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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "english".
</h3>
25 <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>
31 <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
32 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
33 democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.
</p>
35 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
36 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
37 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
38 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
39 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
40 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
41 to the people peeking on the wire. I
42 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
43 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October
</a> and got a
44 lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
45 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
46 documented by Johannes Berg as early as
2006, and both
47 <a href=
"https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
48 Mailpile
</a> and
<a href=
"http://dee.su/cables">the Cables
</a> systems
49 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.
</p>
51 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
52 providing the SMTP protocol on port
25, and use email addresses
53 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
54 the connections to port
25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
55 go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
56 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
57 emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
58 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
59 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
60 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
62 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
63 source code for the Debian package
</a> is available from github. I
64 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
67 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
68 mail system installed (or run
<tt>apt-get purge exim4-config
</tt> to
69 get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
70 above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
71 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service
</tt> and follow
72 the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
73 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
77 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
78 --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
79 </pre></blockquote></p>
81 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
82 address with your own address to test your server. :)
</p>
84 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
85 easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
86 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
87 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
88 architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
89 to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
90 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
91 no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
92 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
93 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
96 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
97 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
</tt> mail address, deliverable over
104 Tags:
<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>.
109 <div class=
"padding"></div>
113 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)
</a>
119 <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
121 <a href=
"https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
122 announcement
</a>:
</p>
125 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
126 Jessie
8.0+edu0~alpha0
128 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
129 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
130 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
131 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
132 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
133 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
134 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
136 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
137 installation instructions are available, including detailed
138 instructions in the manual[
1] explaining the first steps, such as
139 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
140 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
141 of at least
5 characters!
143 [
1]
<URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie
</a> >
145 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
146 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
147 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
148 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
149 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
151 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
152 mostly in Germany and Norway.
154 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
155 ===============================
157 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[
2], is a Linux distribution based
158 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
159 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
160 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
161 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
162 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
163 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
164 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
165 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
166 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
167 services. The desktop contains more than
60 educational software
168 packages[
3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
169 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
172 [
2]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/
</a> >
173 [
3]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html
</a> >
175 Full release notes and manual
176 =============================
178 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
179 and bugfixes of Debian Edu
8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
180 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[
4] for
181 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
182 available, see the manual translation overview[
5].
184 [
4]
<URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features
</a> >
185 [
5]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/
</a> >
190 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (
624 MiB) you can use
192 *
<a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso
</a>
193 *
<a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso
</a>
194 * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-
8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
196 The SHA1SUM of this image is:
361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
198 New features for Debian Edu
8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released
2014-
10-
27
199 ===============================================================================
205 * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
210 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie
8.0, eg:
212 * Linux kernel
3.16.x
213 * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma"
4.11.12, GNOME
3.14, Xfce
4.10,
214 LXDE
0.5.6 and MATE
1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
215 choose one of the others see manual.)
216 * the browsers Iceweasel
31 ESR and Chromium
38
220 * CUPS print system
1.7.5
221 * new boot framework: systemd
222 * Educational toolbox GCompris
14.07
223 * Music creator Rosegarden
14.02
224 * Image editor Gimp
2.8.14
225 * Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.13.0
228 * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
229 * Debian Jessie includes about
42000 packages available for
231 * More information about Debian Jessie
8.0 is provided in the release
232 notes[
6] and the installation manual[
7].
234 [
6]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
</a> >
235 [
7]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
</a> >
240 * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
241 DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
242 information is corrected (Debian bug #
710362)
245 Documentation and translation updates
246 -------------------------------------
248 * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
249 Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
250 Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
255 * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
256 server takes more time.
257 * To manage printers localhost:
631 has to be used, currently www:
631
260 Regressions / known problems
261 ----------------------------
263 * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
264 exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #
765694
265 and Debian bug #
762103).
266 * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
267 #
764594). The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
268 * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
269 work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
270 Will be fixed when Debian bug #
766960 is fixed in Jessie.
272 See the status page[
8] for the complete list.
274 [
8]
<URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie
</a> >
279 <URL:
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a> >
284 The Debian Project was founded in
1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
285 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
286 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
287 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
288 maintain Debian software. Available in
70 languages, and supporting a
289 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
293 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[
9] or send
294 mail to press@debian.org.
296 [
9]
<URL:
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a> >
303 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
308 <div class=
"padding"></div>
312 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic
</a>
318 <p>I spent last weekend at
<a href=
"http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
319 Nordic
</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
320 the surrounding countries. I had volunteered on behalf of the
321 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
322 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
323 a row. There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
324 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
325 <a href=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch
</a>, a
326 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
329 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
330 around
180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
331 <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
332 public
</a> on the MakerConNordic account. The videos have the license
333 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
334 <a href=
"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
335 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår
3.0 Norge
</a>. Many great
336 talks available. Check it out! :)
</p>
342 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
347 <div class=
"padding"></div>
351 <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>
357 <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
358 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
359 operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
360 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
361 and various options for each email address. This take a while for
362 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
363 job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
364 <a href=
"http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
365 listadmin program
</a>. It allow you to check lists for new messages
366 to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
367 lists I recently took over:
</p>
370 % time listadmin xiph
371 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
372 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
378 </pre></blockquote></p>
380 <p>In
1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
381 there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
382 currently moderate
68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
383 minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
384 ago, there were
400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
385 less than
15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
389 <a href=
"https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
390 package
</a> from Debian and create a file
<tt>~/.listadmin.ini
</tt>
391 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:
</p>
394 username username@example.org
397 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
400 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
401 mailman-list@lists.example.com
404 other-list@otherserver.example.org
405 </pre></blockquote></p>
407 <p>There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
408 learn the details.
</p>
410 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
411 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
412 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
413 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:
</p>
416 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=
0 listadmin
417 </pre></blockquote></p>
419 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
420 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
421 initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
422 lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
423 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
426 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of
68
427 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
428 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
429 time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
432 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
433 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
434 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
436 <p>Update
2014-
10-
27: Added missing 'username' statement in
437 configuration example. Also, I've been told that the
438 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=
0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
445 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
450 <div class=
"padding"></div>
454 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation
</a>
460 <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
461 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
462 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
463 Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
464 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
465 package
</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
466 to do this using simple preseeding.
</p>
468 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
469 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
470 the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
471 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
474 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
475 values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
476 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
477 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
478 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
479 isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
480 for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
481 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
482 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
483 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.
</p>
485 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
486 most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
487 the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
488 hardware it is the only option in Debian.
</p>
490 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
491 firmware installed automatically by the installer:
</p>
494 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
495 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
496 </pre></blockquote></p>
498 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
499 both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
500 do not work well, so use version
0.15 or later. Installing both
501 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
502 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
503 and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
504 default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
505 implemented in the package currently in unstable.
</p>
507 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
508 this recipe work for you. :)
</p>
510 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
511 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
512 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
513 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
514 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):
</p>
517 Task: isenkram-packages
519 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
520 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
522 Test-new-install: show show
524 Packages: for-current-hardware
526 Task: isenkram-firmware
528 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
529 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
530 packages are proposed.
531 Test-new-install: mark show
533 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
534 </pre></blockquote></p>
536 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
537 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
538 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
539 list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
540 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
547 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
548 </pre></blockquote></p>
550 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
551 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)
</p>
553 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
554 installed, run
<tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
555 --new-install
</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
558 <p><a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu
</a> will be
559 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
560 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.
</p>
566 Tags:
<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>.
571 <div class=
"padding"></div>
575 <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>
581 <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
582 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
583 with Linux kernel
3.2.0-
23 (ie probably version
12.04 LTS) was stuck
584 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:
</p>
586 <p align=
"center"><img width=
"70%" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
588 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
589 about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
590 <a href=
"http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal
</a>.
</p>
596 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
601 <div class=
"padding"></div>
605 <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>
611 <p>The
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project
</a>
612 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
613 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
614 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
618 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
619 new lsdvd release
</a>, available in git or from
620 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
621 download page
</a>. This is the changelog dated
2014-
10-
03 for version
626 <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks
</li>
627 <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
628 non-existant, to work around additional copy protection
</li>
629 <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles
</li>
630 <li>Fix pallete display of first entry
</li>
631 <li>Fix include orders
</li>
632 <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway
</li>
633 <li>Fix the chapter count
</li>
634 <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
635 the palette size is the same.
</li>
636 <li>Fix array printing.
</li>
637 <li>Correct subsecond calculations.
</li>
638 <li>Add sector information to the output format.
</li>
639 <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
640 with more GCC compiler warnings.
</li>
644 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
645 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
646 project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)
</p>
652 Tags:
<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>.
657 <div class=
"padding"></div>
661 <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>
667 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
668 project
</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
669 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
670 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
671 boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
672 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
673 to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
674 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
675 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
677 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
678 status
</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
679 work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
680 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
681 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.
</p>
683 <p>First, download the test ISO via
684 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp
</a>,
685 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http
</a>
687 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-
1.iso).
688 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
689 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
690 install with some tweaking.
</p>
692 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
693 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run
</p>
696 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
697 </pre></blockquote></p>
699 <p>and add 'exit
0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
700 optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
701 and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
702 due to a known bug in eatmydata.
</p>
704 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
705 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
706 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
709 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
710 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
711 education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
712 or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
713 metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
714 graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
715 once the education-tasks package version
1.801 enter testing in two
718 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
719 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
720 update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
721 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
722 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
723 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
724 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
725 provided in bug
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#
702711</a>.
726 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.
</p>
728 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
729 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
730 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.
</p>
736 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>.
741 <div class=
"padding"></div>
745 <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>
751 <p>I use the
<a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool
</a>
752 to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
753 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
754 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
755 any new development since
2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
756 its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
757 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
758 project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
759 get
<a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
760 into Debian
</a>. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
761 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
762 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
763 over. And yesterday, I became project admin.
</p>
765 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
766 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
767 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
768 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
769 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
770 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
771 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
772 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source
</a> and join
773 <a href=
"https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
780 Tags:
<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>.
785 <div class=
"padding"></div>
789 <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>
795 <p>The
<a href=
"https://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> installer could be
796 a lot quicker. When we install more than
2000 packages in
797 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> using
798 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
799 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
800 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #
613428</a> about too
801 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
802 responsible for unpacking the binary packages. Other parts (like code
803 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
804 installation. All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
805 me. If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
806 to salvage the half installed system. So the failure sync-ing is
807 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
808 relevant while the installer is running.
</p>
810 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
811 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
812 change the code in several packages. The idea is not new, but I have
813 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before. It
814 depend on the small and clever package
815 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata
</a>, which
816 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
817 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
818 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly. Instead of
819 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
820 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
821 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
822 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
823 "eatmydata
$program
$@", to get the same effect.
824 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
825 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.
</p>
827 <p>The effect was stunning. In my first test it reduced the running
828 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from
64 to less than
44
829 minutes (
20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
830 Latitude D505 machine. I am not quite sure what the optimised time
831 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
832 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
833 installation. As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
834 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
835 installation. I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
836 and got these results. The time measured is the time stamp in
837 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
838 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
839 yourself. In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
840 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
846 <th>Machine/setup
</th>
847 <th>Original tasksel
</th>
848 <th>Optimised tasksel
</th>
853 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE
</td>
854 <td>64 min (
07:
46-
08:
50)
</td>
855 <td><44 min (
11:
27-
12:
11)
</td>
860 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE
</td>
861 <td>57 min (
08:
48-
09:
45)
</td>
862 <td>34 min (
07:
43-
08:
17)
</td>
867 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal
</td>
868 <td>22 min (
10:
37-
10:
59)
</td>
869 <td>11 min (
11:
16-
11:
27)
</td>
874 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal
</td>
875 <td>6 min (
08:
19-
08:
25)
</td>
876 <td>4 min (
08:
04-
08:
08)
</td>
881 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE
</td>
882 <td>19 min (
09:
21-
09:
40)
</td>
883 <td>15 min (
10:
25-
10:
40)
</td>
889 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
890 time is spent downloading packages. The connection to the Internet
891 was
100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
892 significant factor in the measurement. Download typically took a few
893 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
896 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
897 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
898 Installer
</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
899 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
900 installation. I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
901 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
902 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
903 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO. The
904 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
905 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i. If the code is
906 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
907 for the entire installation.
</p>
909 <p>I've implemented this in the
910 <a href=
"https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install
</a>
911 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
912 Debian Edu installation. If you want to test this yourself, you can
913 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb). One shell script
914 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:
</p>
919 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
921 logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
924 logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
927 apt-install eatmydata || true
928 if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
929 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
931 # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
932 if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
933 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
934 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
936 chmod
755 /target$file.edu
937 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
938 --rename --quiet --add $file
939 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
941 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
945 error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
950 </pre></blockquote></p>
952 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
953 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
957 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
959 logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
961 remove_install_override() {
962 for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
964 if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
966 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
967 --rename --quiet --remove $file
970 error "Missing divert for $file."
973 sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
976 remove_install_override
977 </pre></blockquote></p>
979 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
980 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
981 finish-install.d scripts.
</p>
983 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
984 Debian installer too? I suspect it should, but am not sure the
985 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough. It also
986 depend on the side effects of the change. I'm not aware of any, but I
987 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
988 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
989 fsync() having effect? Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
990 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
993 <p>Update
2014-
09-
24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
994 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
995 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #
702711</a>. An updated
996 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.
</p>
998 <p>Update
2014-
10-
17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
999 the optimization work again. And I have discovered that the
1000 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
1001 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package. See
1002 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.
</p>
1004 <p>Update
2014-
11-
11: Unfortunately, a new
1005 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org765738">bug #
765738</a> in eatmydata only
1006 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
1007 optimization again. If
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
1008 request
768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.
</p>
1014 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>.
1019 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1023 <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>
1029 <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
1030 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> about
1031 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
1032 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net
</a>, and was very happy to
1033 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
1034 use when looking for peoples public key. So far I have used
1035 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
1036 were misbehaving, but those days are ended. The servers I have used
1037 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable. I hope
1038 those problems are gone now.
</p>
1040 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
1041 <a href=
"https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net
</a> service
1042 there is a pool of more than
100 keyservers which are checked every
1043 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date. It must be
1044 better than what I have used so far. :)
</p>
1046 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
1047 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
1048 not seem to be used in Debian. Perhaps it should?
</p>
1050 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
1053 <p><blockquote><pre>
1054 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
1055 </pre></blockquote></p>
1057 <p>With GnuPG version
2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
1058 entries in DNS. Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
1059 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
1060 keyserver automatically should their need it:
</p>
1062 <p><blockquote><pre>
1063 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
1064 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record
0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
1066 </pre></blockquote></p>
1069 <a href=
"http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
1070 HKP lookup protocol
</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
1071 very happy. It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
1072 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
1073 another key. Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
1074 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
1075 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
1076 This is as far as I can tell not possible today. Perhaps something
1077 for a future version of the protocol?
</p>
1083 Tags:
<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>.
1088 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1092 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H
.264 video in Norway?
</a>
1098 <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
1099 to use or publish a video in H
.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
1100 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
1101 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
1102 agreement with
<a href=
"http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA
</a>. If one
1103 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
1104 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
1105 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license. I
1107 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
1108 then
</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
1109 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
1110 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
1111 LA. The issue is not limited to those two products, though. Other
1112 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
1113 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple. The complicating
1114 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
1115 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
1118 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
1119 <a href=
"http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
1121 <a href=
"http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
1122 text
</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):
</p>
1125 <p>18.2. MPEG-
4. MPEG-
4 technology may be included with the
1126 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:
</p>
1128 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-
4 visual patent portfolio
1129 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
1130 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-
4 visual standard (“MPEG-
4
1131 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-
4 video that was encoded by a
1132 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
1133 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-
4
1134 video. No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
1135 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
1136 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
1137 LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
1138 the MPEG-
4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
1139 with the MPEG-
4 systems standard, except that an additional license
1140 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
1141 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
1142 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
1143 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
1144 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
1145 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.
</p>
1147 <p>18.3. H
.264/AVC. H
.264/AVC technology may be included with the
1148 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:
</p>
1150 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
1151 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
1152 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
1153 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
1154 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
1155 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
1156 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
1157 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.
</p>
1160 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
1161 personal or non-commercial purposes.
</p>
1163 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
1164 <a href=
"http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms
</a>:
</p>
1168 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-
4 Video
1169 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
1170 MPEG-
4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
1171 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
1172 with the MPEG-
4 visual standard (“MPEG-
4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
1173 MPEG-
4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
1174 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
1175 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-
4 video. No license is granted or
1176 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
1177 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
1178 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
1179 http://www.mpegla.com.
</p>
1181 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-
4
1182 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-
4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
1183 MPEG-
4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-
4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
1184 product is licensed under the MPEG-
4 systems patent portfolio license
1185 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-
4 systems standard, except
1186 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
1187 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
1188 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
1189 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
1190 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
1191 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
1192 additional details.
</p>
1196 <p>Some free software like
1197 <a href=
"https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake
</A> and
1198 <a href=
"http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG
</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
1199 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
1200 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.
</p>
1206 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
1211 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1215 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen
</a>
1221 <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
1222 schools,
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
1223 Skolelinux
</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
1224 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
1225 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
1226 the setup. I managed to interview him this summer.
</p>
1228 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1230 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
1231 employed physiotherapist. My former profession is tool maker, but I
1232 haven't worked for
30 years in this job.
30 years ago I started to
1233 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
1234 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
1235 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
1236 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
1237 works with Windows . :-(
</p>
1239 <p>In
1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
1240 Windows
98,
2000, XP, …,
8, Ubuntu, MacOSX. Today we are running a
1241 Linux server with
6 Windows clients and
10 persons (teacher of
1242 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
1243 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
1244 work with the documentations of our patients.
</p>
1246 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1247 project?
</strong></p>
1249 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
1250 his school (
<a href=
"http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
1251 Harsewinkel
</a>). They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
1252 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
1253 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
1254 computer skills in optional lessons. I'm spending
4-
6 hours a week
1257 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1260 <p>The independence.
</p>
1262 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
1263 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
1264 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.
</p>
1266 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
1267 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices. The
1268 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
1269 working reliable.
</p>
1271 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server),
45
1272 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
1273 solution for all classrooms. These machines are all booting from the
1274 terminal server. In the moment we are installing
30 laptops as mobile
1275 workstations. Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
1276 machines in their classrooms. Internet access is realized by a WLAN
1277 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
1278 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.
</p>
1280 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1283 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.
<Irony on
> And Linux
1284 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line.
<Irony
1285 off
> They don't realize the stability of the system.
</p>
1287 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1289 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server
12.04 (Samba,
1290 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)
</p>
1292 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1293 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1295 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
1296 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
1297 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
1298 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
1299 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
1300 instead. Another problem are the publisher of school books. They
1301 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.
</p>
1307 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
1312 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1316 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture
</a>
1322 <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
1323 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
1324 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1325 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
1326 law. Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text. There
1327 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
1328 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
1329 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
1330 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
1331 need to be cleaned up. The work stopped up because I had to give
1332 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
1333 the translation show this very well:
</p>
1335 <p><img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
1337 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
1338 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>
1339 project pages and the
1340 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>,
1341 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
1342 and HTML version available in the
1343 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1346 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1353 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
1358 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1362 <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>
1368 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
1369 project
</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
1370 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
1371 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation. This text is about how the
1372 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.
</p>
1374 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
1375 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
1376 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
1377 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
1378 in sync. And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
1379 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
1380 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
1381 edit the documentation using a web browser. We also want it to be
1382 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
1383 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
1384 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
1387 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
1388 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
1389 wiki
</a>, as several wiki pages written in English. It consist of one
1390 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
1391 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
1392 chapters together into one large web page (aka
1393 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
1394 AllInOne page
</a>). The AllInOne page is the one used for further
1395 processing and translations. Thanks to the fact that the
1396 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin
</a> installation on
1397 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
1398 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format
</a>, we can fetch
1399 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
1400 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
1401 manual. This process also download images and transform image
1402 references to use the locally downloaded images. The generated
1403 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
1404 using the
<tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual
</tt> program, and the
1405 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
1406 a handfull of images. The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
1407 and epub versions of the English manual. This is the basic step of
1408 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
1409 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
1410 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.
</p>
1412 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us. We want translated
1413 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
1414 track the English original. For this we use the
1415 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml
</a> package,
1416 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
1417 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
1418 translation tools used by those translating free software. The pot
1419 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
1420 files), which the translations update with the native language
1421 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
1422 original. The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
1423 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
1424 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
1425 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml). This translated (or partly
1426 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
1427 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
1428 of the documentation.
</p>
1430 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files. We
1432 <a href=
"http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize
</a>,
1433 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
1434 <a href=
"http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle
</a> or
1435 <a href=
"https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex
</a>. All we care about
1436 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository. Updated
1437 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
1438 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
1439 against the debian-edu-doc package
</a>.
</p>
1441 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
1442 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
1443 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
1444 this regard). For this we transform the original PNG images to the
1445 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
1446 translated images by storing translated versions in
1447 images/$LANGUAGECODE/. I am a bit unsure about the details here. The
1448 package maintainers know more.
</p>
1450 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
1451 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
1452 of the documentation packages on the web
</a>. See for example the
1453 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
1454 PDF version
</a> or the
1455 <a href=
"http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
1456 HTML version
</a>. We do not yet build the epub version by default,
1457 but perhaps it will be done in the future.
</p>
1459 <p>To learn more, check out
1460 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
1461 debian-edu-doc package
</a>,
1462 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
1463 manual on the wiki
</a> and
1464 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
1465 translation instructions
</a> in the manual.
</p>
1471 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>.
1476 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1480 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?
</a>
1486 <p>Dear lazyweb. I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
1487 in my car, connected to
1488 <a href=
"http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
1489 small screen
</a> next to the rear mirror. I plan to hook it up with a
1490 GPS and a USB wifi card too. The idea is to get my own
1491 "
<a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer
</a>". But I
1492 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
1493 such car computer.</p>
1495 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
1499 <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
1501 <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
1502 fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
1503 or make a sound). This could be done either using either data from
1504 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
1505 info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
1507 <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
1508 and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
1511 <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
1513 <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
1514 to home server. Try IP over DNS
1515 (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/
">iodine</a>) or ICMP
1516 (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/
">Hans</a>) if direct
1517 connection do not work.</li>
1519 <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
1520 or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
1522 <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
1523 (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
1525 <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
1526 run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
1530 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
1531 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
1537 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
1542 <div class="padding
"></div>
1546 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html
">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
1552 <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/
">the Gnash
1553 project</a> for quite a while now. It is a free software
1554 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
1555 plugin. Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
1556 newer AVM2 format - see
1557 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/
">Lightspark</a> for that one),
1558 allowing several flash based sites to work. Thanks to the friendly
1559 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
1560 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
1561 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
1562 support, but it has not happened yet. If you install both Lightspark
1563 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
1564 so you can get both handled as free software. Unfortunately,
1565 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
1566 sites do not work yet.</p>
1568 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
1569 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/
">Coverity</a>, the static source
1570 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
1571 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
1572 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
1573 the projects I decided to check out. Coverity is able to find lock
1574 errors, memory errors, dead code and more. A few days ago they even
1575 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
1576 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
1577 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
1578 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
1580 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
1581 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity. I was quite happy
1582 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
1583 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed. This make me confident that
1584 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
1585 the previous one. Most of the reported issues were and are in the
1586 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
1588 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
1589 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev
">the
1590 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
1591 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash
">the #gnash channel on
1592 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
1598 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
1603 <div class="padding
"></div>
1607 <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>
1613 <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
1614 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
1615 So I implemented one, using
1616 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram
">my Isenkram
1617 package</a>. To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
1618 run tasksel as user root. You should be presented with a new option,
1619 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)". When you
1620 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
1621 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.
<p>
1623 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
1624 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
1625 packages to install. The first part is in
1626 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc
</tt> and look like
1629 <p><blockquote><pre>
1632 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
1633 Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
1635 Test-new-install: mark show
1637 Packages: for-current-hardware
1638 </pre></blockquote></p>
1640 <p>The second part is in
1641 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware
</tt> and look like
1644 <p><blockquote><pre>
1649 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1651 </pre></blockquote></p>
1653 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
1654 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
1655 have installed on our machines. I've not been able to find a way to
1656 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
1657 before doing the installation. So if you are curious or careful,
1658 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.
</p>
1660 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
1661 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
1662 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
1663 database (using the Modaliases header). The APT package database
1664 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
1665 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#
719837</a> and
1666 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#
730704</a>). The cause is in
1667 the python-apt code (bug
1668 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#
745487</a>), but using a
1669 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
1670 reduce the memory leak from ~
30 MiB per hardware detection down to
1671 around
2 MiB per hardware detection. It should make the desktop
1672 daemon a lot more useful. The fix is in version
0.7 uploaded to
1675 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
1676 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
1677 use the AppStream data source for this. A proposal for getting proper
1678 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
1679 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-
11</a>, and
1680 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
1681 project
</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation. I
1682 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
1683 start using the information when it is ready.
