</a></li>
13500
13501  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (299)</a></li>
13502
13503  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (190)</a></li>
13504
13505  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (33)</a></li>
13506
13507  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
13508
13509  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (71)</a></li>
13510
13511  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (107)</a></li>
13512
13513  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (2)</a></li>
13514
13515  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
13516
13517  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
13518
13519  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
13520
13521  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
13522
13523  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
13524
13525  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (6)</a></li>
13526
13527  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
13528
13529  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (54)</a></li>
13530
13531  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
13532
13533  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
13534
13535  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (55)</a></li>
13536
13537  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (6)</a></li>
13538
13539  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (12)</a></li>
13540
13541  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (55)</a></li>
13542
13543  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (4)</a></li>
13544
13545  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
13546
13547  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
13548
13549  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (11)</a></li>
13550
13551  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (65)</a></li>
13552
13553  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
13554
13555  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (41)</a></li>
13556
13557 </ul>
13558
13559
13560     </div>
13561     <p style="text-align: right">
13562  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
13563 </p>
13564
13565   </body>
13566 </html>