</p>
1685 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
1686 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
1687 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
1688 package
</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
1690 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
1691 blog posts tagged isenkram
</a> for details on the notation. I expect
1692 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
1693 moment I got no better place to store it.
</p>
1699 Tags:
<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>.
1704 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1708 <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>
1714 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
1715 project
</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
1716 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
1717 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
1718 encrypted and away from prying eyes. It is still going strong, and
1719 today a major mile stone was reached.
</p>
1721 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
1722 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable. It was
1723 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
1724 during build and on the first boot. Now all one need to get going is
1725 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
1726 Debian. And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
1727 build everything directly from Debian. :)
</p>
1729 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
1730 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>,
1731 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth
</a>,
1732 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite
</a>,
1733 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor
</a>,
1734 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>,
1735 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud
</a> and
1736 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq
</a>. There
1737 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup. User
1738 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki. Please
1739 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
1740 the manual
</a> and help us improve it.
</p>
1742 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
1743 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
1747 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
1748 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
1750 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
1752 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
1755 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
1756 devices. See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
1757 details on the build. If you do not want all three images, trim the
1758 make line. Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
1759 virtualbox specific. It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
1760 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment. You might need
1761 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
1762 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.
</p>
1764 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
1765 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
1766 the preseed values:
</p>
1769 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
1772 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
1775 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
1776 systemd as the boot system. It will become the default for Linux in
1777 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox. I did
1778 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
1779 during boot when using systemd. I suspect there are other problems
1780 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
1781 be run from the plinth web interface.
</p>
1783 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
1784 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
1785 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
1786 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
1787 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
1788 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
1794 Tags:
<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>.
1799 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1803 <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>
1809 <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
1810 solution for use at home. My requirements are simple, it must be
1811 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
1812 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
1813 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
1814 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
1815 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
1816 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space. On top
1817 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
1818 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage. But
1819 I never found time to implement such system. But the last few weeks I
1820 have looked at a system called
1821 <a href=
"https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL
</a>, a locally
1822 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.
</p>
1824 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
1825 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
1826 Google Drive or OpenStack API. There are heaps of such storage
1827 providers. S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
1828 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server. S3QL
1829 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
1830 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
1831 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
1832 while the content is stored in the cloud as well. This allow me to
1833 have a backup that should survive fire. The file system can not be
1834 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
1835 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
1836 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.
</p>
1838 <p>It is simple to use. I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
1839 package is included already. So to get started, run
<tt>apt-get
1840 install s3ql
</tt>. Next, pick a storage provider. I ended up picking
1841 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
1842 <a href=
"https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
1843 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service
</a>, because I trust the laws
1844 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
1845 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
1846 in Iceland. Another nice recipe is available from the article
1847 <a href=
"http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
1848 Filesystem for HPC Storage
</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
1849 Admin magazine. When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
1850 the API key needed to connect to the storage API. With Greencloud,
1851 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
1854 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
1855 system. First, create a new bucket in the cloud. This bucket is the
1856 file system storage area. I picked a bucket name reflecting the
1857 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
1858 I'll refer to it as
<tt>bucket-name
</tt> below. In addition, one need
1859 the API login and password, and a locally created password. Store it
1860 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
1862 <p><blockquote><pre>
1864 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1865 backend-login: API-login
1866 backend-password: API-password
1867 fs-passphrase: local-password
1868 </pre></blockquote></p>
1870 <p>I create my local passphrase using
<tt>pwget
50</tt> or similar,
1871 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
1872 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
1873 details and password to create it:
</p>
1875 <p><blockquote><pre>
1876 # mkdir -m
700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
1877 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1878 --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1879 Enter backend login:
1880 Enter backend password:
1881 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
1882 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
1883 Enter encryption password:
1884 Confirm encryption password:
1885 Generating random encryption key...
1886 Creating metadata tables...
1896 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1897 Wrote
0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
1898 #
</pre></blockquote></p>
1900 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
1902 <p><blockquote><pre>
1903 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
1904 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
1905 Using
4 upload threads.
1906 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
1916 Mounting filesystem...
1918 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
1919 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1.0T
0 1.0T
0% /s3ql
1921 </pre></blockquote></p>
1923 <p>The file system is now ready for use. I use rsync to store my
1924 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
1925 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
1926 running rsync. To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
1927 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
1928 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
1930 <p><blockquote><pre>
1933 </pre></blockquote></p>
1935 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
1936 correct any problems detected. This can be used if the local server
1937 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
1938 mounted" flag. This is what it look like when processing a working
1941 <p><blockquote><pre>
1942 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name
1943 Using cached metadata.
1944 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
1945 Checking DB integrity...
1946 Creating temporary extra indices...
1947 Checking lost+found...
1948 Checking cached objects...
1949 Checking names (refcounts)...
1950 Checking contents (names)...
1951 Checking contents (inodes)...
1952 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
1953 Checking objects (reference counts)...
1954 Checking objects (backend)...
1955 ..processed
5000 objects so far..
1956 ..processed
10000 objects so far..
1957 ..processed
15000 objects so far..
1958 Checking objects (sizes)...
1959 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
1960 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
1961 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
1962 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
1963 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
1964 Checking inodes (sizes)...
1965 Checking extended attributes (names)...
1966 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
1967 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
1968 Checking directory reachability...
1969 Checking unix conventions...
1970 Checking referential integrity...
1971 Dropping temporary indices...
1972 Backing up old metadata...
1982 Compressing and uploading metadata...
1983 Wrote
0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
1985 </pre></blockquote></p>
1987 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
1988 quick, about the same speed as local file access. Uploading large
1989 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
1990 house. Uploading
685 MiB with a
100 MiB cache gave me
305 kiB/s,
1991 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
1992 Debian installation ISO gave me
610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
1993 Both were measured using
<tt>dd
</tt>. So for me, the bottleneck is my
1994 network, not the file system code. I do not know what a good cache
1995 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
1998 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
1999 time. If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
2002 <p><blockquote><pre>
2003 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
2004 --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:
443/bucket-name /s3ql
2005 Using
8 upload threads.
2006 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
2008 </pre></blockquote></p>
2010 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
2011 metadata is uploaded once every
24 hour by default. To ensure the
2012 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
2013 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
2016 <p><blockquote><pre>
2017 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
2018 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
2020 </pre></blockquote></p>
2022 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
2023 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
2024 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
2027 <p><blockquote><pre>
2029 Directory entries:
9141
2032 Total data size:
22049.38 MB
2033 After de-duplication:
21955.46 MB (
99.57% of total)
2034 After compression:
21877.28 MB (
99.22% of total,
99.64% of de-duplicated)
2035 Database size:
2.39 MB (uncompressed)
2036 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
2038 </pre></blockquote></p>
2040 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
2041 storage. I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
2042 <a href=
"https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud
</a>,
2043 <a href=
"http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive
</a>,
2044 <a href=
"http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces
</a>,
2045 <a href=
"http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace
</a> and
2046 <a href=
"http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud
</A>. The latter even
2047 accept payment in Bitcoin. Pick one that suit your need. Some of
2048 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
2049 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
2052 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
2053 and posters discussing the S3QL file system. There are several, which
2054 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
2055 science community and increased my confidence in using it. One nice
2057 "
<a href=
"http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
2058 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
2059 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach
</a>" by Hsing-Bung
2060 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
2061 and Pamela Smith. Please have a look.</p>
2063 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
2064 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
2065 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
2066 it come to locking and umask handling etc). Running
2067 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html
">my
2068 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
2069 no error was found. So the file system can be used for home
2070 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
2072 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
2073 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
2074 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/
">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
2075 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client. It have
2076 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
2077 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
2078 only read from it.</p>
2080 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2081 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2082 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2088 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
2093 <div class="padding
"></div>
2097 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html
">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
2103 <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
2104 2014-04-08, in 7 days. But there are heaps of machines still running
2105 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
2106 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
2107 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
2108 new operating system. Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
2109 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
2110 are already well known and covered elsewhere. Most of them involve
2111 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
2112 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
2113 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
2114 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
2115 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
2117 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/
">ReactOS</a> is a free software
2118 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
2119 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
2120 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
2121 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
2122 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
2123 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing. It is
2124 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
2125 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/
">the Wine
2126 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
2129 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
2130 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
2131 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
2132 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
2133 click directly from the Internet. Check out the
2134 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots
">screen shots on the
2135 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
2136 Windows before metro).</p>
2138 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
2139 operating systems. I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
2140 virtual machine. The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
2141 fine as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, my main test application
2142 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
2143 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
2144 the disk after the installation. So no luck with that test software.
2145 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
2146 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
2147 to work just fine. If you like Windows and want to keep running your
2148 old Windows binaries, check it out by
2149 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download
">downloading</a> the
2150 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
2157 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos
">reactos</a>.
2162 <div class="padding
"></div>
2166 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html
">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
2172 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
2173 keep gaining new users. Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
2174 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu
">#debian-edu</a>, with a
2175 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
2176 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
2178 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2180 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
2181 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
2182 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent. Additionally,
2183 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
2184 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
2186 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
2187 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
2188 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
2190 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
2191 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
2194 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2195 project?</strong></p>
2197 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/
">LTSP</a> advantages
2198 with "Ubuntu
12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
2199 started looking for an alternative. Even though I highly value and
2200 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
2201 change to a more robust and stable alternative. As far as I was using
2202 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
2203 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself. Surprised, I discovered
2204 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
2205 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
2206 running. I just loved it.
</p>
2208 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2211 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
2212 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
2213 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
2214 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
2215 be made of steel.
</p>
2217 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
2220 <p>I found two main disadvantages.
</p>
2222 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
2223 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
2224 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
2225 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
2228 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
2229 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
2230 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
2231 discourage many people too.
</p>
2233 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2235 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
2239 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2240 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2242 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
2243 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
2244 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
2245 the
<a href=
"http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language
</a>; a
2246 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
2247 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
2248 different level of studies. I believe free and open software will
2249 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
2250 first scenarios where this will happen.
</p>
2256 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
2261 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2265 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone
</a>
2271 <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
2272 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
2273 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
2274 changed since it was created? Or, did you ever need to document that
2275 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
2276 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
2277 was received? The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
2278 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
2279 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.
</p>
2281 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
2282 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
2283 looked a given way. Such
2284 <a href=
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius
</a> service
2285 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
2287 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
2288 timestamping service
</a>.
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
2289 Engineering Task Force
</a> standardised how such service could work a
2290 few years ago as
<a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
2291 3161</a>. The mechanism is simple. Create a hash of the file in
2292 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
2293 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
2294 signed hash + timestamp. Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
2295 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
2296 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
2297 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
2298 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
2299 There are several commercial services around providing such
2300 timestamping. A quick search for
2301 "
<a href=
"https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc
3161
2302 service
</a>" pointed me to at least
2303 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/
">DigiStamp</a>,
2304 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx
">Quo
2306 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/
">Global Sign</a>
2307 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx
">Global
2308 Trust Finder</a>. The system work as long as the private key of the
2309 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
2311 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
2312 timestamp services available for everyone. I've been looking for one
2313 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
2314 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/
">Deutches
2315 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
2316 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-
3161/
">a
2317 blog by David Müller</a>. I then found
2318 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html
">a
2319 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
2322 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/
">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
2323 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service. See
2324 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details. The
2325 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
2326 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
2328 <p><blockquote><pre>
2331 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
2332 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
2333 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
2334 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
2336 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
2337 wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
2339 openssl ts -query -data "$
1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
2340 | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
2341 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text
1>&
2
2342 openssl ts -verify -data "$
1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile"
1>&
2
2344 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
2345 </pre></blockquote></p>
2347 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
2348 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
2349 about the signature to STDERR. Note that due to
2350 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
2351 in the tsget script
</a>, you might need to modify the included script
2352 and remove the last line. Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
2353 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
2356 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
2357 Perhaps something for
<a href=
"http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett
</a> or
2358 my work place the
<a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a>
2365 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
2370 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2374 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software
</a>
2380 <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
2381 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
2382 movie is not straight forward. My preferred method at the moment is
2383 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
2384 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file. This way the
2385 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
2386 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.
</p>
2388 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
2389 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them). I've also
2391 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
2392 and genisoimage
</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
2394 <a href=
"http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo
</a>
2395 written by Bastian Blank. It is
2396 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
2397 already
</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
2398 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
2399 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
2400 and only read those blocks from the DVD. This work surprisingly well,
2401 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
2404 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between
10 and
2405 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection. The most common
2407 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
2408 using UTF-
16 instead of UTF-
8 characters
</a>, which according to
2409 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
2410 players to fail too). A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
2411 DVD structures, as the python library
2412 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
2413 there is a overlap between objects
</a>. An equally rare problem claim
2414 <a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
2415 value is out of range
</a>. No idea what is going on there. I wish I
2416 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
2417 collection will stay with me in the future.
</p>
2419 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
2420 python-dvdvideo. :)
</p>
2426 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
2431 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2435 <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>
2441 <p>The
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
2442 project
</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
2443 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
2444 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
2445 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes. It has been
2446 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
2449 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
2450 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
2451 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
2452 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
2453 file. The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
2454 where most of the needed packages used are already present. Only one,
2455 the freedombox-setup package, is missing. To try to build your own
2456 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
2458 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap
</a>
2459 with a user with sudo access to become root:
2462 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
2464 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
2465 mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
2467 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
2470 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
2471 devices. See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
2472 want all three images, trim the make line. But note that thanks to
<a
2473 href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
2474 vmdebootstrap
</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
2477 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
2478 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
2479 the preseed values:
</p>
2482 url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat
</a>
2485 <p>But note that due to
<a href=
"https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
2486 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie
</a>, the installer will
2487 currently hang while setting up APT sources. Killing the
2488 '
<tt>apt-cdrom ident
</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
2489 installation will get the installation going. This affect all
2490 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.
</p>
2492 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
2493 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
2494 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
2495 irc.debian.org)
</a> and
2496 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
2497 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
2503 Tags:
<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>.
2508 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2512 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
2518 <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
2519 storing user home directories and data. The design for handling this
2520 in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, is
2521 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
2522 the clients take care of the rest. I was reminded about the need to
2523 document this better when one of the customers of
2524 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a>, where I am
2525 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this. The steps to
2526 get this working are the following:
</p>
2530 <li>Add new storage server in DNS. I use nas-server.intern as the
2531 example host here.
</li>
2533 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
2534 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.
</li>
2536 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
2537 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.
</li>
2541 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here. Follow the
2542 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
2543 in the manual
</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
2546 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
2547 relevant subnets or machines:
</p>
2549 <p><blockquote><pre>
2550 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
2551 Export list for nas-server:
2554 </pre></blockquote></p>
2556 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
2557 /storage export. With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
2558 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
2561 <p>The next step is to update LDAP. This can not be done using GOsa²,
2562 because it lack a module for automount. Instead, use ldapvi and add
2563 the required LDAP objects using an editor.
</p>
2565 <p><blockquote><pre>
2566 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2567 </pre></blockquote></p>
2569 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
2570 bottom of the document. The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
2571 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
2572 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.
</p>
2574 <p><blockquote><pre>
2575 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2576 objectClass: automount
2578 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=
60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2580 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2582 objectClass: automountMap
2585 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
2586 objectClass: automount
2588 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=
32768,wsize=
32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
2589 </pre></blockquote></p>
2591 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
2592 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
2593 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.
</p>
2595 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
2596 the storage server directly by just visiting the
2597 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
2598 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.
</p>
2604 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>.
2609 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2613 <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>
2619 <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
2620 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
2621 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>. I called the project
2622 ng-utils, and it has served me well. I placed the project under the
2623 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer
</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
2624 repository. But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
2625 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
2626 proper home since then.
</p>
2628 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
2629 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
2630 a proper source control system. I applied for a project on
2631 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth
</a>, but did not have time
2632 to follow up on it. Until today. :)
</p>
2634 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
2635 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
2636 history of the project. I published all release tarballs and imported
2637 them into the git repository. As the project is really stable and not
2638 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
2639 release and call it
1.0. Visit the new project home on
2640 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/
</a>
2641 if you want to check it out. The new version is also uploaded into
2642 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable
</a>.
</p>
2648 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2653 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2657 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd
</a>
2663 <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
2664 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
2665 boot system instead of their old one. This follow up on the
2666 <a href=
"https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
2667 Google Summer of Code work
</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
2668 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux. To get started,
2669 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
2670 <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>,
2671 and started it using virt-manager.
</p>
2673 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
2674 password) was to get the network operational. I followed
2675 <a href=
"https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
2676 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page
</a> and ran these
2677 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
2678 kvm internal DHCP server:
</p>
2680 <p><blockquote><pre>
2681 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
2682 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $
2}')
2683 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $
2}')
2685 </pre></blockquote></p>
2687 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
2688 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
2689 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.
</p>
2691 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
2692 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
2693 set. Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
2694 compression from working. Remember to turn that off on the client
2697 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
2700 <p><blockquote><pre>
2701 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list
<<EOF
2702 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
2705 apt-get dist-upgrade
2706 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
2707 sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
2708 update-alternatives --config runsystem
2709 </pre></blockquote></p>
2711 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
2712 <tt>reboot-hurd
</tt> instead of just
<tt>reboot
</tt>, as there is not
2713 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
2714 'reboot' command. After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
2715 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
2716 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
2717 start is no longer needed. But for some strange reason, there are no
2718 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
2721 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
2722 fail some times. No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
2723 figure it out. At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
2724 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem. A way to reduce
2725 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
2726 adding this repository to the machine:
</p>
2728 <p><blockquote><pre>
2729 cat
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list
<<EOF
2730 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
2732 </pre></blockquote></p>
2734 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
2735 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
2736 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
2737 BTS. This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:
</p>
2739 <p><blockquote><pre>
2740 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
2741 i emacs - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
2742 i gdb - GNU Debugger
2743 i hurd-recommended - Miscellaneous translators
2744 i isc-dhcp-client - ISC DHCP client
2745 i isc-dhcp-common - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
2746 i libc-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
2747 i libc-dev-bin - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
2748 i libc0.3 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
2749 i A libc0.3-dbg - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
2750 i libc0.3-dev - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
2751 i multiarch-support - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
2752 i A x11-common - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
2753 i xorg - X.Org X Window System
2754 i A xserver-xorg - X.Org X server
2755 i A xserver-xorg-input-all - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
2757 </pre></blockquote></p>
2759 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
2760 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
2761 the porters instructions to fix it. This time I was interested in the
2762 command line stuff.
<p>
2768 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>.
2773 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2777 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins
</a>
2783 <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
2784 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
2785 central control. It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
2786 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth. At least
2787 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
2788 details of every transaction are kept forever. This point is
2790 <a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:
</a>
2791 from December
2013, in the article
2792 "
<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
2793 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
2794 Names
</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
2795 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage. They
2796 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
2797 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
2798 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
2799 money end up. This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
2802 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
2803 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
2804 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
2805 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
2806 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
2807 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
2808 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
2809 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
2810 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
2811 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
2812 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
2813 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).
</p>
2815 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
2816 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
2817 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
2818 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
2819 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
2820 stolen bitcoins were deposited. Because such exchanges seem to serve
2821 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
2822 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
2823 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
2824 present) seem to be particularly attractive."
</p>
2827 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
2828 transaction log. The
2011 paper
2829 "
<a href=
"http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
2830 the Bitcoin System
</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
2831 summarized like this:</p>
2834 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
2835 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
2836 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
2837 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
2838 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
2839 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
2840 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
2841 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
2842 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
2843 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
2844 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
2845 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
2846 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
2847 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
2848 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
2849 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars.
"
2852 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
2853 is anonymous. It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites. Use
2854 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
2855 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
2857 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2858 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2859 <b><a href="bitcoin:
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog
">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2865 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin
">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>.
2870 <div class="padding
"></div>
2874 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html
">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
2880 <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/
">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
2881 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
2882 analysis. It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
2883 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
2884 the source. The company behind it provide
2885 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/
">check of free software projects as
2886 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
2887 already checked. A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
2888 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
2889 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
">gnash</a> and
2890 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/
">ipmitool</a>
2891 projects I am involved with was already registered. But these are
2892 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
2893 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/
1179">request
2894 checking of the chrpath project</a>. It was
2895 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects. Six of
2896 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
2897 error. Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
2898 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
2899 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
2900 the future end up in a library. Having fixed all defects and added
2901 <a href=
"https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
2902 mailing list for the chrpath developers
</a>, I decided it was time to
2903 publish a new release. These are the release notes:
</p>
2905 <p>New in
0.16 released
2014-
01-
14:
</p>
2909 <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.
</li>
2910 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.
</li>
2911 <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.
</li>
2916 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
2917 new version
0.16 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
2918 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
2919 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
2920 include a test suite check.
</p>
2926 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>.
2931 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2935 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George
</a>
2941 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2942 project
</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
2943 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
2944 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
2945 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School. Say hello
2946 to
<a href=
"https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
2949 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
2951 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2953 <p>I am a
23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
2954 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
2955 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
2956 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
2957 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
2958 a bit vacant right now however.
</p>
2960 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
2961 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
2962 around
2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
2963 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
2964 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
2965 talented students in the age of
11 to
15 years, who took the chance to
2966 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
2967 to help building another school's informational education concept from
2970 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
2971 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
2972 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.
</p>
2974 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
2977 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
2978 project?
</strong></p>
2980 <p>I think that happened some time around
2009 when I first attended
2981 <a href=
"http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon
</a> and visited the project
2982 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
2983 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
2984 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
2985 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).
</p>
2987 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
2988 <a href=
"http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr
</a> 2011 when the
2989 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
2990 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
2991 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
2992 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
2993 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
2994 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
2995 seemed rather uninterested.
</p>
2997 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
2998 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
2999 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
3000 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!
</p>
3002 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3005 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
3006 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
3007 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
3008 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
3009 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
3010 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
3011 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
3012 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
3013 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
3014 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
3015 it. I could use
8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
3016 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
3019 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
3020 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
3021 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
3022 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
3023 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
3024 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
3025 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).
</p>
3027 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3030 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
3031 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
3032 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
3033 can list a few points about that:
</p>
3037 <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
3038 <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
3039 <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
3043 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!
</p>
3045 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3047 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
3048 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
3051 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
3052 run text tools. I use
3053 <a href=
"https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh
</a> as shell,
3054 <a href=
"https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp
</a> as very advanced
3055 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
3056 based full-featured student management software with the two),
3057 <a href=
"http://mcabber.com/">mcabber
</a> for XMPP and
3058 <a href=
"http://www.irssi.org/">irssi
</a> for IRC. For that overly
3059 coloured world called the WWW, I use
3060 <a href=
"https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
3061 (Firefox)
</a>. Oh, and
<a href=
"http://www.mutt.org/">mutt
</a> for
3064 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
3065 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
3066 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
3067 kids. One of these things is
<a href=
"http://jappix.org/">Jappix
</a>,
3068 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
3069 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
3070 Facebook now ;).
</p>
3072 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3073 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3075 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
3076 side is what I have experienced.
</p>
3078 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
3079 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
3080 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
3081 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
3082 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
3083 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
3084 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
3085 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
3086 that makes the council of our city spend around
600000 € to buy
3087 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
3088 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
3089 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
3090 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
3091 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
3092 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
3095 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
3096 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
3097 founded an association named
3098 <a href=
"https://www.teckids.org">Teckids
</a> here in Germany that does
3099 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
3100 area of free and open source software, for example the
3101 <a href=
"http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs
</a>, which share staff with
3102 Teckids and are the youth programme of
3103 <a href=
"http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
3104 Conference (FrOSCon)
</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
3105 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
3106 aged
10 to
16. It was a huge success, with approx.
30 kids taking part
3107 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
3108 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.
</p>
3110 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
3111 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
3112 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
3113 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
3114 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
3115 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
3116 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
3117 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
3118 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
3119 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
3120 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
3121 Skolelinux in the future ;)!
</p>
3123 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
3124 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
3125 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
3126 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.
</p>
3130 > * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
3132 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
3133 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
3135 <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
3136 free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
3137 of the decision makers above;
3138 <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
3139 knowledge about free software
3141 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
3149 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
3154 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3158 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper
</a>
3164 <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
3165 but the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3166 Skolelinux
</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
3167 had a new school administrator show up on
3168 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu
</a> to share
3169 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school. This
3170 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
3171 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
3172 Germany a few years ago.
</p>
3174 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3176 <p>I am Klaus Knopper. I have a master degree in electrical
3177 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
3178 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
3179 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.
</p>
3181 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
3182 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
3183 projects like the
<a href=
"http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
3184 system
</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
3185 <a href=
"http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE
</a>
3186 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
3187 <a href=
"http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO
</a>
3188 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
3189 system supporting various operating systems).
</p>
3191 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3192 project?
</strong></p>
3194 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
3195 coordinator for Skolelinux. We were looking for an all-in-one open
3196 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
3197 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.
</p>
3199 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3203 <li>Quick installation,
</li>
3204 <li>works (almost) out of the box,
</li>
3205 <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,
</li>
3206 <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
3207 single company,
</li>
3208 <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
3209 experience and problem solutions.
</li>
3212 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3216 <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
3217 the next version. Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
3218 a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
3219 working again reliably.
3221 <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
3222 little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
3223 similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
3226 <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
3227 configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
3228 not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
3229 configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
3230 and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
3231 network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
3233 <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
3234 contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
3235 distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
3236 Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
3237 future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
3240 <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
3241 compared to Debian.
</li>
3245 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
3246 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
3247 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
3248 upgradeable without reinstallation.
</p>
3250 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3252 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
3253 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
3254 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
3255 programming languages for teaching.
</p>
3257 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3258 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3260 <p>Strong arguments are
</p>
3264 <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
3265 teaching and learning.
</li>
3267 <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
3268 home, and at their working place without running into license or
3269 conversion problems.
</li>
3271 <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
3272 than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
3273 customers to certain products. But teachers need to teach
3274 science, not products.
</li>
3276 <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
3277 would you need proprietary software for?
</li>
3285 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
3290 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3294 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape
</a>
3300 <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
3301 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
3302 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
3303 experiment with interesting network technology, the
3304 <a href=
"http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo
</a>
3305 might be project for you.
39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
3306 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
3307 wireless community network. The work is inspired by
3308 <a href=
"http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk
</a>,
3309 <a href=
"http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
3310 Network
</a>,
<a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet
</a>
3311 and other successful mesh networks around the globe. Two days ago we
3312 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
3313 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
3314 <a href=
"http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
3315 (at) nuug.no
</a> and IRC channel
3316 <a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no
</a> to
3317 coordinate the work. See also the NUUG blog post
3318 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
3319 the mailing list and IRC channel
</a>.
</p>
3325 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
3330 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3334 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release
0.15</a>
3340 <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
3341 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
3342 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
3343 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
3344 compiled ELF programs. The update was triggered by the persistence of
3345 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
3346 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc
64-bit Little Endian) he
3347 is working on. I checked the
3348 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian
</a>,
3349 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu
</a> and
3350 <a href=
"https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora
</a>
3351 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
3352 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
3353 These are the release notes:
</p>
3355 <p>New in
0.15 released
2013-
11-
24:
</p>
3359 <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
3360 with newer architectures. Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
3363 <li>Updated README with current URLs.
</li>
3365 <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
3366 Matthias Klose.
</li>
3368 <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
3369 Petr Machata found in Fedora.
</li>
3371 <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
3372 .dynamic is a NULL terminated string. Based on patch found in
3373 Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.
</li>
3378 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
3379 new version
0.15 from alioth
</a>. Please let us know via the Alioth
3380 project if something is wrong with the new release. The test suite
3381 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
3382 include a testsuite check.
</p>
3388 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>.
3393 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3397 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to
</a>
3403 <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular. The most
3404 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
3405 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
3406 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
3407 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue. I am sure it
3408 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
3409 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
3410 too. The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous. To have
3411 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
3413 "
<a href=
"https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
3414 decision shouldn't belong to a robot
</a>", where he suggested this
3415 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
3419 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
3420 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
3421 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
3422 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
3423 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
3424 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
3425 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
3426 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
3427 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
3428 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
3429 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
3431 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
3432 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
3433 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
3437 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
3438 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
3439 both the government and others use of drones. For such control to be
3440 effective, everyone must be able to do it. What should such beacon
3441 contain? At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
3442 location. Probably also the origin and target position of the current
3443 flight. And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
3444 the drone in a central database tracking their movement. Robots
3445 should not have privacy. It is people who need privacy.</p>
3451 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot
">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>.
3456 <div class="padding
"></div>
3460 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html
">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
3466 <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
3467 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml
">our
3468 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
3469 Oslo</a>. The workshop to help people get started will take place
3470 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
3471 people joining forces to make this happen. We have
3472 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson
">9
3473 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
3474 a connected mesh spread across Oslo. If this sound interesting to
3475 you, please join us at the workshop. If you are too impatient to wait
3476 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
3477 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%
23nuug
">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
3484 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network
">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
3489 <div class="padding
"></div>
3493 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html
">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
3499 <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
3500 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
3501 bought arrived on Friday. Here are my notes on how to set up the
3502 MR3040 as a mesh node using
3503 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/
">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
3505 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
3506 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040
">TL-MR3040</a>,
3508 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin
">the
3509 recommended firmware image</a>
3510 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
3511 uploaded it into the original web interface. The flashing went fine,
3512 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port. After
3513 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
3514 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
3516 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
3517 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research
">Wireless
3518 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
3519 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
3520 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config
">using
3521 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>. A small snag was the fact that the
3522 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
3523 should. The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
3524 dependency crc16 was not already loaded. I
3525 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/
14452">reported the bug</a> to
3526 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon. But the problem
3527 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
3528 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
3530 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/. I did not bridge
3531 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
3532 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
3533 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
3536 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
3540 config interface 'loopback'
3542 option proto 'static'
3543 option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
3544 option netmask '255.0.0.0'
3546 config globals 'globals'
3547 option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
3549 config interface 'lan'
3550 option ifname 'eth0'
3551 option type 'bridge'
3553 option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
3554 option netmask '255.255.255.0'
3555 option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
3556 option ip6assign '60'
3558 config interface 'mesh'
3559 option ifname 'adhoc0'
3561 option proto 'batadv'
3565 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
3568 config wifi-device 'radio0'
3569 option type 'mac80211'
3571 option hwmode '11ng'
3572 option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
3573 option htmode 'HT20'
3574 list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
3575 list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
3576 list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
3577 list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
3580 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
3581 option device 'radio0'
3582 option ifname 'adhoc0'
3583 option network 'mesh'
3584 option encryption 'none'
3586 option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
3587 option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
3589 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
3592 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
3593 option interfaces 'adhoc0'
3594 option 'aggregated_ogms'
3595 option 'ap_isolation'
3597 option 'fragmentation'
3598 option 'gw_bandwidth'
3600 option 'gw_sel_class'
3602 option 'orig_interval'
3604 option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
3605 option 'distributed_arp_table'
3606 option 'network_coding'
3607 option 'hop_penalty'
3609 # yet another batX instance
3610 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
3611 # option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
3614 <p>The mesh node is now operational. I have yet to test its range,
3615 but I hope it is good. I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
3616 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
3622 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network
">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
3627 <div class="padding
"></div>
3631 <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>
3637 <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
3638 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=
147">to get rid of huge
3639 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
3640 init.d scripts at all. Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
3641 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
3644 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
3647 # Required-Start: $remote_fs $time
3648 # Required-Stop: umountnfs $time
3649 # X-Stop-After: sendsigs
3650 # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
3651 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
3652 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
3653 # Description: Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
3654 # It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
3655 # used as a drop-in replacement.
3657 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
3658 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
3661 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
3662 script was
137 lines, and the above is just
15 lines, most of it meta
3665 <p>How to do this, you ask? Well, one create a new script
3666 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
3671 # Define LSB log_* functions.
3672 # Depend on lsb-base (
>=
3.2-
14) to ensure that this file is present
3673 # and status_of_proc is working.
3674 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
3677 # Function that starts the daemon/service
3683 #
0 if daemon has been started
3684 #
1 if daemon was already running
3685 #
2 if daemon could not be started
3686 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test
> /dev/null \
3688 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
3691 # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
3692 # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
3693 # on this one. As a last resort, sleep for some time.
3697 # Function that stops the daemon/service
3702 #
0 if daemon has been stopped
3703 #
1 if daemon was already stopped
3704 #
2 if daemon could not be stopped
3705 # other if a failure occurred
3706 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/
30/KILL/
5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3708 [ "$RETVAL" =
2 ] && return
2
3709 # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
3710 # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
3711 # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
3712 # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
3713 # needed by services started subsequently. A last resort is to
3714 # sleep for some time.
3715 start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=
0/
30/KILL/
5 --exec $DAEMON
3716 [ "$?" =
2 ] && return
2
3717 # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
3723 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
3727 # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
3728 # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
3729 # then implement that here.
3731 start-stop-daemon --stop --signal
1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
3736 scriptbasename="$(basename $
1)"
3737 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
3738 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
3746 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
3747 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
3749 # Exit if the package is not installed
3750 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit
0
3752 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
3753 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
3755 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
3760 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
3763 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
3764 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
3768 [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
3771 0|
1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
0 ;;
3772 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg
1 ;;
3776 status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit
0 || exit $?
3778 #reload|force-reload)
3780 # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
3781 # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
3783 #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
3787 restart|force-reload)
3789 # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
3790 # 'force-reload' alias
3792 log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
3799 1) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Old process is still running
3800 *) log_end_msg
1 ;; # Failed to start
3810 echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}"
>&
2
3818 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
3819 lot. I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
3820 work out of the box, but you get the idea. I did not try very hard to
3821 optimize it nor make it more robust either.
</p>
3823 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
3824 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
3825 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
3826 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially. The boot
3827 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.
</p>
3833 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>.
3838 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3842 <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>
3848 <p><a href=
"http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol
</a> for
3849 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
3850 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
3851 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
3852 missing in Debian. The
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
3853 for a package
</a> was from
2012-
04-
10 with no progress since
3854 2013-
04-
01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
3855 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
3856 repository to get a package I could use. I would very much like
3857 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
3858 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
3859 NEW. I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.
</p>
3861 <p>The source is now available from
3862 <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>
3868 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3873 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3877 <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>
3884 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap
</a>
3885 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images. It
3886 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
3887 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
3888 stick. Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
3889 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi
</a>, as part
3890 of a plan to simplify the build system for
3891 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
3892 project
</a>. The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
3893 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
3894 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
3897 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
3898 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
3899 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
3900 Debian laptop. I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
3901 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
3902 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
3903 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi
</a>. First, the
3904 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler
</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
3905 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
3906 generated chroot before running the second stage. This allow
3907 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host. Next I added
3908 two new options
<tt>--bootsize size
</tt> and
<tt>--boottype
3909 fstype
</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
3910 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
3911 partition for the /boot/ stuff. I also added a
<tt>--variant
3912 variant
</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
3913 Debian base system packages installed. Finally, I added an option
3914 <tt>--no-extlinux
</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
3915 as a boot loader. It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
3916 most other non-x86 architectures. The changes were accepted by the
3917 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
3919 <a href=
"http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
3920 upstream project page
</a>.
</p>
3922 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
3923 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
3924 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
3929 set -e # Exit on first error
3932 cat
<<EOF
> etc/apt/sources.list
3933 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
3935 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi. This
3936 # install a kernel somewhere too.
3937 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
3938 -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3939 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
3940 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
3941 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
3942 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
3945 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
3946 to build the image:
</p>
3949 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
3952 --distribution jessie \
3953 --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
3962 --root-password raspberry \
3963 --hostname raspberrypi \
3964 --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
3965 --customize `pwd`/customize \
3967 --package git-core \
3968 --package binutils \
3969 --package ca-certificates \
3974 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
3975 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
3976 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
3977 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant. I really wish there was a way to
3978 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
3979 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
3980 using a non-free binary blob.
</p>
3982 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
3983 probably a few others installed. I have not checked the complete
3984 build dependency list.
</p>
3986 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
3987 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
3988 optimized for that use. So the images created will be a bit slower
3989 than
<a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian
</a> based images.
</p>
3995 Tags:
<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>.
4000 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4004 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node
</a>
4010 <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
4011 <a href=
"http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
4012 batman-adv mesh technology
</a>. I want to gain some experience to see
4013 if it will fit
<a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
4014 Freedombox project
</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
4015 mesh network around the park where I live. Batman-adv is a layer
2
4016 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
4017 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.
</p>
4019 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
4020 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv. So
4021 instead, I started playing with a
4022 <a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi
</a>, and tried to
4023 get it working as a mesh node. My idea is to use it to create a mesh
4024 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
4025 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
4026 network. This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
4027 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
4028 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh. This in turn is useful for
4029 Android phones using
<a href=
"http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
4030 Project
</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
4031 phone and message each other for free. The reason is that Android
4032 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
4033 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted. But if
4034 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
4035 every client on the local network.
</p>
4037 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
4038 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node
</a>
4040 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node
</a>
4041 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image. I'm using Debian Jessie (and
4042 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
4043 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
4044 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now. Also, as
4045 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
4046 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit. I hope
4047 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
4050 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
4051 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:
</p>
4054 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
4055 https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
4056 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node
> build.log
2>&
1
4057 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=
1M
4061 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
4062 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node. At least it does for
4063 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
4064 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
4065 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
4066 earlier blog post about this mesh testing
</a>.
</p>
4068 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either. I bought
4069 everything over the counter in shops nearby. If I had ordered online
4070 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:
</p>
4074 <tr><th>Supplier
</th><th>Model
</th><th>NOK
</th></tr>
4075 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet
</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B
</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
4076 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet
</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case
</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
4077 <tr><td>Lefdal
</td><td>Jensen Air:Link
25150</td><td>295.-
</td></tr>
4078 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson
</td><td>Kingston
16 GB SD card
</td><td>199.-
</td></tr>
4079 <tr><td>Total cost
</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
4083 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
4084 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the
1th
4085 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
4086 play-node I use to develop the image building script. And some times
4087 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it. I look forward
4088 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
4089 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)
</p>
4095 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
4100 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4104 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github
</a>
4110 <p>Back in
2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
4111 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot
</a>
4112 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
4113 web page. Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
4114 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github. If
4115 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
4116 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
4117 libspykee-perl github repository
</a>.
</p>
4123 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
4128 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4132 <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>
4138 <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
4139 wider attention. I recommend signing and donating to each one of
4142 <p>Via
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
4143 Project News for
2013-
10-
14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
4144 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
4145 more women involved in free software. One debian sponsor has offered
4146 to match
<a href=
"http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
4147 earmarked
</a> for this initiative. I donated a few minutes ago, and
4148 hope you will to. :)
</p>
4150 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
4151 create
<a href=
"https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
4152 documentaries about the excessive spying
</a> on every Internet user that
4153 take place these days, and their need to fund the work. I've already
4154 donated. Are you next?
</p>
4156 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
4157 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
4158 statement under the heading
4159 <a href=
"http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
4160 Access
</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
4161 Norwegian government. So far
499 signatures. I hope you will sign it
4168 Tags:
<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>.
4173 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4177 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania
</a>
4183 <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
4184 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
4185 areas, depending on the radio technology used. Normal wifi equipment
4186 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
4187 successful examples like
4188 <a href=
"http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk
</a> and
4189 <a href=
"http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network
</a>
4191 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
4192 for a large list
</a>) around the globe. To give you an idea how it
4193 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
4194 can be seen from their
4195 <a href=
"http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
4196 updated node graph and map
</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
4197 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
4198 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
4199 and that is the main topic of this blog post.
</p>
4201 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
4202 to do it as part of my involvement with the
<a
4203 href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation
</a> community, and
4204 my recent involvement in
4205 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project
</a>
4206 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
4207 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
4208 when possible, given that most communication between people are
4209 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
4210 communication patterns). It also allow people to communicate without
4211 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
4212 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
4213 important over the years.
</p>
4215 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
4216 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
4217 <a href=
"http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet
</a> at Husmania. They seem to
4218 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
4219 <a href=
"http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
4220 Freifunk project
</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
4221 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
4222 <a href=
"http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx
</a>. Unfortunately the wiki
4223 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
4224 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
4225 the new project. A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
4226 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks. I
4227 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
4228 speakers about this talk (from
4229 <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube
</a>):
</p>
4231 <p><iframe width=
"420" height=
"315" src=
"https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe></p>
4233 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
4234 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
4235 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
4236 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
4237 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
4238 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
4239 batman-adv for now. It sure help me to know that the very cool
4240 <a href=
"http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia
</a>
4241 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
4242 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
4243 less industrialized communities. Check out this cool video presenting
4245 <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube
</a>):
</p>
4247 <p><iframe width=
"560" height=
"315" src=
"https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe></p>
4249 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
4250 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
4251 mesh network
</a> there are around
70 competing schemes for routing
4252 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
4253 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
4254 based community mesh networks.
</p>
4256 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer
2
4257 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
4258 network. One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
4259 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
4260 computer. The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
4261 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up. A
4262 <a href=
"http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
4263 introduction
</a> is available from the Open Mesh project. These are
4264 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:
</p>
4267 <tr><th>Setting
</th><th>Value
</th></tr>
4268 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module
</td><td>batman-adv
</td></tr>
4269 <tr><td>ESSID
</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet
</td></tr>
4270 <td>Channel / Frequency
</td><td>11 /
2462</td></tr>
4271 <td>Cell ID
</td><td>02:BA:
00:
00:
00:
01</td>
4274 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
4275 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers. (See a nice post from
4277 "
<a href=
"http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
4278 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!
</a>
4279 for details.) When these settings are activated and you have some
4280 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
4281 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
4282 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)
</p>
4284 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
4285 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
4286 firmware supporting batman-adv. If anyone know how to use that old
4287 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.
</p>
4289 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
4290 us on IRC, either channel
4291 <a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace
</a>
4292 or
<a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug
</a> on
4293 irc.freenode.net.
</p>
4295 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
4296 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
4297 and Innovation called
4298 <a href=
"http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
4299 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks
</a> and elsewhere
4300 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
4301 Grünerløkka in Oslo. So mesh networks are also interesting for
4302 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
4303 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
4304 know have closed down the experiment. Perhaps Telenor or others would
4305 be interested in a cooperation?
</p>
4307 <p><strong>Update
2013-
10-
12</strong>: I was just
4308 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
4309 by the Serval project developers
</a> that they no longer use
4310 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
4317 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
4322 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4326 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador
</a>
4332 <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
4333 Salvador had published a
4334 <a href=
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
4335 Youtube
</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
4336 Skolelinux profile. This is the profile intended for use at home or
4337 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
4338 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
4339 in other word a single user machine). The result is
11 minutes long,
4340 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
4341 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
4342 showing the
<a href=
"http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body
3D model
4343 of the human body
</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
4344 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
4345 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
4346 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
4347 computers without hard drives by installing one central
4348 <a href=
"http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server
</a>.
</p>
4350 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:
</p>
4352 <iframe width=
"420" height=
"315" src=
"http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe>
4354 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux? Please let
4361 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
4366 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4370 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!
</a>
4376 <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
4377 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team. The
4378 complete announcement text can be found at
4379 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
4380 section
</a>, translated to several languages. Please check it out.
</p>
4382 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon. One
4383 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
4384 partition is too small. A workaround is to extend the partition (use
4385 lvresize + resize2fs in tty
2 while installing).
</p>
4391 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4396 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4400 <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>
4406 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
4407 project
</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
4408 vision, ideas and solution several places. Here is a little
4409 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.
</p>
4413 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
4414 2,
5 minute marketing film
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
4416 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
4417 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
4419 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
4420 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
4421 Web
2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting
2010</a>
4424 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem
2011
4425 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox
</a> (Youtube)
</li>
4427 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
4428 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz
2011</a> (Youtube)
</li>
4430 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
4431 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
4432 York City in
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
4434 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
4435 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in
2012</a>
4438 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
4439 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat,
2012</a> (Youtube)
</li>
4441 <li><a href=
"https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
4442 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem
2013</a> (FOSDEM)
</li>
4444 <li><a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
4445 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
4446 2013</a> (Youtube)
</li>
4450 <p>A larger list is available from
4451 <a href=
"https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
4452 Freedombox Wiki
</a>.
</p>
4454 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
4455 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
4456 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
4457 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
4458 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
4459 pending in NEW. The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
4460 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload. Join
4461 us on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
4462 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)
</a> and
4463 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4464 mailing list
</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.
</p>
4470 Tags:
<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>.
4475 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4479 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy
</a>
4485 <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4486 today. This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:
</p>
4491 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta
2 for
4492 short) of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4493 Skolelinux
</a> based on Debian Wheezy!
</p>
4495 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
4496 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
4497 weekend. We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
4498 if you find something, please notify us immediately!
</p>
4500 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
4501 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)
</p>
4503 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~b2
4504 compared to beta1:
</p>
4508 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
4509 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.
</li>
4510 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
4511 understand ical/dav sources.
</li>
4512 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
4514 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.
</li>
4515 <li>Updates for chromium (
29.0.1547.57-
1~deb7u1), imagemagick
4516 (
6.7.7.10-
5+deb7u2), php5 (
5.4.4-
14+deb7u4), libmodplug
4517 (
0.8.8.4-
3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (
4.0.2-
6+deb7u2), linux-image
4518 (
3.2.0-
4-
486_3.2
.46-
1+deb7u1).
</li>
4522 <p>Where to get it:
</p>
4524 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
4527 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso
</a></li>
4528 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso
</a></li>
4529 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .
</li>
4532 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f
</p>
4534 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
4536 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso
</a></li>
4537 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso
</a></li>
4538 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .
</li>
4541 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e
</p>
4543 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
4544 debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
4545 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
4546 as the other isos.
</p>
4548 <p>How to report bugs
</p>
4550 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
4551 <br><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
4554 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</p>
4556 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
4557 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
4558 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
4559 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
4560 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
4561 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
4562 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
4563 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
4564 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
4565 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
4566 services. The desktop contains more than
60 educational software
4567 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
4568 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
4570 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
4571 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
4572 Squeeze release.
</p>
4574 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases
</p>
4576 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4577 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4578 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
4579 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (
1) Keep
4580 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (
2)
4581 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
4582 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
4583 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
4584 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
4596 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4601 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4605 <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>
4611 <p>I was introduced to the
4612 <a href=
"http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project
</a>
4613 in
2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
4614 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
4615 within the legal protection of their own homes. The idea is to give
4616 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
4617 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture. Instead of
4618 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
4619 control over their own basic infrastructure.
</p>
4621 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
4622 taken priority. But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
4623 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
4624 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
4625 actually started working on the project a while back.
</p>
4627 <p>The
<a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
4628 Debian initiative
</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
4629 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
4630 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
4631 communication. The initial deployment platform have been the
4632 <a href=
"http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug
</a>,
4633 which is a piece of hardware I do not own. So to be able to test what
4634 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
4635 it on some hardware I do have access to. I have rewritten the
4636 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker
</a>
4637 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
4638 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
4639 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
4640 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
4641 missing in Debian).
</p>
4643 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
4645 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup
</a>),
4646 and a administrative web interface
4647 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth
</a> + exmachina +
4648 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
4649 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy
</a>
4650 (freedombox-privoxy). There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
4651 client (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat
</a>)
4652 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
4653 (
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd
</a>). The
4654 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
4655 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc. Not much of
4656 this is really working yet, see
4657 <a href=
"https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
4658 project TODO
</a> for links to GIT repositories. Most of the code is
4659 on github at the moment. The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
4660 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
4661 users. I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
4662 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
4663 with lots of half baked features.
</p>
4665 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
4666 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
4669 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64
</strong></p>
4673 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.
</li>
4674 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.
</li>
4675 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
4676 to the Debian installer:
<p>
4677 <pre>url=
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat
</a></pre></li>
4679 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
4682 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
4683 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.
</li>
4687 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian
</strong></p>
4691 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.
</li>
4692 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.
</li>
4693 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:
</p>
4695 deb
<a href=
"http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox
</a> wheezy main
4697 <li><p>Run this as root:
</p>
4699 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
4702 apt-get install freedombox-setup
4703 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
4705 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.
</li>
4709 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
4710 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
4711 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
4712 in my APT repository. But do not let this stop you. It is only a
4713 short "
<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy
</tt>" away. :)</p>
4715 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
4716 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
4717 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
4718 disable
</tt>" as root.</p>
4720 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
4721 problems. We gather on the IRC channel
4722 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:
6667/%
23freedombox
">#freedombox</a> on
4723 irc.debian.org and the
4724 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
">project
4725 mailing list</a>.</p>
4727 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
4728 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
4729 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
4730 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
4731 to look at the rest of plinth. The default user is 'admin' and the
4732 default password is 'secret'.</p>
4738 Tags: <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>.
4743 <div class="padding
"></div>
4747 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html
">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
4753 <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
4754 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
4755 integration fixes . This is the release announcement:</p>
4757 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
4759 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4760 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
4762 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
4764 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
4765 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
4766 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
4767 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
4768 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
4769 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
4770 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
4771 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
4772 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
4773 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
4774 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
4776 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
4777 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
4778 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
4779 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
4781 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
4782 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
4785 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
4786 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
4787 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
4788 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (
1) Keep
4789 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
4790 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
4791 the mailing list
</a>. (
2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
4792 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
4793 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
4794 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
4795 CIFS access to their home directory.
</p>
4797 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
4801 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
4802 work also without a attached tty.
</li>
4803 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
4804 make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
4805 tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
4806 has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
4811 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
4815 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
4816 needed for desktop=xfce installations.
</li>
4817 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
4818 stick ISO image.
</li>
4819 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).
</li>
4820 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.
</li>
4821 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
4822 during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
4823 cope with this.
</li>
4824 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².
</li>
4825 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
4826 empty password hashes.
</li>
4827 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
4828 smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
4829 from joining the Samba domain.
</li>
4833 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
4837 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
4838 not use the http proxy as it should.
</li>
4839 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
4840 (using the KDE configuration).
</li>
4844 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
4846 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
4850 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso
</a></li>
4852 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso
</a></li>
4854 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
</li>
4858 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
4859 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2
</p>
4861 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
4865 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso
</a></li>
4866 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso
</a></li>
4867 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .
</li>
4871 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
4872 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119
</p>
4875 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
4877 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
4883 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4888 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4892 <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>
4898 <p>Earlier, I reported about
4899 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
4900 problems using an Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB disk
</a>. Friday I was
4901 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away. And as
4902 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
4903 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
4904 currently on the disk.
</p>
4906 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
4907 <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>
4908 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
4909 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
4910 disks. I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
4911 booted the ISO from a USB stick. The disk was recognized, but the
4912 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
4913 to insert any Intel firmware. So no change, and the disk is still
4914 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
4915 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware. No idea how likely
4916 that is. Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness. I
4917 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
4918 the broken disks.
</p>
4924 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4929 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4933 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture
</a>
4939 <p>It has been a while since my last update. Since last summer, I
4940 have worked on a Norwegian
4941 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
4942 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
4943 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
4944 law. Yesterday, I finally broken the
90% mark, when counting the
4945 number of strings to translate. Due to real life constraints, I have
4946 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
4947 I found time to work on it again. Still lots of work left, but the
4948 first draft is nearing completion. I created a graph to show the
4949 progress of the translation:
</p>
4951 <p><img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
4953 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
4954 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
4955 drawings need to be fixed. There are probably also some index entries
4956 missing that need to be added. This can be done by comparing the
4957 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
4958 English docbook version with the paper version. Last, the colophon
4959 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
4960 done. I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
4961 of the index pages. All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
4962 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
4963 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.
</p>
4965 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
4966 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
4967 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
4968 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
4969 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
4970 around? There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
4971 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
4972 project files currently available from
4973 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
4975 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
4977 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
4979 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
4980 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
4981 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
4982 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
4988 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
4993 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4997 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
5003 <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5004 today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
5006 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~b0 released
5007 2013-
07-
27</strong></p>
5009 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5010 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
5012 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
5014 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5015 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5016 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5017 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5018 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5019 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5020 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5021 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5022 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5023 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5024 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5026 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5027 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
5028 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5029 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
5031 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5032 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5033 Squeeze release.
</p>
5035 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
5036 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
5039 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
5043 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
5044 for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.
</li>
5045 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
5046 packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
5047 by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
5048 installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
5049 and libpam-mklocaluser.
</li>
5050 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).
</li>
5051 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).
</li>
5052 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
5057 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
5061 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
5062 desktop=gnome installations.
</li>
5063 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
5065 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
5066 setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.
</li>
5067 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
5068 install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
5069 with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.
</li>
5070 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
5071 exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
5072 name setting at run time to work again.
</li>
5073 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
5074 fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
5075 updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.
</li>
5076 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
5077 (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.
</li>
5078 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.
</li>
5082 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
5086 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.
</li>
5087 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
5088 not use the http proxy as it should.
</li>
5089 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.
</li>
5093 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
5095 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
5099 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso
</a></li>
5101 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso
</a></li>
5103 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .
</li>
5107 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
5108 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f
</p>
5110 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
5114 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso
</a></li>
5115 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso
</a></li>
5116 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .
</li>
5120 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
5121 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733
</p>
5124 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
5126 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
5132 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5137 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5141 <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>
5147 <p>Today I switched to
5148 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
5149 new laptop
</a>. I've previously written about the problems I had with
5150 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
5151 <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
5152 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware
</a> that did not handle
5153 sustained writes. My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
5154 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
5155 identical
180 GB disks they decided to send me a
256 GB Samsung SSD
5156 disk instead to fix it once and for all. The Samsung disk survived
5157 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
5158 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
5159 decided to trust it with my data. I have installed it as a Debian Edu
5160 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
5161 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
5162 station from now on.
</p>
5164 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
5165 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
5166 performance and increase life time of the disk. The Linux kernel and
5167 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
5168 environment. To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
5169 package
<tt>ssd-setup
</tt> to handle this tuning. The
5170 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
5171 for the ssd-setup package
</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
5172 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
5173 package. If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
5174 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
5175 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.
</p>
5177 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
5178 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD. It is adjusted to my use case,
5179 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
5180 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
5181 top of this again. See the README file in the package source for the
5182 references I used to pick the settings. At the moment these
5183 parameters are tuned:
</p>
5187 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
5188 (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)
</li>
5190 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
5191 this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
5192 0 to
1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.
</li>
5194 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
5197 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
5200 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.
</li>
5202 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
5205 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to
1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
5206 to
50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.
</li>
5210 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
5211 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
5212 little gain. My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
5213 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
5214 computer. I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
5215 from getting the data on the disk (see
5216 <a href=
"http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #
538</a> for an explanation why).
5217 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
5218 right thing to do.
</p>
5220 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
5221 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
5222 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.
</p>
5224 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
5225 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
5226 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
5227 instead of during my work.
</p>
5229 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
5230 this is already done by Debian Edu.
</p>
5232 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning. I expect
5233 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
5234 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.
</p>
5236 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
5239 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
5240 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
5241 disk. It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
5242 the Lenovo firmware. But I have not tried and did not want to do so
5243 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
5244 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
5251 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5256 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5260 <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>
5266 <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
5267 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
5268 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk
</a>, which
5269 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
5270 sustained write. My supplier is in contact with
5271 <a href=
"http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo
</a>, and they wanted to send a
5272 replacement disk to try to fix the problem. They decided to send an
5273 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.
</p>
5275 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
5276 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it. The new disk have the
5277 same firmware version as the original. This time my hope raised
5278 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
5279 die after
4-
7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
5280 going past
10%,
20%,
40% and even past
50%. But around
60%, the disk
5281 died again and I was back on square one. I still do not have a new
5282 laptop with a disk I can trust. I can not live with a disk that might
5283 lock up when I download a new
5284 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ISO or
5285 other large files. I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
5286 the next proposal from Lenovo.
</p>
5288 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
5289 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
5290 LF1i,
29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
5291 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
5292 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
5293 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
5295 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD
520 Series
180 GB,
5296 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-
302, FW:
5297 LF1i,
22APR2013, PBA: G39779-
300, LBA
351,
651,
888, LI P/N:
0C38722,
5298 Pb-free
2LI, LC P/N:
16-
200366, WWN:
55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
5299 SSDSC2BW180A3L
2.5"
6Gb/s SATA SSD
180G
5V
1A, ASM P/N
0C38732, FRU
5300 P/N
45N8295, P0C38732.
</p>
5302 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
5303 SA, date and WNPP values. Mentioning all the details here in case
5304 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
5305 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
5312 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5317 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5321 <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>
5327 <p>The upcoming Saturday,
2013-
07-
13, we are organising a combined
5328 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
5329 party in Oslo. It is organised by
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the
5330 member assosiation NUUG
</a> and
5331 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5332 project
</a> together with
<a href=
"http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
5335 <p>It starts
10:
00 and continue until late evening. Everyone is
5336 welcome, and there is no fee to participate. There is on the other
5337 hand limited space, and only room for
30 people. Please put your name
5338 on
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
5339 wiki page
</a> if you plan to join us.
</p>
5345 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>.
5350 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5354 <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>
5360 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
5361 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
5362 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41
</a>. Unfortunately I did not have much
5363 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
5364 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived. I
5366 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230
</a>
5367 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
5368 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly. But my
5369 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful. More
5372 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5373 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5374 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
5375 feature at
<a href=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
5376 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5377 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
5378 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
5379 disks from my search parameters. I also asked around among friends to
5380 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.
</p>
5382 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
5383 X41. I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
5384 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
5385 hand a lot more to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly
5386 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
5387 I will get used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
5388 needed a new laptop now. :)
</p>
5390 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple. All it took was a quick
5391 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.
</p>
5393 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop. The
180 GB SSD disk
5394 lock up during load. And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
5395 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
5396 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
5397 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
5398 default in Ubuntu). And the bug with is already known. It was
5399 reported to Debian as
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
5400 report #
691427 2012-
10-
25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
5401 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD). It is also reported to the Linux
5402 kernel developers as
5403 <a href=
"https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
5404 report #
51861 2012-
12-
20</a> (Intel SSD
520 stops working under load
5405 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
5406 Lenovo forums, both for
5407 <a href=
"http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
5408 2012-
11-
10</a> and for
5409 <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
5410 03-
20-
2013</a>. The problem do not only affect installation. The
5411 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
5412 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
5413 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
5415 <a href=
"https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
5416 available
</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
5417 minutes by writing to a file.
</p>
5419 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
5420 contacting PCHELP Norway (request
01D1FDP) which handle support
5421 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
5422 firmware. Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
5423 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i). I
5424 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
5431 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5436 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5440 <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>
5446 <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
5447 trusty old Thinkpad X41. Unfortunately I did not have much time to
5448 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived. I ended up
5449 picking a
<a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
5450 X230
</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN). I first test installed Debian Edu
5451 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly. As I write
5452 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
5453 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
5454 with an expencive door stop.
</p>
5456 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
5457 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
5458 listed in the feature list. But I did get good help from the search
5459 feature at
<ahref=
"http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt
</a>, which
5460 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
5461 requirements. A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
5462 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.
</p>
5464 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
5465 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
5466 to reach the edges. But the key response is fairly good and the
5467 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
5468 used to it. My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
5469 new laptop now. :)
</p>
5471 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.
</p>
5477 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5482 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5486 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
5492 <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
5493 today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
5495 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
5496 2013-
07-
03</strong></p>
5498 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5499 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
5501 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
5503 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
5504 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
5505 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
5506 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
5507 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
5508 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
5509 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
5510 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
5511 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
5512 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
5513 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
5515 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
5516 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
5517 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
5518 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
5520 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
5521 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
5522 Squeeze release.
</p>
5524 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
5526 <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.
</li>
5527 <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
5528 submenu. It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
5529 brings KDE in line with the others.
</li>
5530 <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
5531 they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
5532 menu now that menu-xdg was removed.
</li>
5533 <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
5534 multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
5535 X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
5537 <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
5538 are too few to make the package useful.
</li>
5540 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
5542 <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
5543 <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.
</li>
5544 <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
5545 up for some language options.
</li>
5546 <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.
</li>
5547 <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.
</li>
5548 <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
5549 d-i is doing it.
</li>
5550 <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
5551 debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.
</li>
5552 <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
5553 script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
5554 Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.
</li>
5555 <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
5556 installation, to work properly in Wheezy.
</li>
5557 <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).
</li>
5558 <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
5559 and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.
</li>
5560 <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
5561 work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.
</li>
5563 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
5565 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
5566 available yet (
698840).
</li>
5567 <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.
</li>
5569 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
5571 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
5573 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso
</a></li>
5574 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso
</a></li>
5575 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .
</li>
5578 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
5579 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8
</p>
5581 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
</p>
5583 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso
</a></li>
5584 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso
</a></li>
5585 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .
</li>
5588 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
5589 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721
</p>
5591 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
5593 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
5599 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5604 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5608 <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>
5614 <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
5615 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
5616 working. One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
5617 needed to get the hardware on my computer working. Most often this
5618 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
5619 controller or the ethernet card. Today I pushed version
0.4 of the
5620 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package
</a>
5621 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
5622 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
5623 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
5624 debian packages. Here is a test run on my laptop:
</p>
5627 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5628 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
5629 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
5630 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
5631 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
5632 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
5635 Preconfiguring packages ...
5636 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
5637 (Reading database ...
259727 files and directories currently installed.)
5638 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
5639 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (
0.28+squeeze1) ...
5643 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
5644 printed instead:
</p>
5647 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
5648 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules. exiting
5652 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
5653 me some time when setting up new machines. :)
</p>
5655 <p>So, how does it work? It look at the set of currently loaded
5656 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
5657 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information. Next, it
5658 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
5659 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
5660 requested firmware file. If the package is in the non-free section, a
5661 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
5662 <tt>apt-get install
</tt>. The end result is a slightly better working
5665 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
5666 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
5667 finally fix
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
5668 #
655507</a>. There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
5669 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
5670 from the nearby Debian mirror.
</p>
5676 Tags:
<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>.
5681 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5685 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...
</a>
5691 <p>In the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5692 Skolelinux
</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
5693 which check that services are running, working, and return the
5694 expected results. It runs automatically just after the first boot on
5695 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
5696 installations (using non-test ISOs). It test that the LDAP service is
5697 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
5698 online resizable, etc, etc. And it check that the PXE service is
5699 configured, which is the topic of this post.
</p>
5701 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
5702 Edu Wheezy release. These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
5703 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
5704 happen all the needed packages need to be on them. Thanks to our test
5705 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
5706 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
5707 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
5708 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
5709 working packages to get it working. And the packages changed name
5710 from debian-installer-
6.0-netboot-$arch to
5711 debian-installer-
7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
5712 packages during installation. Without our test suite, I suspect we
5713 would never have discovered this before release. Now it is fixed
5714 right after we got the ISOs operational.
</p>
5716 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
5717 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
5718 test suite using
<tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install
</tt> and see if
5719 any errors are detected. This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
5722 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
5724 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
5725 irc.debian.org
</a> and the
5726 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@
</a> mailing
5733 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5738 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5742 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu
</a>
5748 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
5749 Skolelinux
</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
5750 globe. And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
5751 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
5752 #debian-edu
</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
5753 worked. We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
5754 help us with translations. And today I managed to get an interview
5755 with him, to learn more about him.
</p>
5757 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
5759 <p>I'm a
25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
5760 which is also my country of origin. Back in
2009, at a New Year's Eve
5761 party, I had a very nice
<strike>beer
</strike> discussion with a
5762 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
5763 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
5764 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
5765 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
5766 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
5769 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
5770 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
5771 activities. For the last
13 months, I have been the Technical Director
5772 of
<a href=
"http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata
</a>, which is a free
5773 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
5774 the only one we have in our country.
</p>
5776 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5777 project?
</strong></p>
5779 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
5780 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
5781 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
5782 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
5783 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
5784 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
5785 ways to contribute.
</p>
5787 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
5788 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
5789 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
5790 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
5791 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
5792 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
5793 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
5794 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
5795 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
5796 have a pretty consistent starting point.
</p>
5798 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
5801 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
5802 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
5803 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
5804 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
5805 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
5806 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
5807 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
5808 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.
</p>
5810 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
5811 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
5812 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
5813 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
5814 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
5817 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5820 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
5821 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
5822 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
5823 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story. I'd like to see
5824 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
5825 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
5826 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
5827 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
5828 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!
</p>
5830 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
5831 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
5832 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
5835 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
5837 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
5838 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
5839 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
5840 Enlightenment project a lot!),
5841 <a href=
"http://www.claws-mail.org/">Claws Mail
</a> due to its ease of
5842 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
5843 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift
</a>, which helps me
5844 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
5845 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!
</p>
5847 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5848 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
5850 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
5851 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
5856 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software
</li>
5858 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
5859 experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
5860 of teenagers more?
</li>
5862 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
5863 be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
5864 other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
5867 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
5868 lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
5869 person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)
</li>
5873 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
5874 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
5875 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
5876 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
5877 very hard to convert against their will.
</p>
5883 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
5888 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5892 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter
</a>
5898 <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
5899 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5900 project
</a> and
<a href=
"http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
5901 project
</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
5902 effort between the projects. One person with a foot in both camps is
5903 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.
</p>
5905 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
5907 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
5908 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
5909 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)
</p>
5911 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
5912 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
5915 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5916 project?
</strong></p>
5918 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
5919 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
5920 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in
2005 in
5921 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
5922 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
5923 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
5924 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
5925 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
5926 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
5927 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
5928 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
5929 we'll get there one day.
</p>
5931 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5934 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
5935 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
5936 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
5937 very high quality work.
</p>
5939 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
5940 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
5941 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
5942 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
5943 community members and commercial suppliers to support.
</p>
5945 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5948 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
5949 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
5950 what I originally rambled on about)
</p>
5952 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
5953 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
5954 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
5955 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
5956 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
5957 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
5958 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
5959 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
5960 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
5963 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
5964 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
5965 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
5966 educational institutions spend on
3rd party solutions that they don't
5967 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
5968 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
5971 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
5973 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows
7. I was
5974 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
5975 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
5976 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
5977 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)
</p>
5979 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
5980 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
5981 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
5982 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
5983 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
5984 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
5985 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
5988 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
5989 using Norton Commander in the early
90's and it stuck (I think the
5990 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
5993 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5994 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
5996 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
5997 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
5998 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
6001 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
6002 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
6003 advantage of that.
</p>
6005 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
6006 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
6007 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
6008 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
6009 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
6010 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
6011 best solution for them.
</p>
6013 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
6014 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
6015 make a decision that would work for them.
</p>
6021 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
6026 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6030 <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>
6036 <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
6037 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
6038 or on first boot from the hard disk. I've seen it once in a while the
6039 last few years, but only recently understood the cause. I've seen it
6040 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
6041 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops. The system to
6042 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
6043 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead. I do
6044 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
6045 i915 driver used by the
6046 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6047 EasyNote LV
</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.
</p>
6049 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways. Either by adding
6050 i915.invert_brightness=
1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
6051 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=
1
6052 option when it load the i915 kernel module. On Debian and Ubuntu, it
6053 can be done by running these commands as root:
</p>
6056 echo options i915 invert_brightness=
1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
6057 update-initramfs -u -k all
6060 <p>Since March
2012 there is
6061 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
6062 mechanism in the Linux kernel
</a> to tell the i915 driver which
6063 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
6064 brightness setting automatically. To use it, one need to add a row in
6065 <a href=
"http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
6066 intel_quirks array
</a> in the driver source
6067 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c
</tt> (look for "
<tt>static
6068 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks
</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
6069 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
6072 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
6073 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
6076 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
6077 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
6078 (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
6079 Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
6080 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
6081 ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
6082 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
6083 <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
6085 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
6086 Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
6087 Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
6088 Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
6089 Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
6090 Capabilities: <access denied>
6091 Kernel driver in use: i915
6094 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
6097 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
6099 /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
6100 { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
6105 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
6106 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
6107 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
6108 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
">dri-devel
6109 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
6110 developers. But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
6112 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/
2013-June/thread.html
">the
6113 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
6114 emails from non-subscribers. Because of this, I sent my patch also to
6115 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
6116 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
6117 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
6119 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
6120 with this problem working properly with Linux. If you use Gnome, your
6121 worries should be over at this point. But if you use KDE, there is
6122 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
6123 the screen during login. I've reported it to Debian as
6124 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
6125 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
6126 this. Perhaps you can help? Perhaps you know what the Gnome
6127 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
6128 developers? Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
6129 during login? If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
6130 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
6132 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
6133 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
6134 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
6135 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
6142 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
6147 <div class="padding
"></div>
6151 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html
">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6157 <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6158 today. This is the release announcement:</p>
6160 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
6161 2013-06-10</strong></p>
6163 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
6164 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
6166 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
6168 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6169 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6170 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6171 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6172 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6173 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6174 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6175 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
6176 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6177 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6178 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6180 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6181 than
60 educational software packages
</a> and more are available from
6182 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6183 and Xfce desktop environment.
</p>
6185 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6186 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6187 Squeeze release.
</p>
6189 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
6193 <li>Iceweasel was updated from
10 to
17. (DSA
2699-
1)
6194 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-
2674), libxvmc (DSA-
2675), libxfixes (DSA-
2676), libxrender (DSA-
2677), mesa (DSA-
2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-
2679), libxt (DSA-
2680), libxcursor (DSA-
2681), libxext (DSA-
2682), libxi (DSA-
2683), libxrandr (DSA-
2684), libxp (DSA-
2685), libxcb (DSA-
2686), libfs (DSA-
2687), libxres (DSA-
2688), libxtst (DSA-
2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-
2690), libxinerama (DSA-
2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-
2692), libx11 (DSA-
2693), chromium-browser (DSA-
2695), gnutls26 (DSA-
2697), wireshark (DSA-
2700), krb5 (DSA-
2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-
2702) and subversion (DSA-
2703).
6195 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
6196 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
6197 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
6201 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
6205 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
6206 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
6207 <li>New Romanian translation.
6208 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
6209 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/
0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/
0.8~deb7u1: #
706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
6210 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
6211 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
6212 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
6213 <li>More testsuite tests.
6214 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
6215 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
6217 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
6218 LTSP in Wheezy.
</li>
6220 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
6221 them up with GOsa².
</li>
6223 <li>Update IMAP server setup.
</li>
6225 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
6226 slbackup-php/
0.4.4-
1: #
700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
6227 entered password).
</li>
6231 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
6235 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.
</li>
6237 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6238 available yet (Open in gosa/
2.7.4-
4: #
698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
6239 missing import feature).
</li>
6241 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).
</li>
6243 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #
502192: menu-xdg: invents
6244 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
6249 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
6251 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
6255 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso
</a></li>
6257 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso
</a></li>
6259 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-
7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .
</li>
6263 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
6264 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419
</p>
6266 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
6268 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a>
6274 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6279 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6283 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building? Debian Edu need help!
</a>
6289 <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
6290 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
6291 hope to get released soon. The two problems require some with PHP
6292 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
6297 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
6298 (slbackup-php) using the root user and password. This is
6299 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #
700257</a>.
6300 This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
6301 Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?
</li>
6303 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
6304 using ldif nor using CSV files. The feature was disabled after a
6305 major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
6306 This is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
6311 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
6312 (
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
6313 irc.debian.org
</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.
</p>
6319 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6324 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6328 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier
</a>
6334 <p>It has been a while since my last English
6335 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
6336 interview last November. But the developers and translators are still
6337 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
6338 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
6339 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.
</p>
6341 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
6343 <p>I am
34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
6344 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
6345 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
6346 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.
</p>
6348 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
6349 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
6350 packaging, publicity and translation.
</p>
6352 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
6353 project?
</strong></p>
6355 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
6356 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
6357 Debian Edu manual
</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
6358 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
6361 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
6362 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
6363 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
6364 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.
</p>
6366 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
6367 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
6368 by
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²
</a>. What pleased
6369 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
6370 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
6371 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
6372 artistic skills with music (
<a href=
"http://ardour.org/">Ardour
</a>,
6373 <a href=
"http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity
</a>) and
6374 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
6375 <a href=
"http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion
</a>).
</p>
6377 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
6378 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu
</a>.
6379 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
6380 beautiful project.
</p>
6382 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6385 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
6386 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
6387 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.
</p>
6389 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
6390 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
6391 of educational free software.
</p>
6393 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
6396 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
6397 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
6398 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
6399 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
6400 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.
</p>
6402 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
6403 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
6404 wiki dokumentation
</a>, where some countries already have a number of
6405 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
6406 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
6407 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
6408 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
6409 support for Debian Edu as well.
</p>
6411 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
6413 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
6414 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
6415 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice. I am
6416 also using the mathematical software
6417 <a href=
"http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about">Scilab
</a> and
6418 <a href=
"http://www.sagemath.org/index.html">Sage
</a> (built from
6419 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
6421 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
6422 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
6423 statistics?
</strong></p>
6425 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
6426 university, we use both
<a href=
"http://www.r-project.org/">R
</a> and
6427 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
6428 geometry, there are nice programs:
</p>
6432 <li><a href=
"http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo
</a> and
6433 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig">kig
</a> to do
6434 constructions in planar geometry
6436 <li><a href=
"http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali
</a>
6437 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
6438 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.
</li>
6443 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor
</a>, which
6444 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
6445 <a href=
"http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave">Octave
</a>, etc...
</p>
6447 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
6448 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
6450 <p>My suggestions would be to
</p>
6454 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.
</li>
6456 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
6457 well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
6458 OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.
</li>
6460 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.
</li>
6462 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
6471 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
6476 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6480 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)
</a>
6486 <p>Included in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6487 Skolelinux
</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
6488 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn. We have tried to
6489 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
6490 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
6491 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
6492 debtag field. Here it is. Click on a image to learn more about the
6495 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>"; ( for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi; done; ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
6497 <p><strong>field::arts
</strong></p>
6499 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=audacity'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'
></a>
6500 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
6501 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=denemo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'
></a>
6502 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=freebirth'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'
></a>
6503 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
6504 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gimp'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'
></a>
6505 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=hydrogen'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'
></a>
6506 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=lilypond'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'
></a>
6507 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=lmms'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'
></a>
6508 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=rosegarden'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'
></a>
6509 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scribus'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'
></a>
6510 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=solfege'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'
></a>
6511 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=stopmotion'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'
></a>
6512 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=tuxpaint'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'
></a>
6515 <p><strong>field::astronomy
</strong></p>
6517 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'
></a>
6518 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gpredict'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'
></a>
6519 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kstars'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'
></a>
6520 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=planets'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'
></a>
6521 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=stellarium'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'
></a>
6522 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xplanet'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'
></a>
6525 <p><strong>field::biology:structural
</strong></p>
6527 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=pymol'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'
></a>
6530 <p><strong>field::chemistry
</strong></p>
6532 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=atomix'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'
></a>
6533 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=chemtool'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'
></a>
6534 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=easychem'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'
></a>
6535 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gchempaint'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'
></a>
6536 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gdis'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'
></a>
6537 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=ghemical'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'
></a>
6538 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gperiodic'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'
></a>
6539 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kalzium'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'
></a>
6540 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=pymol'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'
></a>
6541 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=viewmol'
>[viewmol]
</a>
6542 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xdrawchem'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'
></a>
6545 <p><strong>field::electronics
</strong></p>
6547 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
6548 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gpsim'
>[gpsim]
</a>
6551 <p><strong>field::geography
</strong></p>
6553 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kgeography'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'
></a>
6554 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=marble'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'
></a>
6555 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xplanet'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'
></a>
6558 <p><strong>field::linguistics
</strong></p>
6560 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
6561 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kanagram'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'
></a>
6562 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=khangman'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'
></a>
6563 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=klettres'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'
></a>
6564 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=parley'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'
></a>
6567 <p><strong>field::mathematics
</strong></p>
6569 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
6570 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=drgeo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'
></a>
6571 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
6572 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=geogebra'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'
></a>
6573 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=geomview'
>[geomview]
</a>
6574 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=grace'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'
></a>
6575 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=graphmonkey'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'
></a>
6576 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=graphthing'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'
></a>
6577 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kalgebra'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'
></a>
6578 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kbruch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'
></a>
6579 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kig'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'
></a>
6580 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=kmplot'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'
></a>
6581 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=mathwar'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'
></a>
6582 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=rocs'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'
></a>
6583 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scratch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'
></a>
6584 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=tuxmath'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'
></a>
6585 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=xabacus'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'
></a>
6588 <p><strong>field::physics
</strong></p>
6590 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
6591 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=step'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'
></a>
6594 <p><strong>field::TODO
</strong></p>
6596 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=blinken'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'
></a>
6597 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=cgoban'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'
></a>
6598 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=childsplay'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'
></a>
6599 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gcompris'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'
></a>
6600 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gnuchess'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'
></a>
6601 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gnugo'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'
></a>
6602 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=gtans'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'
></a>
6603 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=ktouch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'
></a>
6604 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=librecad'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'
></a>
6605 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=
1&suite=all§ion=all&keywords=scratch'
><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
06-
01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'
></a>
6608 <p>In total,
61 applications.
3 of them lacked screen shots on
6609 <a href=
"http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net
</a>. If
6610 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
6611 know on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
6612 on irc.debian.org
</a>, or our
6613 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
6614 debian-edu@
</a>.
</p>
6620 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6625 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6629 <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>
6635 <p>Two days ago, I asked
6636 <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
6637 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
6638 preinstalled with Windows
8</a>. I found a solution, but am horrified
6639 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
6642 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
6643 secure booting or fast boot. I suspect fast boot was the problem,
6644 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
6645 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
6648 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
6649 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive! This is as far as I
6650 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
6651 without accepting the Windows
8 license agreement. I am told (and
6652 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
6653 firmware setup once booted into Windows
8. But as I believe the terms
6654 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
6655 was never an alternative. I do not enter agreements I do not intend
6658 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
6659 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
6660 work. But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
6661 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows
8 certified laptops. Is
6662 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
6663 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
6664 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms? Or at least not
6665 without risking to loose the warranty?
</p>
6668 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
6669 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV
</a>, to ensure the next person
6670 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
6673 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
6674 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.
</p>
6680 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6685 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6689 <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>
6695 <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days. I bought three
6696 new laptops for my parents and a few others. I bought Packard Bell
6697 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer. But I
6698 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it. The
6699 computer is preinstalled with Windows
8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
6700 instead of a BIOS to boot.
</p>
6702 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
6703 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick. I have yet
6704 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work. when I turn on
6705 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
6706 the normal boot menu. I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
6707 USB stick booting. When booting, it first ask for the language to
6708 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
6709 Windows
8 terms of use. As these terms are completely unacceptable to
6710 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
6711 to get it to boot the Linux installer.
</p>
6713 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
6714 <a href=
"http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
6715 EasyNote LV
</a> model. If you have any idea how to get Linux
6716 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
6717 page. If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
6718 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.
</p>
6720 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
6721 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
6728 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6733 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6737 <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>
6743 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is
6744 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It
6745 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
6746 pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server,
6747 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
6748 educational software. The project was founded almost
12 years ago,
6749 2001-
07-
02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for
6750 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
6751 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
6752 donate some money
</a>.
6754 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
6755 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
6756 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very
6757 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
6758 the Debian Edu installer.
</p>
6761 <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/>
6762 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
6763 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
6764 into a Debian Edu Workstation:
</p>
6768 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.
</li>
6769 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
</li>
6770 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
6771 our configuration.
</li>
6772 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
6773 /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
6774 according to the profile specified in the config above,
6775 overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
</li>
6776 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
6777 that could not be done using preseeding.
</li>
6778 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.
</li>
6782 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
6783 replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
6784 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
6785 the needed packages.
</p>
6787 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
6788 setting up
<a href=
"http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi
</a> as a
6789 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
6790 <a href=
"http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage">Raspbian
</a> installation and
6791 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
6792 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).
</p>
6794 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
6795 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
6796 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:
</p>
6799 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
6803 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
6804 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
6805 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
6812 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>.
6817 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6821 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
6827 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6828 project
</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
6829 release today. This is the release announcement:
</p>
6831 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu
7.0.0 alpha1 released
6832 2013-
05-
14</strong></p>
6834 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7.0.0 edu
6835 alpha1, based on
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org">Debian
</a> with
6836 codename "Wheezy".
</p>
6838 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
6840 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6841 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6842 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
6843 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6844 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6845 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6846 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
6847 other machines can be installed via the network.
</p>
6849 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
6850 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
6851 version compared to the Squeeze release.
</p>
6853 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
6855 <li>Install freemind (
0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
6857 <li>Install chromium (
26.0.1410.43) by default.
</li>
6858 <li>Install goplay (
0.5-
1.1) to make golearn available by default.
</li>
6859 <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
6863 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
6866 <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
6867 reliability improvements.
</li>
6868 <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
6869 of
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.
</li>
6870 <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
6872 <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
6874 <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.
</li>
6875 <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.
</li>
6876 <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.
</li>
6877 <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
6878 servers, to make room for all the software installed.
</li>
6879 <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
6880 log in (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).
</li>
6883 <p><strong>Known issues
</strong></p>
6886 <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
6887 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>). Only install
6888 libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.
</li>
6889 <li>DVD images are not yet ready.
</li>
6890 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
6891 available yet (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).
</li>
6892 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).
</li>
6893 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.
</li>
6894 <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
6895 (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.
</li>
6896 <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
6897 password submission problem
6898 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).
</li>
6902 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
6904 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
</p>
6907 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~
7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso
</a></li>
6908 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~
7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso
</a></li>
6909 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~
7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~
7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso
</li>
6913 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is:
685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b
</p>
6915 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c
</p>
6917 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
6919 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
6925 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6930 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6934 <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>
6941 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
6942 announced a
</a> new
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
6943 channel #debian-lego
</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
6944 community interested in
<a href=
"http://www.lego.com/">LEGO
</a>, the
6945 marvellous construction system from Denmark. We also created
6946 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page
</a> to have
6947 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes. And several
6948 people showed up to help. I was very happy to see the effect of my
6949 call. Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
6950 <a href=
"http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego
</a>
6951 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count
10 packages related to
6952 LEGO and
<a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms
</a>:
</p>
6955 <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>
6956 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad
</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software
</td></tr>
6957 <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>
6958 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd
</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS
</td></tr>
6959 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc
</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
</td></tr>
6960 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc
</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX
</td></tr>
6961 <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>
6962 <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>
6963 <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>
6964 <tr><td><a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n
</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
</td></tr>
6967 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
6968 currently available in Jessie/testing. leocad is so far only
6969 available in experimental.
</p>
6971 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
6972 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
6973 for LEGO designers.
</p>
6979 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
6984 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6988 <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>
6994 <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
6995 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
6996 for Debian Wheezy
</a> was waiting in my mail box. This is a great
6997 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
7000 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
7001 in particular make me very happy to see included. The
7002 <a href=
"http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch
</a> program, made famous by
7003 the
<a href=
"http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code
</a> movement, is
7004 included for the first time. Alongside similar programs like
7005 <a href=
"http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle
</a> and
7006 <a href=
"http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart
</a>,
7007 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
7008 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
7009 computer. Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
7012 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
7013 Edu/Skolelinux release too. The
7014 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
7015 alpha release
</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
7022 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>.
7027 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7031 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy
</a>
7037 <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
7038 its first Wheezy based release today. This is the release
7041 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~
7.0.0 alpha0 released
7042 2013-
04-
26</strong></p>
7044 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~
7.0.0
7045 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".
</p>
7047 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</strong></p>
7049 <p><a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7050 Skolelinux
</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7051 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7052 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
7053 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7054 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7055 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7056 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7057 installed via the network.
</p>
7059 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
7060 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
7061 version compared to the Squeeze release.
</p>
7063 <p><strong>Software updates
</strong></p>
7066 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
7068 <li>Linux kernel
3.2.x
</li>
7069 <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma"
4.8.4, GNOME
3.4, and LXDE
4
7070 (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
7072 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
10 ESR
</li>
7073 <li>LibreOffice
3.5.4</li>
7076 <li>CUPS print system
1.5.3</li>
7077 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
12.01</li>
7078 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
12.04</li>
7079 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.8.2</li>
7080 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.1</li>
7081 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.11.3</li>
7082 <li>Scratch visual programming environment
1.4.0.6</li>
7083 <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
7084 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
7085 manual
</a> for more details.
</li>
7086 <li>Debian Wheezy includes about
37000 packages available for
7088 <li>More information about Debian Wheezy
7.0 is provided in the
7089 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes
</a> and the
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual
</a>.
</li>
7093 <p><strong>Documentation
</strong></p>
7095 <li>The (
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English
</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
7096 German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
7097 for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
</li>
7100 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes
</strong></p>
7102 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
7103 choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
7104 server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.
</li>
7107 <p><strong>Other changes
</strong></p>
7109 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
7110 configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
7111 entry in lts.conf or LDAP.
<li>
7112 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
7113 functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
7114 completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.
</li>
7117 <p><strong>Regressions
</strong></p>
7119 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
7123 <p><strong>No updated artwork
</strong></p>
7126 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
7127 screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
7128 had for our Squeeze based release.
</li>
7131 <p><strong>Where to get it
</strong></p>
7133 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
7135 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</a></li>
7136 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</a></li>
7137 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/
</li>
7140 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c
</p>
7142 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:
25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2
</p>
7144 <p><strong>How to report bugs
</strong></p>
7146 <p><a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
</a></p>
7152 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7157 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7161 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in
2013 take place in Trondheim
</a>
7167 <p>This years first
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
7168 Debian Edu
</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
7169 Details about the gathering can be found
7170 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
7171 the FRiSK wiki
</a>. The dates are
19-
21th of April
2013, and online
7172 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
7173 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
7176 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
7177 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
7180 <p>See you on
<a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,
</a> then?
</p>
7186 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7191 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7195 <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>
7201 <p>Today the
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
7202 package
</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
7203 for many months. I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
7204 2013-
01-
27, and today it was accepted into the archive.
</p>
7206 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
7207 install to work with a pluggable hardware device. The suggestion pop
7208 up when the device is plugged in. For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
7209 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
7210 the NXT controller. Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
7217 Tags:
<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>.
7222 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7226 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)
</a>
7232 <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
7233 time, without much sacrifice? A small step could be to change the
7234 font you use when printing.
</p>
7237 <a href=
"http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
7238 Technica
</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
7239 changed their default front from
7240 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial
</a> to
7241 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
7242 Gothic
</a> to save money. The Century Gothic font uses
30% less toner
7243 than Arial to print the same text. In other word, you could cut your
7244 toner costs by
30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
7245 by more than
30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
7248 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
7249 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $
100,
000 per year
7250 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
7251 <a href=
"http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
7252 TwinCities.com
</a>, and expected to save between $
5,
000 and $
10,
000
7253 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font. Not
7254 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
7255 sources will most likely still use a different font. Also, the
7256 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
7257 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
7258 depend on the documents printed.
</p>
7260 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
7261 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
7262 and save some money in the process.
</p>
7264 <p>Update
2013-
04-
10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
7265 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
7266 <a href=
"http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
7267 difference between font pairs
</a>. They also
7268 <a href=
"http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
7269 which fonts to use
</a> to save ink. Check it out. :) While updating
7270 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
7271 <a href=
"http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
7272 the fonts they recommend
</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.
</p>
7278 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7283 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7287 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB
</a>
7293 <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
7294 <a href=
"http://www.efn.no/">EFN
</a> about interesting books to read
7295 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
7296 the
1968 short story Kodémus by
7297 <a href=
"http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd
</a>
7298 came up. The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
7299 easily available for current and future generations. Some of the
7300 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
7301 reported back
2013-
03-
19 that the author was OK with releasing the
7302 short story using a
<a href=
"http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
7303 Commons
</a> license. The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
7304 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.
</p>
7306 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
7307 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
7308 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
7309 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook
</a> processing framework to
7310 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story. The tools to
7311 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
7312 distribution of choice,
<a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a>, so
7313 all I had to do was to use the
7314 <a href=
"http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex
</a>,
7315 <a href=
"http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub
</a>
7316 and
<a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto
</a> tools to do the
7317 conversion. After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
7319 <a href=
"http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl
</a>),
7320 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
7321 nicer
<variablelist
> typesetting, but that is just a minor
7322 technical detail.
</p>
7324 <p>There were a few challenges, of course. We want to typeset the
7325 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
7326 control over the layout. The original short story have three
7327 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
7328 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
7329 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.
</p>
7331 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
7332 single star in it, ie
<para
>*
</para
>, but it made sure a
7333 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted. This did not look too
7334 good without the centring. The next approach was to create a new
7335 preprocessor directive
<?newscene?
>, mapping to "
<hr/
>"
7336 for HTML and "
<fo:block
text-align="center"
><fo:leader
7337 leader-pattern="rule"
rule-thickness="
0.5pt"/
></fo:block
>"
7338 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
7339 switched at this time). The HTML XSL file looked like this:
</p>
7341 <p><blockquote><pre>
7342 <?xml version='
1.0'?
>
7343 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:
xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version='
1.0'
>
7344 <xsl:template
match="processing-instruction('newscene')"
>
7346 </xsl:template
>
7347 </xsl:stylesheet
>
7348 </pre></blockquote></p>
7350 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:
</p>
7352 <p><blockquote><pre>
7353 <?xml version='
1.0'?
>
7354 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:
xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version='
1.0'
>
7355 <xsl:template
match="processing-instruction('newscene')"
>
7356 <fo:block
text-align="center"
>
7357 <fo:leader
leader-pattern="rule"
rule-thickness="
0.5pt"/
>
7359 </xsl:template
>
7360 </xsl:stylesheet
>
7361 </pre></blockquote></p>
7363 <p>Finally, I came across the
<bridgehead
> tag, which seem to be
7364 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced
<?newscene?
>
7365 with
<bridgehead
>*
</bridgehead
>. It isn't centred, but we
7366 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
7369 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
7370 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
7371 directive
<?linebreak?
>, mapping to
<br/
> in HTML, and
7372 <fo:block/
> in FO/PDF. I suspect there are better ways to do
7373 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github. The HTML XSL file now
7376 <p><blockquote><pre>
7377 <?xml version='
1.0'?
>
7378 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:
xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version='
1.0'
>
7379 <xsl:template
match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"
>
7381 </xsl:template
>
7382 </xsl:stylesheet
>
7383 </pre></blockquote></p>
7385 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:
</p>
7387 <p><blockquote><pre>
7388 <?xml version='
1.0'?
>
7389 <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:
xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version='
1.0'
7390 xmlns:
fo="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Format"
>
7391 <xsl:template
match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"
>
7393 </xsl:template
>
7394 </xsl:stylesheet
>
7395 </pre></blockquote></p>
7397 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
7398 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
7399 structure in the DocBook source. No idea how to do this, so we ended
7400 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
7403 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
7404 <a href=
"https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
7406 (
<a href=
"https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
7407 repository
</a>). We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
7414 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
7419 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7423 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux
6 got a video review from Pcwizz
</a>
7430 <a href=
"https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter
</a>
7431 I just discovered that
<a href=
"http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz
</a> have
7432 done a
<a href=
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
7433 review
</a> on Youtube of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
7434 / Debian Edu
</a> version
6. He installed the standalone profile and
7435 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
7436 a few programs and his view of our distribution.
</p>
7438 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
7439 have heard wrong). While looking thought the Graphics menu:
</p>
7442 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
7445 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:
</p>
7448 "So, yeah, a bit bloated. It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
7449 to keep it nice and GNU. So, I do not want to go on about it, but
7450 lets give it
7 out of
10. I am not going to use it. That is because
7451 I am not deploying a school network. There may be some mythical
7452 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
7455 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
7456 installation option. It make it possible to install only the main
7457 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
7458 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)
</p>
7460 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
7461 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
7464 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
7465 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
7466 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
7467 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
7470 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
7471 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
7472 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
7473 consistent menu system
</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
7474 inconsistent menu systems.
</p>
7476 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
7479 <iframe width=
"560" height=
"315" src=
"http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder=
"0" allowfullscreen
></iframe>
7485 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
7490 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7494 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released
</a>
7500 <p>Last Sunday,
2013-
03-
03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
7501 of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
7502 based on Debian Squeeze. This is the first update since
7503 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
7504 initial release
2012-
03-
11</a>. This is the
7505 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
7506 announcement email from Holger
</a>:
</p>
7508 <blockquote><p>Hi,
</p>
7510 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
7511 Edu
6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").
</p>
7513 <p>Debian Edu
6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
7514 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian
6.0.4 and
6.0.7 as
7515 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
7516 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes. Please see
7517 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311</a>
7518 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".
</p>
7520 <p>Images are available for download at
7521 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/
</a></p>
7524 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
7525 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
7526 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso
</p>
7529 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3 debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
7530 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
7531 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa debian-edu-
6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso
</p>
7533 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.
</p>
7535 <p>Changes for Debian Edu
6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
7539 <li>sitesummary was updated from
0.1.3 to
0.1.8
7541 <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient
</li>
7542 <li>Comply with
3.X kernel
</li>
7544 <li>debian-edu-doc from
1.4~
20120310~
6.0.4+r0 to
1.4~
20130228~
6.0.7+r1
7546 <li>Minor updates from the wiki
</li>
7547 <li>Danish translation now complete
</li>
7549 <li>debian-edu-config from
1.453 to
1.455
7551 <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #
699880</li>
7552 <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.
</li>
7553 <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after
2 days.
7554 Closes: #
664596</li>
7555 <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
7556 Closes: #
664976</li>
7557 <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
7559 <li>Don't fail if password contains "
</li>
7560 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog
</li>
7562 <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
7564 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes
</li>
7565 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²
</li>
7566 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
7567 "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #
687256</li>
7568 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users
</li>
7570 <li>Add Danish web page
</li>
7572 <li>debian-edu-install from
1.528 to
1.530
7574 <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation
</li>
7578 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
7579 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/
</a>
7580 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
7581 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)
</p>
7583 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
7585 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</a>!
7588 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)
</p>
7594 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7599 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7603 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web
</a>
7609 <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
7610 broadcast them on the air? Using free software? With video on demand
7612 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
7613 open standards
</a>? Included a web based video stream as well? And
7614 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world? A
7615 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
7616 <a href=
"http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen
</a> have been building a
7617 system to do just this. The source code for the solution is licensed
7618 using the GNU LGPL, and
7619 <a href=
"http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github
</a>.
</p>
7621 <p>The idea is simple. You upload a video file over the web, and
7622 attach meta information to the file. You select a time slot in the
7623 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
7624 in the web stream. It is also made available in a video on demand
7625 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time. All
7626 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.
</p>
7628 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution. I'll mention
7629 the three most important ones. The first part is the database of
7630 videos and the schedule. This is written in Django and include a REST
7631 API. The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
7632 PostgreSQL. At the moment this system can be tested on
7633 <a href=
"http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv
</a>. The
7634 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
7635 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast. This is done
7636 using
<a href=
"http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT
</a> and
7637 <a href=
"http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit
</a>. Video
7638 signal distribution is handled using
7639 <a href=
"http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder
</a>. The
7640 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
7641 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
7642 on demand. It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
7643 decided what it will end up using. Note that the source of the latter
7644 two parts are not yet pushed to github. The lead author want to clean
7645 them up a bit more first.
</p>
7647 <p>The development is coordinated on the
7648 <a href=
"irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
7649 channel
</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
7650 <a href=
"http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
7651 frikanalen mailing list
</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
7652 (phed on IRC). Anyone is welcome to participate in the
7659 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
7664 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7668 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March
1st
2013</a>
7674 <p>Dr.
<a href=
"http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman
</a>,
7675 founder of
<a href=
"http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation
</a>,
7676 is giving
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
7677 talk in Oslo March
1st
2013 17:
00 to
19:
00</a>. The event is public
7678 and organised by
<a href=
"">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)
</a>
7679 (where I am the chair of the board) and
7680 <a href=
"http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
7681 Center
</a>. The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
7682 GNU», with this description:
7685 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
7686 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
7687 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
7688 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
7691 <p>The meeting is open for everyone. Due to space limitations, the
7692 doors opens for NUUG members at
16:
15, and everyone else at
16:
45. I
7693 am really curious how many will show up. See
7694 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
7695 page
</a> for the location details.
</p>
7701 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
7706 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7710 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap
</a>
7716 <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
7717 now a great source of free maps available from
7718 <a href=
"http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart
</a>. To
7719 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
7720 download the map type you want. There are
8 different maps available,
7721 using different colours and data selection. Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
7722 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
7723 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
7724 page for descriptions).
</p>
7726 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
7727 map you can just edit the
7728 <a href=
"http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap
</a> map source
7729 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)
</p>
7735 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart
</a>.
7740 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7744 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code
</a>
7750 <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
7751 <a href=
"http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
7752 by the Norwegian government
</a> require that invoices are sent through
7753 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
7754 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
7755 facilitators. This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
7756 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers. My preferred
7757 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
7758 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
7759 protocol like REST or SOAP. But this might also be overkill, as the
7760 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
7761 using a simple bar code. My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
7762 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there. The
7763 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
7764 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format
</a>, as
7765 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.
</p>
7767 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
7768 information can be included using such extentions. For example an
7769 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
7770 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
7771 for donations to the Debian Edu project
</a> and thus have bank account
7772 information publicly available) for NOK
1000.00 could have these extra
7777 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
7778 X-INVOICE-KID:
123412341234
7779 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
7780 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:
16040884339
7781 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
7782 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
7785 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
7787 <a href=
"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
7788 to put bank account information into a vCard
</a>. For payments in
7789 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
7790 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.
</p>
7792 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:
</p>
7797 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
7798 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei
29D;OSLO;;
0485;Norway
7799 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
7800 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
7801 REV:
20130212T095000Z
7803 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
7804 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
7805 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:
16040884339
7806 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
7807 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
7811 <p>The resulting QR code created using
7812 <a href=
"http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode
</a> would look
7813 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
7814 phone, or for example the
<a href=
"http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
7815 bar code reader
</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
7818 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
7820 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
7821 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
7822 handling invoices. I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
7823 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.
</p>
7825 <p><strong>Update
2013-
02-
12 11:
30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
7826 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.
</p>
7832 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
7837 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7841 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids
</a>
7847 <p><img align=
"left" style=
"margin-right:25px;" src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
7849 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
7850 during the night and wake up when it is morning. I mean, when I
7851 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier. In our household we
7852 have decided that
07:
00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
7853 sleep until
07:
00 is a small challenge every day. They have adapted
7854 quite well, and rarely wake up at
05:
00 any more, but some times wake
7855 up at times like
05:
50,
06:
15,
06:
30 or
06:
45, and it is hard to put
7856 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
7857 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until
07:
00
7858 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
7859 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.
</p>
7861 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem. It
7862 involve home automation. A few years ago I bought a
7863 <a href=
"http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick
</a> and RF
7864 switches at the local
<a href=
"http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
7865 Ohlson
</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
7866 gadgets using my Linux server. When I moved from the old flat to a
7867 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
7868 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
7869 the gadgets I had. But recently I bought a
7870 <a href=
"http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
7871 Net
</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
7872 sockets. I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
7873 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding. The default
7874 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
7875 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
7877 <a href=
"http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
7878 with local access
</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
7879 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
7880 code. I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
7881 important. But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
7882 the kids came to me yesterday. We can set up a night light controlled
7883 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at
07:
00. The kids can
7884 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
7885 get up or not. They joined me in setting everything up, and I
7886 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
7887 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.
</p>
7889 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
7890 after
07:
00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
7891 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
7892 arrived. So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
7893 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
7894 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.
</p>
7896 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
7897 to tell the kids to get up. We do not have to wait until
07:
00, and
7898 can also delay it if we want to.
</p>
7904 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
7909 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7913 <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>
7920 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
7921 bitcoin related blog post
</a> mentioned that the new
7922 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package
</a> for
7923 Debian was waiting in NEW. It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
7924 2013-
01-
19, and have been available in unstable since then. It was
7925 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
7928 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
7929 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
7930 architectures. For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
7931 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
7932 architectures (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #
672524</a>).
7933 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
7934 no-one have been able to propose a fix. If you got an idea what is
7935 failing, please let us know via the BTS.
</p>
7937 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
7938 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
7939 if it run short on space (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
7940 #
696715</a>). So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
7943 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7944 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7945 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
7951 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>.
7956 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7960 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!
</a>
7967 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
7968 for testers
</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
7969 pluggable hardware devices, which I
7970 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
7971 out to create
</a> earlier this month. Several valuable testers showed
7972 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
7973 people. But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
7974 for this project. Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
7975 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name. In the
7976 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
7977 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint
</a>
7978 repository in Debian. The new name? It is
<strong>Isenkram
</strong>.
7979 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use
</p>
7982 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
7983 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
7986 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet. If you
7987 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
7988 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
7989 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)
</p>
7991 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
7992 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc. Typical hardware
7993 stuff, in other words. I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
7994 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
7997 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
7998 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
8001 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
8002 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.
</p>
8008 Tags:
<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>.
8013 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8017 <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>
8023 <p>Early this month I set out to try to
8024 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
8025 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices
</a>. Now my
8026 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience. To test
8028 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
8029 from the Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>, build and install the
8030 package. You might have to log out and in again activate the
8031 autostart script.
</p>
8033 <p>The design is simple:
</p>
8037 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
8038 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.
</li>
8040 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
8041 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
8044 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
8045 the APT database, a database
8046 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
8047 via HTTP
</a> and a database available as part of the package.
</li>
8049 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
8050 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
8051 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
8052 package or packages.
</li>
8054 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
8055 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.
</li>
8057 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
8058 package while showing progress information in a window.
</li>
8062 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system. Here
8063 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action. First the
8064 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
8065 approve all the dependencies. Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.
</p>
8067 <p><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
8068 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
8069 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
8070 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
8071 <br><img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width=
"70%"></p>
8073 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
8074 is already useful. The database of hardware to package mappings also
8075 need more work. It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
8076 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
8077 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
8078 method. I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
8079 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
8080 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.
</p>
8082 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
21 16:
50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
8083 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
8085 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
8086 hw-support-handler; debuild
</tt>'. If you lack debuild, install the
8087 devscripts package.
</p>
8089 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
23 12:
00</strong>: The project is now
8090 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
8091 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository. See
8092 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
8093 instructions
</a> for details.
</p>
8099 Tags:
<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>.
8104 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8108 <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>
8114 <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died. It died quietly and
8115 suddenly in bed. With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
8116 black. The power button was no longer able to turn it on. It was a
8117 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had. Better than both
8118 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S. Far better than the
8119 Compaq I had before that. Now I need to find a replacement. To keep
8120 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
8121 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
8122 not a durable solution.
8124 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest. This is my wishlist from when I
8125 got a new one more than
10 years ago. It still holds true.:)
</p>
8129 <li>Lightweight (around
1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
8131 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.
</li>
8132 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.
</li>
8133 <li>Long battery life time. Preferable a week.
</li>
8134 <li>Internal WIFI network card.
</li>
8135 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.
</li>
8136 <li>Some USB slots (
2-
3 is plenty)
</li>
8137 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.
</li>
8138 <li>Video resolution at least
1024x768, with size around
12" (A4 paper
8140 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
8141 X.org packages.
</li>
8142 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
8147 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
8148 list. The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
8149 last
10-
15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
8150 at other features to choose my laptop. But are there still made as
8151 robust laptops as my X41? The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
8152 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
8153 Lenovo took over. But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
8154 still be useful.
</p>
8156 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
8157 external keyboard? I'll have to check the
8158 <a href=
"http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site
</a> for
8159 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
8160 of the vendors listed on the
<a href=
"http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
8161 Pre-loaded site
</a>.
</p>
8167 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8172 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8176 <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>
8182 <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
8183 install to get support for a given MIME type. Thanks to
8184 <a href=
"https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
8185 done by Ubuntu
</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
8186 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
8187 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
8188 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:
</p>
8194 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8199 version = pkg.candidate
8201 version = pkg.installed
8204 record = version.record
8205 if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
8207 mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
8208 for t in mime_types:
8209 t = t.rstrip().strip()
8211 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
8213 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
8214 if
1 < len(sys.argv):
8215 mimetype = sys.argv[
1]
8216 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
8217 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
8221 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:
</p>
8224 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
8225 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
8227 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
8228 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
8229 browser-plugin-gnash
8233 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
8234 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
8235 packages. It would be great if Debian supported such feature too. Is
8236 anyone working on adding it?
</p>
8238 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
18 14:
20</strong>: The Debian BTS
8239 request for icweasel support for this feature is
8240 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#
484010</a> from
2008 (and
8241 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#
698426</a> from today). Lack
8242 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
8243 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.
</p>
8249 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8254 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8258 <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>
8264 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
8265 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
8266 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
8267 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
8268 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
8269 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
8270 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
8271 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
8273 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
8274 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
8275 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
8277 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
8278 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
8279 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
8280 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
8281 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
8283 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
8287 ----- -----------------------
8303 18 application/x-ogg
8310 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
8314 ----- -----------------------
8330 18 application/x-ogg
8337 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
8341 ----- -----------------------
8358 18 application/x-ogg
8364 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
8365 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
8366 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
8369 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
16 13:
35</strong>: Updated numbers after
8370 discovering a typo in my script.
</p>
8376 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8381 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8385 <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>
8391 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
8392 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
8393 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
8394 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
8395 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
8396 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
8397 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
8398 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
8399 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
8402 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
8403 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
8404 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
8408 Package: package-name
8409 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
8412 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
8413 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
8415 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
8416 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
8420 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
8423 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
8424 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
8427 Package: pcmciautils
8428 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
8431 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
8432 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
8435 Package: colorhug-client
8436 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
8439 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8440 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8441 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
8443 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8444 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8445 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8446 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8447 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
8448 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8449 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
8452 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8453 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8454 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
8455 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
8457 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
8458 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8459 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8460 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
8462 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8463 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
8466 % ./hw-support-lookup
8467 <br>yubikey-personalization
8471 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8472 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
8475 % ./hw-support-lookup
8480 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
8481 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
8482 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
8484 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
8485 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
8486 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
8487 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
8488 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
8489 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
8490 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
8493 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8494 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8495 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8496 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
8502 Tags:
<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>.
8507 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8511 <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>
8517 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
8518 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
8519 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
8520 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
8522 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8523 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
8525 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
8527 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
8528 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
8529 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
8530 <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> >,
8531 <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> > and
8532 <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> >.
8534 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
8535 this shell script:
</p>
8538 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
8541 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
8545 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
8546 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
8547 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
8551 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
8553 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
8554 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
8557 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
8560 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
8565 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
8566 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
8568 sc
00 (bus subclass)
8572 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
8573 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
8574 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
8575 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
8577 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
8580 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
8582 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
8583 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
8586 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
8589 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
8592 v
1D6B (device vendor)
8593 p
0001 (device product)
8595 dc
09 (device class)
8596 dsc
00 (device subclass)
8597 dp
00 (device protocol)
8598 ic
09 (interface class)
8599 isc
00 (interface subclass)
8600 ip
00 (interface protocol)
8603 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
8604 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
8605 these alias entries show up:
</p>
8608 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
8609 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
8610 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
8611 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
8614 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
8615 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
8616 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
8618 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
8620 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
8621 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
8624 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8627 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
8629 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
8631 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
8632 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
8633 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
8636 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
8639 <p>The values present are
</p>
8642 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
8643 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
8644 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
8645 svn IBM (system vendor)
8646 pn
2371H4G (product name)
8647 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
8648 rvn IBM (board vendor)
8649 rn
2371H4G (board name)
8650 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
8651 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
8652 ct
10 (chassis type)
8653 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
8656 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
8657 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
8661 4 Low Profile Desktop
8674 17 Main Server Chassis
8675 18 Expansion Chassis
8677 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
8678 21 Peripheral Chassis
8680 23 Rack Mount Chassis
8689 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
8690 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
8691 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
8693 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
8695 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
8699 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
8702 <p>The values present are
</p>
8711 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
8712 the valid values are.
</p>
8714 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
8716 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
8717 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
8718 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
8719 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
8720 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
8721 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
8722 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
8724 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
8726 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
8727 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
8730 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
8732 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
8736 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
8737 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
8741 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
8743 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
8745 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
8746 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
8747 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
8748 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
8749 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8750 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
8751 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
8752 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
8756 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8757 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8758 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8759 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
8761 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
8762 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
8763 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
8769 Tags:
<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>.
8774 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8778 <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>
8784 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
8785 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
8786 Launcher and updated the Debian package
8787 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
8788 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
8789 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
8790 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
8791 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
8792 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
8793 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
8794 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
8795 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
8796 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
8797 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
8798 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
8799 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
8800 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
8801 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
8807 Tags: <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>.
8812 <div class="padding
"></div>
8816 <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>
8822 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
8823 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
8824 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
8825 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
8826 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
8827 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
8828 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
8829 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
8830 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
8831 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
8832 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
8834 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
8835 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
8836 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
8841 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
8842 starting when a user log in.</li>
8844 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
8845 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
8847 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
8848 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
8851 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
8852 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
8856 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
8857 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
8858 discover database to find packages and
8859 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
8862 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
8863 draft package is now checked into
8864 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
8865 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
8866 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
8867 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
8868 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
8869 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
8870 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
8871 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
8872 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
8873 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
8874 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
8875 because of the freeze).</p>
8877 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
8878 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
8881 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
8883 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
8884 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
8885 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
8887 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
8888 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
8889 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
8890 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
8891 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
8892 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
8893 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
8895 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
8896 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
8897 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
8898 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
8899 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
8900 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
8901 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
8902 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
8903 not be installed?
</p>
8905 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
8906 please send me an email. :)
</p>
8912 Tags:
<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>.
8917 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8921 <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>
8927 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
8928 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
8929 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
8930 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
8931 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
8932 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
8933 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
8934 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
8935 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
8936 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
8938 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
8939 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
8940 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
8946 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
8951 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8955 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
8961 <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
8962 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
8963 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
8964 Agency in Trondheim. NOK
1000,- showed up on our donation account
8965 December
24th. I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
8966 present. As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
8967 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
8968 gatherings, this donation was most welcome. One developer gathering
8969 cost around NOK
15 000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
8970 development pace we want. Thus, I hope their example this year is
8971 followed by many others. :)
</p>
8973 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
8974 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
8975 donation page
</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
8976 you want to donate to the project.
</p>
8982 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
8987 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8991 <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>
8997 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
8998 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
9000 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
9001 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
9002 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
9003 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
9004 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
9005 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
9006 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
9007 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
9008 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
9011 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
9012 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
9013 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
9016 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
9018 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
9019 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
9022 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
9023 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
9024 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
9025 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
9026 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
9027 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
9028 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
9029 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
9030 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
9032 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
9033 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
9034 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
9040 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>.
9045 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9049 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
9055 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
9056 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
9057 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
9058 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
9059 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
9060 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
9061 is now maintained by a
9062 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
9063 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
9064 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
9065 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
9066 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
9067 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
9068 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
9069 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
9070 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
9072 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
9073 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
9076 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
9077 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
9078 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
9079 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
9080 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
9081 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
9082 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
9083 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
9084 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
9085 new version to unstable.
9087 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
9088 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
9089 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
9090 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
9091 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
9092 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
9093 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
9094 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
9095 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
9096 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
9097 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
9098 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
9099 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
9100 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
9101 have not tested them.
</p>
9104 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
9105 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
9106 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
9107 years ago, as can be
9108 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
9109 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
9110 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
9111 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
9112 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
9113 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
9114 the same address as last time,
9115 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
9121 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>.
9126 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9130 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format
</a>
9136 <p>A few days ago I came across
9137 <a href=
"http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
9138 Hess
</a> describing
<a href=
"http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger
</a> and
9139 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting. I found it
9140 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
9141 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
9142 the different web based systems we use. I find it hard to find what I
9143 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
9144 the systems. Ledger seem different. The accounting data is kept in
9145 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
9147 are at least
<a href=
"https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
9148 different implementations
</a> able to read the format. An example
9149 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
9150 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:
</p>
9153 2004-
05-
27 Book Store
9154 Expenses:Books $
20.00
9158 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
9159 look for others using it. I found blog posts from
9160 <a href=
"http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
9162 <a href=
"http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
9164 <a href=
"http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
9166 <a href=
"http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
9167 Ip
</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
9168 <a href=
"https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
9169 M. Kuhn
</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy. All seemed like good
9170 recommendations fitting my need.
</p>
9172 <p>The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger
</a>
9173 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
9174 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger
</a>
9175 package only is available in Debian Sid. As I use Squeeze, ledger
9176 seemed the best choice to get started.
</p>
9178 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
9179 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper
</a> for
9180 <a href=
"http://www.lodo.no/">LODO
</a>, the accounting system used by
9181 the
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a> association, and started to
9182 play with the data set. I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
9183 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
9184 using the "
<tt>ledger balance
</tt>" command. But I will have to
9185 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
9186 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
9192 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
9197 <div class="padding
"></div>
9201 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html
">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
9207 <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/
">University of
9208 Oslo</a>, we use the
9209 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/
">Cerebrum user
9210 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
9211 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
9212 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC
">XML-RPC</a> API, but
9213 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
9214 always use the bofh command line client at work. Until today. I want
9215 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
9216 virtual machines. Here are a few notes on how to use it with
9219 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
9220 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/
">bofh
9221 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server. I also
9222 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
9223 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html
">a
9224 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
9226 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
9227 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
9228 user currently logged in:</p>
9231 #!/usr/bin/env python
9234 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
9235 username = getpass.getuser()
9236 password = getpass.getpass()
9237 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
9238 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
9239 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
9240 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
9241 result = server.logout(sessionid)
9245 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
9246 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.
</p>
9252 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin
</a>.
9257 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9261 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?
</a>
9267 <p>While working on a
9268 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
9269 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a> (
76% done),
9270 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
9271 creativity, one idea occurred to me. The idea is to get the tax
9272 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
9273 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.
</p>
9275 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
9276 <a href=
"http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
9277 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
9278 by John Perry Barlow
</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
9279 in writing for a wider audience. The idea is not really based on the
9280 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
9281 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
9282 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
9283 controlled by the citizens in a country. I'm sharing the idea here to
9284 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
9287 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government. At least here in
9288 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
9289 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
9290 stocks and other valuables are all added together. If the tax value
9291 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
9292 taxes for these values. And copyrighted work have value. It have
9293 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
9294 work. But it is not included in the tax calculations? Why not?
</p>
9296 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
9297 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
9298 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
9299 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes. If such
9300 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
9301 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
9302 hard operation with todays copyright law. To ensure that copyright
9303 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
9304 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
9305 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
9306 correct right holder.
</p>
9308 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
9309 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
9310 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
9311 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
9312 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
9313 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
9314 work. Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
9315 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
9316 tax calculation. I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
9317 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
9318 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain. The
9319 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
9320 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
9321 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.
</p>
9323 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
9324 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
9325 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .
</p>
9327 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet? I am sure the tax office
9328 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.
</p>
9334 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
9339 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9343 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß
</a>
9349 <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the
<a
9350 href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
9351 community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
9352 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
9353 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
9354 the people behind the German
9355 "
<a href=
"http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule
</a>"
9356 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm
9357 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
9359 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9361 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
9362 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
9363 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
9365 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
9366 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
9367 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
9368 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
9369 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also
9370 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.
</p>
9372 <p>In
2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
9373 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides
9374 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
9375 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
9376 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
9377 relationship management and the communication processes in the
9380 <p>Since
2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
9381 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
9382 and a yoga teacher.
</p>
9384 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9385 project?
</strong></p>
9387 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).
</p>
9389 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
9390 Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
9391 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
9392 their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the
9393 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
9394 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
9395 teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for
9396 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
9397 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
9400 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
9401 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
9402 schools. One day before Christmas
2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
9403 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
9404 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
9405 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
9408 <p>For information about our school project you can read
9409 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
9410 interview with Mike Gabriel
</a>.
</p>
9412 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9415 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
9416 answer comes rather from a social point of view.
</p>
9418 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
9419 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
9420 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
9421 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
9422 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
9423 ;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big
9424 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
9425 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
9426 teachers, parents...
</p>
9428 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9431 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
9432 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
9434 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
9435 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
9436 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
9437 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
9438 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
9440 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
9441 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
9442 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
9443 and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the
9444 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
9445 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
9446 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
9448 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
9450 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu
10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
9451 on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
9452 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
9453 my N900 running with Maemo.
</p>
9455 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9456 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
9458 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
9459 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
9460 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
9461 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
9462 strategy has three crucial pillars:
</p>
9466 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
9467 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
9468 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.
</li>
9470 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
9471 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
9472 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
9473 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
9474 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
9475 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
9476 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.
</li>
9478 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
9479 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
9480 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
9481 offer to become more and more independent from us.
</li>
9489 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
9494 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9498 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin
</a>
9504 <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
9505 <a href=
"http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
9506 a report (PDF)
</a> about virtual currencies and
9507 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>. It is interesting to
9508 see how a member of the bitcoin community
9509 <a href=
"http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
9510 the report
</a>. As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
9511 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
9512 competition. My thoughts go to the
9513 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment
</a> with
9514 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
9515 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in
1933. A successful
9516 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
9517 powerful forces to work against it.
</p>
9519 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
9520 that the community already seem to have
9521 <a href=
"http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
9522 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme
</a>. Not very surprising, given
9523 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other. I guess
9524 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
9525 wealth is available.
</p>
9531 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
9536 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9540 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick
</a>
9546 <p>I work at the
<a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a>
9547 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
9548 all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of
9549 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association
</a>, which in turn
9550 make me a member of
<a href=
"http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX
</a>. NUUG
9551 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
9552 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
9553 is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to
9554 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
9555 <a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:
</a> in the
9556 mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of
9559 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
9560 article by
<a href=
"http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick
</a> from
9561 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
9562 "
<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
9563 Takes Us Down
</a>" (longer version also
9564 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/
2012-
06-
30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf
">available
9565 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
9566 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
9567 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
9568 etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
9569 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
9570 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
9572 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
9573 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
9574 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
9575 assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the
9576 article: First the unplanned outage:
9579 Subject: Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
9580 Severity: Critical (Unplanned)
9581 Start: Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
9582 End: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
9583 Duration: 40 minutes
9584 Scope: Exchange 2003
9585 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
9588 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
9589 access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
9593 Next the planned outage:
9596 Subject: H Building Switch Upgrades
9597 Severity: Major (Planned)
9598 Start: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
9599 End: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
9602 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
9603 stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
9605 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
9606 this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
9611 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
9612 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
9613 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
9614 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
9615 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
9616 format listed above). There are also other issues with the format
9617 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
9619 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
9620 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
9621 university too. We do register
9622 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/
">planned
9623 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
9624 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
9625 report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something
9626 for other sites to consider too?</p>
9632 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
9637 <div class="padding
"></div>
9641 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html
">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
9647 <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
9648 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/
2012/
10/
22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/
">how
9649 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
9650 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>. If a real book store did
9651 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
9652 and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more
9653 background information is available in Norwegian from
9654 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon
">digi.no</a>.
9655 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
9656 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
9657 introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
9659 <a href="http://boingboing.net/
2009/
07/
20/amazons-orwellian-de.html
">
9660 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
9661 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
9662 customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even
9664 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/
07/
18/technology/companies/
18amazon.html
">Amazon
9665 would never do that again</a>. And here we are, three years
9668 <p>And thought this action is
9669 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/
904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende
">against
9670 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
9671 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
9672 Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
9673 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
9676 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
9677 unacceptable terms. For example
9678 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/
">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
9679 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/
">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
9680 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts
">The Internet
9681 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
9682 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
9684 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
9685 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
9686 restored the account of the user, as reported by
9687 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904675/helomvending-fra-amazon
">digi.no</a>
9688 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/
1.8368487">NRK</a>.
9689 Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen
9690 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
9691 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the
9692 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend
9693 reading two opinions from
9694 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2012/
10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm
">Simon
9696 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm
">Glen
9697 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
9698 details about the original story.</p>
9704 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>.
9709 <div class="padding
"></div>
9713 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html
">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
9719 <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
9720 drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but
9721 time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came
9722 across a marvellous drawing by
9723 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html
">Clay Bennett</a>
9724 visualising some of what is going on.
9726 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html
">
9727 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg
"></a></p>
9730 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
9731 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
9734 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when
9735 you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you
9736 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I
9737 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
">the
9738 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
9739 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
9745 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet
">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance
">surveillance</a>.
9750 <div class="padding
"></div>
9754 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html
">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
9760 <p>Thanks to a blog post by
9761 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/
2012/
10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html
">Eddy
9762 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
9763 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
9764 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
9765 <a href=
"http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
9766 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions
</a>, the producer
9767 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
9768 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
9769 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
9770 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
9771 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
9774 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
9775 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
9776 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
9777 health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
9778 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
9779 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
9780 to argue its side.
</p>
9782 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
9783 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
9784 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
9785 effect
</a> can make it rethink its strategy.
</p>
9787 <p>What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
9788 <a href=
"http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
9789 victims of detoxification
</a>.
</p>
9795 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis
</a>.
9800 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9804 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?
</a>
9810 <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
9811 <a href=
"http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
9812 the computer science book collection available in his local
9813 library
</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
9814 computer books becoming obsolete so soon. That is part of the reason
9815 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
9816 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
9817 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
9818 computer classic from trash. And they need to know which one will
9819 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
9820 recently published books.
</p>
9822 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
9823 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
9824 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
9825 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess. Once, just
9826 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
9827 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
9828 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection. I
9829 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
9830 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
9831 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
9832 collection
</a>). I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
9833 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
9834 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
9835 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
9836 for the library that evening.
</p>
9838 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
9839 going to know that for example
9840 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
9841 Practice of Programming
</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
9842 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
9843 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
9844 the suggestions for books to get? I know they would love to hear from
9845 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
9846 book right away.
</p>
9852 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
9857 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9861 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture
</a>
9867 <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian
<a
9868 href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
<a
9869 href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
9870 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
9871 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
9872 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
9875 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
9876 for volunteers
</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
9877 and progress is a bit slow. Anyway, today I broken the
70 percent
9878 mark for the first rough translation. At the moment, less than
700
9879 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate. With
9880 my current progress of
10-
20 strings per day, it will take a while to
9881 complete the translation. This graph show the updated progress:
</p>
9883 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
9885 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
9886 commitments. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
9887 the project files currently available from
9888 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
9890 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
9892 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
9894 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
9895 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
9896 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
9897 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
9903 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
9908 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9912 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda
</a>
9918 <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
9919 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
9920 community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is
9921 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
9922 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
9923 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
9924 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.
</p>
9926 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
9928 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
9929 in secondary (
15-
18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
9930 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
9931 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
9932 IT.
3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
9933 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
9934 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
9935 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
9936 training is anyway very important
</p>
9938 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
9939 <a href=
"http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school
</a> (secondary) is a very
9940 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
9941 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
9942 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
9944 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
9945 project?
</strong></p>
9947 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
9948 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
9949 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
9950 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
9951 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
9954 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9957 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
9958 very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with
9959 the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
9960 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
9961 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
9962 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
9963 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
9964 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
9967 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
9970 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
9971 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
9972 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
9973 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
9974 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
9975 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
9976 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
9977 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)
</p>
9979 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
9981 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
9982 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
9983 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
9984 <a href=
"http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus
</a>
9987 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
9988 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
9989 something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
9990 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.
</p>
9992 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9993 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
9995 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
9996 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
9997 just because they are normally not open to change.
</p>
9999 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
10000 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
10003 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
10004 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
10005 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had
20
10006 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
10007 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
10008 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
10009 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.
</p>
10015 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
10020 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10022 <div class=
"entry">
10023 <div class=
"title">
10024 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec
</a>
10027 15th September
2012
10031 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
10032 codec made
</a> it into
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> as
10033 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716</a>, I had a look
10034 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
10035 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
10036 area. A non-"working group" mailing list
10037 <a href=
"https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec
</a>
10039 <a href=
"http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created
2012-
08-
20</a>. It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
10040 formal working group should be formed.
</p>
10042 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out. There is already
10043 <a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
10044 email from someone
</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
10045 participate in the ISO group. Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
10046 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
10047 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
10048 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
10049 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.
</p>
10051 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
10052 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
10059 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
10064 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10066 <div class=
"entry">
10067 <div class=
"title">
10068 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus
</a>
10071 12th September
2012
10074 <p>Yesterday,
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> announced the
10076 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716, the Definition
10077 of the Opus Audio Codec
</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
10078 intended for both VoIP, film and music. This is the first time, as
10079 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec. In
10080 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC
3533</a>, IETF
10081 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
10082 royalty free container for audio, video and movies. I hope IETF will
10083 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
10084 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
10085 multimedia content on the Internet.
</p>
10087 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
10088 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
10089 free specifications. Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
10090 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.
</p>
10092 <p>Visit the
<a href=
"http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page
</a> if
10093 you want to learn more about the solution.
</p>
10099 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
10104 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10106 <div class=
"entry">
10107 <div class=
"title">
10108 <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>
10115 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
10116 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
10117 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
10118 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
10119 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
10121 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
10122 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
10123 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
10124 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
10126 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
10127 PostScript formats at
10128 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
10129 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
10135 Tags:
<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>.
10140 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10142 <div class=
"entry">
10143 <div class=
"title">
10144 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)
</a>
10150 <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
10151 <a href=
"http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
10152 have been forced to open Office
</a>, and it made me remember and
10153 revisit the great site
10154 <a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots
</a> which allow you
10155 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format. I
10156 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)
</p>
10162 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
10167 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10169 <div class=
"entry">
10170 <div class=
"title">
10171 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture
</a>
10177 <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
10178 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
10179 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
10180 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
10181 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
10182 English book. It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
10183 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society. When the
10184 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
10185 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
10186 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law. This
10188 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
10189 for volunteers
</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
10190 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.
</p>
10192 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the
50% mark. Then more than
50% of
10193 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
10194 titles and index entries are also counted). All parts from the
10195 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated. So is
10196 chapters six, seven and the conclusion. I created a graph to show the
10199 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
10201 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
10202 entries into the docbook. They were missing with the docbook version
10203 I initially started with. There are still quite a few index entries
10204 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done. I
10205 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
10206 english version of the docbook source.
</p>
10208 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
10209 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
10210 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
10211 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
10212 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
10213 around? I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
10214 me. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
10215 project files currently available from
<a
10216 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
10218 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10220 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
10222 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
10223 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
10224 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10225 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
10231 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
10236 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10238 <div class=
"entry">
10239 <div class=
"title">
10240 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...
</a>
10246 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> one can specify
10247 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
10248 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
10249 also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
10250 this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
10251 with
<book
lang="de"
>, and the document will show up with the
10252 correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
10253 case for the language
10254 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
10255 am working with at the moment
</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.
</p>
10257 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
10258 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
10259 all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
10260 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
10261 of them do not handle it at all.
</p>
10263 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
10264 this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
10265 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
10266 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
10267 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
10268 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
10269 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
10270 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
10271 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
10272 alias for 'nb'.
</p>
10274 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
10275 understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
10276 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#
684391</a>), but due to a bug
10277 (BTS
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#
682936</a>) the 'no'
10278 language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
10279 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
10280 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
10281 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
10282 at the same time. :(
</p>
10284 <p>The correct solution is to use
<book
lang="nb"
>, but it will
10285 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
10288 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/
</p>
10294 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
10299 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10301 <div class=
"entry">
10302 <div class=
"title">
10303 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?
</a>
10309 <p>I tried to send this text to the
10310 <a href=
"https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
10311 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org
</a>, but it only accept messages
10312 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
10313 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
10314 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
10317 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
10318 learning curve at the moment.
</p>
10320 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
10321 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
10322 docbook to handle the process. The files to build the book are
10324 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
10325 The book got around
400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
10326 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
10327 software docbook processors. My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
10330 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
10331 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
10332 formats. I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
10337 <li>Using dblatex, the
<part
> handling is not the way I want to,
10338 as
</part
> do not really end the
<part
>. (See
10339 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #
683166</a>), the
10340 xetex backend (needed to process UTF-
8) give incorrect hyphens in
10341 index references spanning several pages (See
10342 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #
682901</a>), and
10343 I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
10344 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #
682936</a>).
</li>
10346 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
10347 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
10350 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
10351 show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
10352 footnote and text body, see
10353 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #
683197</a>), and
10354 fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
10355 refs listed are not right).
</li>
10357 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.
</li>
10359 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
10360 index problems the xmlto + fop processing.
</li>
10364 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
10365 of this book? Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
10366 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?
</p>
10368 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?
</p>
10374 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>.
10379 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10381 <div class=
"entry">
10382 <div class=
"title">
10383 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian -
5 chapters done,
74 percent left to do
</a>
10389 <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
10390 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
10391 norwegian version
</a> of the book
10392 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
10393 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
10394 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six. The source files as well as a
10395 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
10396 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
10398 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
10399 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
10400 completely translated. This completes
26 percent of the number of
10401 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus
74
10402 percent left to translate. A graph of the progress is present at the
10403 bottom of the github project page. There is still room for more
10404 contributors. Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
10405 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
10408 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
10409 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
10416 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
10421 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10423 <div class=
"entry">
10424 <div class=
"title">
10425 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a>
10431 <p>I am currently working on a
10432 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
10433 to translate
</a> the book
10434 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig
10435 to Norwegian. And the source we base our translation on is the
10436 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook
</a> version, to
10437 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
10438 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
10439 tagged. The source files of this project is available from
10440 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
10442 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
10443 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert. Is there a
10444 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
10445 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
10446 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book? This will provide a
10447 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
10448 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version. If you can and want
10449 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
10450 send pull requests with fixes. :)
</p>
10456 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
10461 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10463 <div class=
"entry">
10464 <div class=
"title">
10465 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg
</a>
10471 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10472 Skolelinux
</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
10473 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
10474 country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
10475 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
10476 to adjust and scale the just released
10477 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
10478 Wheezy
</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
10479 happy to share his answers with you here.
</p>
10481 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
10483 <p>I'm a
44 year old country guy that have been working
12 years at
10484 the same school as
50% IT-manager and
50% Teacher. My educational
10485 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
10486 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
10487 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
10488 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
10489 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
10490 perspective when working with IT.
</p>
10492 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10493 project?
</strong></p>
10495 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
10496 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
10497 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
10498 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
10499 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
10500 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
10502 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10505 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
10506 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
10507 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
10508 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
10509 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
10510 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
10511 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
10512 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
10513 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
10514 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
10515 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
10516 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
10517 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
10518 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
10519 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
10520 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
10521 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
10522 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
10523 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
10524 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
10525 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
10526 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
10529 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10532 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
10533 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
10534 year (
2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
10535 sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
10536 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
10537 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.
</p>
10539 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
10540 install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
10541 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
10542 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
10543 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
10544 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
10545 support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
10546 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
10547 need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
10548 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
10549 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
10550 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
10551 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
10552 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
10553 are done. This is important if you want to get a job.
</p>
10555 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
10556 magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
10557 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
10558 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
10559 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
10560 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
10561 edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
10562 there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.
</p>
10564 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
10565 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
10566 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
10567 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
10568 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
10569 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
10570 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
10571 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
10572 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
10573 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
10574 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
10575 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
10576 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
10579 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
10580 will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
10581 they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
10582 look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
10583 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
10584 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
10585 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
10586 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
10587 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.
</p>
10589 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
10591 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
10592 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
10593 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
10596 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10597 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
10599 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
10600 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
10601 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
10602 flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
10603 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
10604 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
10605 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
10606 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
10607 the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
10608 open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
10609 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
10610 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
10611 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
10612 desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
10613 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.
</p>
10615 <p>Update
2012-
07-
09 08:
30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
10616 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
10617 article
<a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
10618 management with Airtime
</a>,
10619 <a href=
"http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime
</a> which
10620 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
10621 <a href=
"http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell
</a> which claim to
10622 be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
10623 useful to the aspiring radio producer.
</p>
10629 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
10634 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10636 <div class=
"entry">
10637 <div class=
"title">
10638 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?
</a>
10644 <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
10645 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
10646 in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
10647 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
10648 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
10649 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
10650 Steinberg in his blog post
10651 "
<a href=
"http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
10652 you recognize the million pound chair?
</a>". Read it and weep for the
10653 spending of your tax money.</p>
10655 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
10656 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
10657 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
10658 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
10659 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
10666 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
10671 <div class="padding
"></div>
10673 <div class="entry
">
10674 <div class="title
">
10675 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html
">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
10681 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu /
10682 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
10683 software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
10684 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
10685 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
10686 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
10687 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
10688 receive. The software is
10690 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/
">named FET</a>, and it provide a
10691 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
10692 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
10693 both teachers and students. It is available both for
10694 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html
">Linux, MacOSX and
10697 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html
">the
10698 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
10702 <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
10703 You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
10705 <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
10706 (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
10707 (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
10708 (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
10709 (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
10710 (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
10711 sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
10712 (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
10715 <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
10716 semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
10718 <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
10719 GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
10721 <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
10722 with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
10724 <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
10726 <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
10729 <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
10730 and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
10731 non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
10732 (as separate sets)</li>
10734 <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
10735 (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
10738 <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
10739 demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
10742 <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
10743 <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
10744 <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
10745 <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
10746 <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
10747 <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
10748 <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
10749 <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
10750 <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
10751 <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
10752 students sets for each activity. (it is possible
10753 also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
10755 <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
10756 <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
10759 <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
10761 <li>Break periods</li>
10762 <li>For teacher(s):
10764 <li>Not available periods</li>
10765 <li>Max/min days per week</li>
10766 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
10767 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
10768 <li>Min hours daily</li>
10769 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
10771 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
10774 <li>For students (sets):
10776 <li>Not available periods</li>
10777 <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
10778 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
10779 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
10780 <li>Min hours daily</li>
10781 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
10783 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
10786 <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
10788 <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
10789 <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
10790 <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
10791 <li>Min/max days between them</li>
10792 <li>End(s) students day</li>
10793 <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
10794 <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
10795 flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
10796 <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
10797 <li>Not overlapping</li>
10798 <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
10799 <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
10803 <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
10805 <li>Room not available periods</li>
10806 <li>For teacher(s):
10808 <li>Home room(s)</li>
10809 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
10810 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
10814 <li>For students (sets):
10816 <li>Home room(s)</li>
10817 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
10818 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
10821 <li>Preferred room(s):
10823 <li>For a subject</li>
10824 <li>For an activity tag</li>
10825 <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
10826 <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
10830 <li>For a set of activities:
10832 <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
10839 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
10840 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
10841 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
10842 manually, check it out.
10844 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
10845 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/
2012/
03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/
">a
10846 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
10847 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
10848 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos
">Debian Edu HowTo
10855 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
10860 <div class="padding
"></div>
10862 <div class="entry
">
10863 <div class="title
">
10864 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html
">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
10870 <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a>
10871 project (Norwegian version of
10872 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> from
10873 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
10874 a problem with the municipalities using
10875 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/
">Zimbra</a>. When FiksGataMi send a
10876 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
10877 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
10878 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address. The intention is to make
10879 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
10880 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
10881 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
10882 Zimbra. Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
10883 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
10884 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
10885 the From: header.</p>
10887 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
10888 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
10889 problem. We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
10890 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
10891 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports. We have been in
10892 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
10893 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
10896 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
10897 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
10898 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
10899 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
10900 differently. Anyone know? Please let us know at
10901 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
10902 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
10908 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>.
10913 <div class="padding
"></div>
10915 <div class="entry
">
10916 <div class="title
">
10917 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html
">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
10923 <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
10924 another interview with the people behind
10925 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
10926 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
10927 helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
10928 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
10929 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
10930 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.html
">Debian Edu
10931 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
10933 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
10935 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
10936 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
10939 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
10940 project?</strong></p>
10942 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
10943 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
10944 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
10945 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
10947 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10950 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
10951 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
10952 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
10953 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
10955 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
10958 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
10959 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
10960 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
10961 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
10962 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
10963 technologies in school.</p>
10965 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
10967 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
10968 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/
">Geany</a> and
10969 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator
">Terminator</a>.</p>
10971 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
10972 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
10974 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
10975 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
10976 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
10977 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
10979 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
10980 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
10981 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
10983 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
10984 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
10985 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
10986 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
10987 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
10988 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
10989 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
10990 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
10997 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju
">intervju</a>.
11002 <div class="padding
"></div>
11004 <div class="entry
">
11005 <div class="title
">
11006 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html
">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
11012 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
11013 <a href="http://www.uit.no/
">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
11014 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
11015 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
11016 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
11017 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
11018 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
11019 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
11020 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
11021 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
11022 missing in my book.</p>
11024 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
11025 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
11026 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
11027 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/
">Debconf
11028 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
11029 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/
">Petter's
11030 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
11036 Tags: <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>.
11041 <div class="padding
"></div>
11043 <div class="entry
">
11044 <div class="title
">
11045 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html
">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
11051 <p>During my work on
11052 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.nb.html
">Debian Edu
11053 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
11054 addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
11055 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
11060 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
11061 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
11062 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
11063 system depend on tasksel tasks in
11064 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
11067 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
11068 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
11069 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
11070 at least try to enable it for these services:
11073 <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
11075 <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
11076 <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
11077 <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
11078 <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
11079 <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
11083 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
11084 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
11085 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
11086 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
11088 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
11089 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
11090 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
11092 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
11093 touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
11094 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
11095 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
11096 it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
11097 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
11099 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
11100 time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
11101 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
11104 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
11105 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
11106 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
11108 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
11109 change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
11110 paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
11111 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
11113 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
11114 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
11115 familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
11116 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
11118 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
11119 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
11120 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
11122 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
11123 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
11124 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
11126 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
11127 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
11128 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
588968">BTS report
11129 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
11130 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
11132 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
11135 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
11136 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
11137 <li>and probably more?</li>
11140 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
11141 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
11142 examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
11143 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
11144 some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
11145 could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
11146 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
11147 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
11150 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
11151 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
11152 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
11155 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
11156 interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
11157 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
11158 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
11159 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
11161 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
11162 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
11163 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
11164 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
11165 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
11166 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.
</li>
11168 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
11169 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
11170 There are at least three implementations,
11171 <a href=
"italc.sourceforge.net/">italc
</a>,
11172 <a href=
"http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula
</a> og
11173 <a href=
"http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes
</a> and we should pick one of
11174 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
11175 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
11176 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
11179 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
11180 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
11181 the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
11182 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
11183 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
11184 configuration and data with the central server. This should be
11189 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
11196 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11201 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11203 <div class=
"entry">
11204 <div class=
"title">
11205 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience
</a>
11211 <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
11212 <a href=
"http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
11213 with face recognition
</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
11214 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
11215 recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who
11216 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
11217 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
11218 evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would
11219 be willing to pay for.
</p>
11221 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
11222 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
11223 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
11224 <a href=
"http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
11231 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance
</a>.
11236 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11238 <div class=
"entry">
11239 <div class=
"title">
11240 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status
</a>
11247 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
11248 reported how to get
</a> the support status out of Dell using an
11249 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
11250 <a href=
"http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
11251 by Daniel De Marco in february
</a>. Combined with my web scraping
11252 code for HP, Dell and IBM
11253 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
11254 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
11255 <a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
11256 web service
</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
11257 support status and get a machine readable result back.
</p>
11259 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
11263 % GET
<a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=
2v1xwn1
</a>
11264 supportstatus({"servicetag": "
2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "
2013-
11-
24", "shipped": "
2010-
11-
24", "scrapestamputc": "
2012-
06-
06T20:
26:
56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://
143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
11266 </pre></blockquote>
11268 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
11269 support for other vendors. The python source is available on
11270 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.
</p>
11276 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11281 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11283 <div class=
"entry">
11284 <div class=
"title">
11285 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
</a>
11291 <p>Back in
2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
11292 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
11293 mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
11294 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
11295 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11296 Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
11298 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
11300 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am
38 years old and live near Kiel,
11301 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
11302 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
11305 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
11306 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
11307 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
11308 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
11309 becoming an osteopath.
</p>
11311 <p>Starting in
2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
11312 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
11313 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
11314 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
11315 skills with communication skills.
</p>
11317 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11318 project?
</strong></p>
11320 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
11321 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
11322 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
11323 people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
11324 distributions that target being used for school networks.
</p>
11326 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
11327 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
11328 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between
12/
2010 and
03/
2011 we
11329 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
11330 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
11331 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
11332 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
11333 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
11334 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
</p>
11336 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
11337 people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
11338 protection experts, other IT professionals.
</p>
11340 <p>We came to two conclusions:
</p>
11342 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
11343 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
11344 by
100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
11345 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
11346 IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
11347 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
11348 possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
11349 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
11350 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
11351 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
11354 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
11355 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
11356 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
11357 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
11358 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
11359 tries to provide an approach for this.
</p>
11361 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
11362 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
11363 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
11364 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
11365 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
11368 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
11369 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
11370 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
11371 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
11372 non-existent until
2010/
2011.
</p>
11374 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
11375 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
11376 avoidance do exist.
</p>
11378 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
11379 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
11380 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
11381 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
11382 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
11383 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
11384 and probably a gain for all.
</p>
11386 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11389 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
11390 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
11391 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
11392 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
11393 project communication, honest communication within the group of
11394 developers, etc.
</p>
11396 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11399 <p>Every coin has two sides:
</p>
11401 <p>Technically:
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
11402 #
311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
11403 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
11404 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
11405 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
11406 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
11409 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
11410 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
11411 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
11412 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
11413 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
11414 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
11415 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
11416 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
11417 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
11418 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
11420 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
11422 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
</p>
11424 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
11425 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
11426 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
</p>
11428 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In
2010 I started the
11429 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
11430 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
11431 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
</p>
11433 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
11434 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
11435 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
11436 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
11439 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
</p>
11441 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11442 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
11444 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
11451 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
11456 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11458 <div class=
"entry">
11459 <div class=
"title">
11460 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status
</a>
11466 <p>A few years ago I wrote
11467 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
11468 to extract support status
</a> for your Dell and HP servers. Recently
11469 I have learned from colleges here at the
11470 <a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> that Dell have
11471 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service. Given
11472 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
11473 readable information about the support status. This perl code
11474 demonstrate how to do it:
</p>
11481 my $GUID = '
11111111-
1111-
1111-
1111-
111111111111';
11483 my $servicetag = $ARGV[
0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
11484 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
11486 -
> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
11487 -
> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
11488 -
> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
11490 my $a = $s-
>GetAssetInformation(
11491 SOAP::Data-
>name('guid')-
>value($GUID)-
>type(''),
11492 SOAP::Data-
>name('applicationName')-
>value($App)-
>type(''),
11493 SOAP::Data-
>name('serviceTags')-
>value($servicetag)-
>type(''),
11495 print Dumper($a -
> result) ;
11498 <p>The output can look like this:
</p>
11503 'Entitlements' =
> {
11504 'EntitlementData' =
> [
11506 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
11507 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
11509 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
11513 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
11514 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
11516 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
11520 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
11521 'EndDate' =
> '
2007-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
11523 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
11528 'AssetHeaderData' =
> {
11529 'SystemModel' =
> 'GX620',
11530 'ServiceTag' =
> '
8DSGD2J',
11531 'SystemShipDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T19:
00:
00-
05:
00',
11533 'Region' =
> 'Europe',
11534 'SystemID' =
> 'PLX_GX620',
11535 'SystemType' =
> 'OptiPlex'
11541 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
11542 service outside the
11543 <a href=
"http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
11544 documentation
</a>, and according to
11545 <a href=
"http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
11546 comment
</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
11547 scraping HTML pages. :)
</p>
11549 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service. If
11550 you know of one, drop me an email. :)
</p>
11556 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
11561 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11563 <div class=
"entry">
11564 <div class=
"title">
11565 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug
</a>
11571 <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
11572 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug
</a> arrived in the
11573 mail, and I've had a few days to test it. As all my machines are
11574 running Debian Squeeze, where
11575 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
11576 calibration software
</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
11577 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD. This worked
11578 just fine. So far I have only done the quick calibration. It was
11579 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
11582 <p>After calibration, I get a
11583 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
11584 profile
</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
11585 tools. KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
11586 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
11587 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
11588 monitor setups. But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
11589 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
11590 monitor. After searching a bit, I
11591 <a href=
"http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered
</a>
11592 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
11596 dispwin -d
1 profile.icc
11599 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor. The
11600 result was a bit more pink than I expected. I guess I picked the
11601 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
11602 enough for now.
</p>
11608 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11613 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11615 <div class=
"entry">
11616 <div class=
"title">
11617 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter
</a>
11623 <p>In
2003, a German teacher showed up on the
11624 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
11625 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
11626 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
11627 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
11628 since then, helping to make sure the
11629 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
11630 Squeeze
</a> release became as good as it is..
</p>
11632 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
11634 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
11635 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past
12
11636 years (since
2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
11637 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
11638 O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
11639 our computer network.
</p>
11641 <p>Now, in my early
40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
11642 spare time together with my wife, our son (
3 years) and our daughter
11645 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11646 project?
</strong></p>
11648 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
11649 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
11650 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
11651 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
11652 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt,
2005 (IIRC). Few
11653 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
11654 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
11655 than
7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
11656 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
11657 approximately
50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
11658 locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
11659 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
11660 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
11661 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
</p>
11663 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11666 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
11667 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
11668 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
11669 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
11670 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
11671 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
11672 labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
11673 administration costs tend towards zero.
</p>
11675 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11678 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
11679 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
11680 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
11681 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
11682 office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
11683 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
11684 capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
11685 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
11686 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
11687 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
11688 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
11689 i.e. harder to understand for novices.
</p>
11691 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
11693 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
11694 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
11695 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
</p>
11697 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11698 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
11702 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
11703 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
11704 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
11707 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
11708 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
11709 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
11710 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
11711 share among German Skolelinux schools.
</li>
11713 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
11714 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
11715 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
</li>
11717 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
11718 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
11719 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
11720 shared world wide (school books e.g.).
</li>
11722 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
11723 office suites is much above
20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
11724 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
</li>
11726 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
</li>
11728 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
11729 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
11730 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
11731 keep sending documents in ODF formats.
</li>
11739 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
11744 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11746 <div class=
"entry">
11747 <div class=
"title">
11748 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML
</a>
11754 <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
11755 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
11756 government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his
11757 assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my
11758 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.
</p>
11760 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi. I just noted your
11761 <a href=
"http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-
500-million/index.htm
</a>
11764 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
11765 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
11766 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard
" as claimed by the
11767 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
11768 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
11771 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is
11772 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around
2007,
11773 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
11774 at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
11775 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
11776 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
11777 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
11778 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
11779 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In
11780 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
11781 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
11782 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not
20 minutes
11783 of wasted effort.
</p>
11785 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
11786 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending
10
11787 minutes converting to ODF. :)
</p>
11790 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php
</a>
11792 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php
</a>
11793 for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)
</p>
11800 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
11805 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11807 <div class=
"entry">
11808 <div class=
"title">
11809 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration
</a>
11816 <a href=
"http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
11817 the ColorHug
</a>, a USB dongle from
11818 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski
</a> to calibrate
11819 the color on a computer screen. The software required is
11820 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
11821 in Debian
</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
11822 batch. Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
11823 opportunity to order. Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
11824 delivery. I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
11825 should go in the mail on monday. :)
</p>
11827 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
11828 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
11835 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
11840 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11842 <div class=
"entry">
11843 <div class=
"title">
11844 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner
</a>
11850 <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
11851 publish another interview with the people behind
11852 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>.
11853 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
11854 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
11855 details get right before release.
11857 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
11859 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm
49 years old and living in
11860 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly
20 years as
11861 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
11862 international company for machinery and equipment. Since
2011 I'm a
11863 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
11864 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
11865 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
11866 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.
</p>
11868 <p>My first contact with linux was around
1993. Since that time I used
11869 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
11870 home since
2006.
</p>
11872 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
11873 project?
</strong></p>
11875 <p>Once a day in the early year of
2001 when I wanted to fetch my
11876 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
11877 middle of
20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
11878 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
11879 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
11880 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".
</p>
11882 <p>Some weeks later every of the
10 classrooms had one computer
11883 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
11884 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
11885 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
11886 and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
11887 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
11888 building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
11889 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
11890 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
11891 costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
11892 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
11893 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
11894 prerelease
32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
11895 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
11896 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
11897 Bielefeld in December of
2006.
</p>
11899 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11902 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
11903 for me as today.
</p>
11905 <p>In the past there were advantages like:
</p>
11909 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
11910 they had little money to spent for computers and software.
</li>
11912 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
11915 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
11916 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
11917 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
11918 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
11921 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
11926 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
11927 came up in this way:
</p>
11931 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
11934 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
11935 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
11936 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.
</li>
11938 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
11939 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
11940 interfaces used in the past.
</li>
11942 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
11943 different needs.
</li>
11945 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.
</li>
11947 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
11948 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
11949 is sharing knowledge and minds.
</li>
11951 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
11952 solved today by Debian Edu.
</li>
11956 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11961 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
11962 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
11963 whole municipality areas.
</li>
11965 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
11966 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
11969 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.
</li>
11973 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
11975 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
11976 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
11977 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
11978 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
11979 need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
11980 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.
</p>
11982 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
11983 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
11984 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
11985 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
11986 and the whole family. I probably forgot something.
</p>
11988 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11989 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
11991 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
11992 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
11993 countries and areas all over the world.
</p>
11999 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
12004 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12006 <div class=
"entry">
12007 <div class=
"title">
12008 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job
</a>
12014 <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
12015 <img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
12017 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
12018 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
12019 But the last ones have not really been up to the task. My last
12020 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
12021 time, and cutting my head took forever. And the one before that did
12022 not work very well either. We have looked for something better for a
12023 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
12024 discovered that there are indeed better tools available. But these
12025 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers". The hair saloons
12026 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
12027 companies. The models they sell, are very different from the ones
12028 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal. The main difference is their
12029 efficiency. It would cut my hair in
5 minutes, instead of the
30-
40
12030 minutes required by my impotent Braun. The hairdresser I visited had
12031 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
12032 producer. But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.
</p>
12034 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it. This was not
12035 straight forward. The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
12036 did not want to sell anything to me. But searching for the model on
12037 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
12038 around NOK
4000,-. This was a bit much. We kept searching and
12039 finally found a Danish supplier
12040 <a href=
"http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
12041 it for around NOK
1800,-
</a>. We ordered one, and it arrived a few
12044 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for
8 hours when we started
12045 to use it, so we left it charging over night. Normally it will only
12046 need one hour to charge. The following evening we successfully tested
12047 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
12048 cutter. The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
12055 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12060 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12062 <div class=
"entry">
12063 <div class=
"title">
12064 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video? What do you mean?
</a>
12070 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
12071 article today
</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
12072 <a href=
"http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke
</a> reports
12073 that the video editor application included with
12074 <a href=
"http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
12075 X
</a> have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
12076 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
12079 "
<a href=
"http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
12080 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
12081 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.
</a>"
12084 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
12087 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
12088 commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately.
"
12091 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
12092 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
12093 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html
">discovered
12094 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>. The HTC One X specification specifies that
12095 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
12097 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues
">Adaptive
12098 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
12099 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
12100 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/
">VoiceAge</a>. MP4 is
12101 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H
.264/MPEG-
4_AVC#Patent_licensing
">MPEG4 with
12102 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
12103 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/
">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
12105 <p>I know why I prefer
12106 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and open
12107 standards</a> also for video.</p>
12113 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
12118 <div class="padding
"></div>
12120 <div class="entry
">
12121 <div class="title
">
12122 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html
">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
12128 <p>Here in Norway, the
12129 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=
339"> Ministry of
12130 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
12131 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder
">directory of
12132 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
12133 government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
12134 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
12135 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
12136 to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
12137 on the same level.</p>
12139 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
12140 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing
">Reasonable
12141 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
12142 directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
12143 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
12144 implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
12145 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
12146 willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
12147 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
12148 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
12149 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
12150 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
12151 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
12152 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
12153 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
12154 to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
12155 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
12156 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
12158 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
12159 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
12160 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
12161 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
12162 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
12163 in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
12164 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
12165 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
12167 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
12169 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2010/
11/rand-not-so-reasonable/
">RAND:
12170 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
12172 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
12173 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm
">blog
12174 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
12175 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
12176 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
12177 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder
">the
12178 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
12179 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
12180 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
12186 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
12191 <div class="padding
"></div>
12193 <div class="entry
">
12194 <div class="title
">
12195 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html
">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
12201 <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and
12202 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
12203 setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
12204 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
12205 years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
12206 up in the recently released
12207 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze
">Debian
12208 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
12210 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12212 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
12213 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
12214 Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
12215 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
12216 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
12217 information technology and science/technology.</p>
12219 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12220 project?</strong></p>
12222 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
12223 project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
12224 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
12227 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12230 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
12231 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
12232 Debian Project!</p>
12234 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12237 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
12238 downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
12239 setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
12240 possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
12241 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
12242 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
12243 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
12245 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN
">Debian LAN</a>
12246 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
12248 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12250 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
12251 on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
12252 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
12253 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
12255 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12256 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12258 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
12259 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
12260 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
12261 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
12262 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
12263 free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
12264 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.
</p>
12266 <p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
12267 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
12268 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
12269 the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
12270 "Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
12271 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
12272 fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
12273 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.
</p>
12279 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
12284 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12286 <div class=
"entry">
12287 <div class=
"title">
12288 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye
</a>
12294 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
12295 like
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>,
12296 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
12298 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
12299 Edu Squeeze release manual
</a>.
12301 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
12303 <p>I'm a
44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
12304 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.
</p>
12306 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12307 project?
</strong></p>
12309 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
12310 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
12311 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
12312 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
12313 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
12314 "localisation".
</p>
12316 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12319 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12322 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
12323 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
12324 education system.
</p>
12326 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
12327 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
12328 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
12329 money on the latest hardware.
</p>
12331 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
12333 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
12334 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
12335 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).
</p>
12337 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12338 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
12340 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
12341 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
12342 you would hardly need a strategy.
</p>
12348 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
12353 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12355 <div class=
"entry">
12356 <div class=
"title">
12357 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround
</a>
12363 <p>Recently I have spent time with
12364 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a> on speeding
12365 up a
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
12366 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
12367 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
12368 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
12369 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
12370 the Multimedia menu would cause more than
20 000 IP packages to be
12371 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
12373 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
12374 ping times between the client and the server were in the range
2-
20
12375 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
12376 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
12377 the source of these NFS calls are access(
2) system calls for
12378 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(
2) calls to find
12379 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
12380 around
230 access(
2) calls.
</p>
12382 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
12383 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
12384 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
12385 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
12386 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
12387 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
12388 <a href=
"https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
12389 from
2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.
</p>
12391 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
12392 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
12393 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
12394 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
12395 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
12396 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
12397 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
12398 one icon from several hundred to less than
5, and make the KDE menu
12399 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
12400 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.
</p>
12402 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
12403 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
12404 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
12405 that is not really an option at the moment.
</p>
12407 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
12408 (at) lists.debian.org.
</p>
12414 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12419 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12421 <div class=
"entry">
12422 <div class=
"title">
12423 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News
</a>
12429 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
12430 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a> by
12431 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
12432 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
12433 for schools. Check out his article
12434 <a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
12435 distribution for education
</a> if you want to learn more.
</p>
12441 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12446 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12448 <div class=
"entry">
12449 <div class=
"title">
12450 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer
</a>
12456 <p>Germany is a core area for the
12457 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
12458 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
12459 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
12461 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
12463 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
12464 Bochum, Germany. Since
1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
12465 "
<a href=
"http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
12466 Dortmund
</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
12467 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
12468 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
12469 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
12470 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
12472 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
12473 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
12474 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
12475 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
12476 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
12477 the end of April this year.</p>
12479 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12480 project?</strong></p>
12482 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
12483 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
12484 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
12485 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
12486 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
12487 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
12488 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
12489 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
12490 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
12491 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
12494 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
12495 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
12496 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
12497 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
12498 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
12499 the admin teachers.</p>
12501 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12504 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
12505 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
12506 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
12508 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
12509 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
12510 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
12511 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
12512 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
12514 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12517 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
12519 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12521 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
12522 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
12523 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
12526 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12527 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12529 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
12530 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
12531 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
12537 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju
">intervju</a>.
12542 <div class="padding
"></div>
12544 <div class="entry
">
12545 <div class="title
">
12546 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html
">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
12552 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
12554 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
12555 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
12556 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
12557 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
12558 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
12559 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/
38601767">vimeo</a>
12561 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg
12562 Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
12564 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie
" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
12565 <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis
"' />
12566 <p>Download video as
12567 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg</a>.</p>
12574 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
12579 <div class="padding
"></div>
12581 <div class="entry
">
12582 <div class="title
">
12583 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html
">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
12589 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
12590 users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
12591 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/
2012/
03/msg00001.html
">the
12592 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
12593 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
12595 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12597 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
12598 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
12599 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
12600 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
12601 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
12602 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
12603 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
12606 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12607 project?</strong></p>
12609 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
12610 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
12611 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
12612 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
12613 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
12614 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
12615 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
12616 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
12617 these things we decided to try it.</p>
12619 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12622 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
12623 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
12624 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
12625 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
12626 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
12627 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about
25
12628 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
12629 proprietary software everywhere.
</p>
12631 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12634 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
12635 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
12636 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
12637 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
12638 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!
</p>
12640 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
12642 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
12643 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
12644 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
12645 use Ubuntu and an Android
4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
12646 that counts...)
</p>
12648 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12649 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
12651 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
12652 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
12653 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
12654 applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
12655 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
12656 XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
12657 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
12658 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
12659 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
12660 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
12661 first
10,
000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in
2 hours.
</p>
12663 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
12664 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
12665 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.
</p>
12671 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
12676 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12678 <div class=
"entry">
12679 <div class=
"title">
12680 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu
</a>
12686 <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
12687 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
12688 translated versions in sync. To do this we have come up with what we
12689 believe is a very efficient work flow.
</p>
12693 <li>The documentation is written in a
12694 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki
</a> (see for example
12695 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
12696 Squeeze release manual
</a>) with support for exporting the content as
12699 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
12700 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
12701 with the translated text.
</li>
12703 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
12704 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed. They can
12705 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
12706 the translation. There is even a system in place to handle translated
12709 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
12710 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.
</li>
12712 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
12713 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.
</li>
12717 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
12718 issue is that
<a href=
"http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
12719 we use in moinmoin
</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
12720 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
12721 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.
</p>
12723 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
12724 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
12731 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12736 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12738 <div class=
"entry">
12739 <div class=
"title">
12740 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!
</a>
12746 <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
12747 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> based
12748 on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
12749 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available
</a>
12750 from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
12751 you have not done so already.
</p>
12753 <p>I plan to present the new version at
12754 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
12755 meeting
</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
12756 in Oslo, Norway.
</p>
12762 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12767 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12769 <div class=
"entry">
12770 <div class=
"title">
12771 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker
</a>
12777 <p>Inspired by
<a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
12778 interview series
</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
12779 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12780 community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
12781 more international audience.
</p>
12783 <p>While
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
12784 Skolelinux
</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
12785 Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
12786 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
12787 and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
12788 work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
12789 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
12792 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
12794 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
12795 and we have three lovely children, aged
15,
14 and
4(!) I am the IT
12796 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
12797 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
12798 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
12799 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
12800 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
12801 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
12802 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
12803 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
12804 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
</p>
12806 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12807 project?
</strong></p>
12809 <p>In around
2004 or
5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
12810 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
12811 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
12812 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
12813 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
12814 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
12815 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
12816 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
12817 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
12818 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
12819 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
12820 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
12821 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
</p>
12823 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12826 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
12827 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
12828 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
12829 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
12830 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
12831 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
12834 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12837 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
12838 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
12839 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
12840 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
12841 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
12842 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
12843 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
12844 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
12845 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
12846 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
12847 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
12848 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
12849 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
12850 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
12853 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
12855 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
12856 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
12857 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
12858 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
12859 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
12860 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
12861 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
12862 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
12863 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
12864 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
12865 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
</p>
12867 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12868 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
12870 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
12871 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
12872 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
12873 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
12874 file formats and Word than they did
5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
12875 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
12876 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
12877 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
12878 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
12879 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
12880 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
12881 doesn't play flash, for example.
</p>
12887 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju
</a>.
12892 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12894 <div class=
"entry">
12895 <div class=
"title">
12896 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze
</a>
12902 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
12904 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
12905 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
12906 Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
12907 also available from
<a href=
"http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo
</a> and
12909 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
12910 Theora
</a> file. Check it out below.
</p>
12912 <p><video id=
"gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width=
"256" height=
"184" preload controls
>
12913 <source src=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg;
codecs=
"theora, vorbis"'
/>
12914 <p>Download video as
12915 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
</a>.
</p>
12922 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12927 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12929 <div class=
"entry">
12930 <div class=
"title">
12931 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
12937 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
12938 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12939 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement is
12940 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available
</a>
12941 from the project announcement list. Check it out if you
12942 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
12948 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
12953 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12955 <div class=
"entry">
12956 <div class=
"title">
12957 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded
</a>
12963 <p>Many years ago, the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
12964 / Debian Edu project
</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
12965 for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher
12966 needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion",
12967 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
12968 national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and
12969 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
12970 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman
12971 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
12972 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
12973 animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got
12974 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
12975 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last
12978 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
12979 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
12981 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion
</a>.
12982 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
12983 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
12984 mean). I've been following
12985 <a href=
"https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
12986 mailing list
</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
12987 the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies.
12988 Check it out. :)
</p>
12994 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
12999 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13001 <div class=
"entry">
13002 <div class=
"title">
13003 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
13009 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
13010 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
13011 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement did for some
13012 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
13013 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available
</a>
13014 from the Debian development announcement list. Check it out if you
13015 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
13021 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13026 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13028 <div class=
"entry">
13029 <div class=
"title">
13030 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
13036 <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
13037 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
13038 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
13039 on Squeeze. The full announcement is
13040 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available
</a>
13041 on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
13042 solution for your school.
</p>
13048 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13053 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13055 <div class=
"entry">
13056 <div class=
"title">
13057 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail
</a>
13063 <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems. Thanks to Linux
13064 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
13065 <a href=
"http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
13066 close
</a> this summer :). But once a disk is starting to behave
13067 funny, a practical problem present itself. How to get from the Linux
13068 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
13069 the disk when the computer is turned off? In my case I have SATA
13070 disks with a unique ID printed on the label. All I need is a way to
13071 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.
</p>
13073 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
13074 <a href=
"http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
13075 that hdparm -I
</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
13076 printed on the disk label. The following (almost) one-liner can be
13077 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:
</p>
13080 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
13082 printf "Failed disk $d: "
13083 hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
13085 </blockquote></pre>
13087 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
13088 next time, and in case other find it useful.
</p>
13090 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(
</p>
13093 Failed disk sdd1: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
13094 Failed disk sdd2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
13095 Failed disk sde2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1840589
13096 </blockquote></pre>
13098 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
13099 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
13100 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
13101 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label. The vendor
13102 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
13103 mounted inside my box.
</p>
13105 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
13106 Software RAID in the
13107 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard
</a>
13108 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
13109 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail. At the moment
13110 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
13111 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
13112 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.
</p>
13118 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid
</a>.
13123 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13125 <div class=
"entry">
13126 <div class=
"title">
13127 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
13133 <p>New in the Squeeze version of
13134 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is the
13135 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
13136 based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
13137 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from
<tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat
</tt>, to
13138 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
13139 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
13140 change the global proxy setting by editing
13141 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat
</tt> and the change propagate
13142 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.
</p>
13144 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
13145 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
13146 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):
</p>
13149 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
13151 if (!isResolvable(host) ||
13152 isPlainHostName(host) ||
13153 dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
13156 return "PROXY webcache:
3128; DIRECT";
13158 </pre></blockquote>
13160 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:
</p>
13163 http_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
13164 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
13165 </pre></blockquote>
13167 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
13168 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
13170 <tt><a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a></tt>,
13171 and insert this extracted proxy URL in
<tt>/etc/environment
</tt> and
13172 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf
</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
13173 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
13174 javascript code is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
13175 able to build
</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
13176 library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
13177 is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
13178 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
13179 known alternative is known at the moment.
</p>
13181 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
13182 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
13183 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
13184 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
13185 feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
13186 announced, direct connections will be used instead.
</p>
13188 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
13189 or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
13190 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
13191 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
13192 distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
13193 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
13194 first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
13195 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
13196 the network setup changes.
</p>
13198 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
13199 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
13201 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
13202 page
</a> for those that want to learn more.
</p>
13208 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13213 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13215 <div class=
"entry">
13216 <div class=
"title">
13217 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night
</a>
13223 <p>Since the Lenny version of
13224 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, a
13225 feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
13226 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
13227 in the morning. This is done using the
13228 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night
</a> Debian package.
</p>
13230 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
13231 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, this is done in
13232 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
13233 every hour from
16:
00 until
06:
00 to see if the machine is unused, and
13234 shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
13236 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup
</a>
13237 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around
07:
00 +-
13238 10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
13239 try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
13240 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.
</p>
13242 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
13243 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
13244 the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
13245 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
13246 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
13247 starting from
0 (or was it
1990?) every boot. If you have one of
13248 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.
</p>
13250 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
13251 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
13252 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
13253 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night
</tt> to enable it.
13254 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?
</p>
13260 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13265 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13267 <div class=
"entry">
13268 <div class=
"title">
13269 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
13275 <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
13276 publish the third beta version of
13277 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
13278 on Squeeze. If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
13279 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
13280 installing new machines, check it out. If you need a software
13281 solution for your school, check it out too. The full announcement is
13282 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available
</a>
13283 on the project announcement list.
</p>
13285 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
13286 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):
</p>
13290 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
13291 10.0.0.0/
8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
13292 the installation.
</li>
13294 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
13295 Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.
</li>
13297 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
13298 disabled queues are restarted every hour. This should cut down on
13299 the amount of manual administration needed for printers.
</li>
13301 <li>The set of initial users have been changed. Now a personal user
13302 for the local system administrator is created during installation
13303 instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
13304 and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
13305 membership. This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
13306 up to date on the system.
</li>
13310 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
13311 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home. I will use it look
13312 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
13313 final Squeeze release is published.
</p>
13315 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
13316 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
13317 gathering
</a> in Oslo. We will continue the work on the Squeeze
13318 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version. Perhaps I
13319 will see you there?
</p>
13325 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13330 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13332 <div class=
"entry">
13333 <div class=
"title">
13334 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
13340 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
13341 This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
13342 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
13343 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
13344 firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
13345 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
13346 work, but there are other use cases as well.
</p>
13348 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
13349 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
13350 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
13351 during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
13352 by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
13353 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
13354 not taken care of by this.
</p>
13356 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
13357 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware
</tt> which
13358 search through the
<tt>dmesg
</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
13359 firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
13360 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
13361 the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
13362 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
13363 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#
655507</a>), to allow PXE
13364 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
13365 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
13366 firmware packages.
</p>
13368 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
13369 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
13370 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
13371 included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
13372 initrd with extra firmware, the
13373 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware
</tt> script is
13374 provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
13375 PXE initrd with firmware packages.
</p>
13377 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
13378 network cards working. For this,
13379 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware
</tt> is
13380 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
13381 the same way as the other firmware related tools.
</p>
13383 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
13384 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
13385 non-free software, and it is their choice.
</p>
13387 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
13394 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13399 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13401 <div class=
"entry">
13402 <div class=
"title">
13403 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
13409 <p>The next version of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
13410 / Skolelinux
</a> will include a new tool
13411 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp
</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
13412 the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
13413 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.
</p>
13415 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
13416 central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
13417 as thin clients and wait
5 minutes after the last client booted to
13418 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
13419 this is done, log on to the central server and run
13420 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
</tt> in the
<tt>konsole
</tt> to use the
13421 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
13422 will look similar to this:
</p>
13424 <p><blockquote><pre>
13425 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
13426 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [
10.0.2.2] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
05.
13427 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-
00-
01-
02-
03-
04-
06 [
10.0.16.20] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
06.
13429 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
13431 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
13432 enter password: *******
13434 </pre></blockquote></p>
13436 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
13437 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
13438 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
13439 automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
13440 then to log into
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa
</a>,
13441 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
13442 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
13443 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
13444 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
13445 group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
13446 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
13449 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
13450 enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.
</p>
13452 <p>Update
2012-
01-
28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
13453 hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
13454 original text, and have added it to the text now.
</p>
13460 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary
</a>.
13465 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13467 <div class=
"entry">
13468 <div class=
"title">
13469 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a>
13475 <p>In the Squeeze version of
13476 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> soon
13477 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
13478 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
13479 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
13480 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
13481 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
13484 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
13485 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
13486 default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
13487 to see the page behind this new URL.
</p>
13489 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
13490 called as "
<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'
</tt>' to update LDAP with the
13493 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
13494 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
13495 from within Iceweasel instead.
</p>
13501 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
13506 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13508 <div class=
"entry">
13509 <div class=
"title">
13510 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze
</a>
13516 <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
13517 the second beta version of
13518 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>. If
13519 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
13520 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
13521 machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
13522 school, check it out too. The full announcement is
13523 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available
</a>
13524 on the project announcement list.
</p>
13530 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13535 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13537 <div class=
"entry">
13538 <div class=
"title">
13539 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu
</a>
13545 <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
13546 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ready
13547 for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
13550 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
13551 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
13552 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
13553 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
13554 scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
13555 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
13556 wrap up its tasks.
</p>
13558 <p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
13559 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
13560 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
13561 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
13562 because I was typing.
</P>
13564 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
13565 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
13566 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
13567 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
13568 generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
13569 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
13570 generate entropy.
</p>
13573 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
13574 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a> version, and we
13575 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
13576 developers
</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.
</p>
13582 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13587 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13589 <div class=
"entry">
13590 <div class=
"title">
13591 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
13597 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
13598 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
13599 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
13600 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
13601 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
13602 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
13603 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
13604 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
13605 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
13606 the tools to do so.
</p>
13608 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
13609 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
13610 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
13611 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
13613 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
13614 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
13615 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
13616 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
13617 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
13618 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
13619 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
13620 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
13622 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
13623 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
13624 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
13630 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
13632 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
13633 my %rhelmodules = (
13634 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
13636 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
13637 eval "use $module;";
13639 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
13640 system("yum install -y $pkg");
13641 eval "use $module;";
13645 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
13651 sub run_firmware_script {
13652 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
13654 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
13657 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
13659 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
13660 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
13662 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
13666 sub run_firmware_scripts {
13667 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
13668 # Run firmware packages
13669 for my $dir (@dirs) {
13670 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
13671 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
13672 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
13673 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
13674 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
13682 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
13683 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
13688 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13691 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
13693 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
13694 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
13696 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
13700 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
13701 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
13702 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
13703 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
13706 for my $url (@paths) {
13707 fetch_dell_fw($url);
13709 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
13711 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13712 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13716 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
13717 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
13721 sub fetch_dell_fw {
13723 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
13727 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
13728 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
13729 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
13730 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
13731 my $filename = shift;
13733 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
13735 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
13737 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
13739 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
13741 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
13742 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
13743 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
13745 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
13746 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
13748 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
13750 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
13752 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
13755 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
13756 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
13758 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
13759 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
13761 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
13762 for my $path (@paths) {
13763 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
13764 push(@paths, $cpath);
13772 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
13773 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
13774 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
13775 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
13782 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
13787 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13789 <div class=
"entry">
13790 <div class=
"title">
13791 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?
</a>
13797 <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
13798 publishing houses how to handle electronic books. Surprisingly, the
13799 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
13800 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
13801 publishing houses. Time limited renting (
2-
3 years) is one proposed
13802 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
13803 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
13806 <p>Anyway, while reading
<a href=
"http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
13807 this debate
</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
13808 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
13809 to a better model. The idea is simple:
</p>
13811 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
13812 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
13813 solution to hand out free e-books. As a start, the books distributed
13814 by
<a href=
"http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg
</a> (about
13815 36,
000 books),
<a href=
"http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg
</a>
13816 (
1149 books) and
<a href=
"http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
13817 Internet Archive
</a> (
3,
033,
748 books) could be included, but any book
13818 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
13821 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:
</p>
13825 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
13826 other relevant equipment.
</li>
13828 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.
</li>
13832 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
13833 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
13834 visiting the library. The site would be the distribution point for
13835 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
13836 books available.
</p>
13838 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this? I guess it would
13839 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
13846 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
13851 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13853 <div class=
"entry">
13854 <div class=
"title">
13855 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage
</a>
13858 17th September
2011
13861 <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
13862 server. It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
13863 movie collection easily available. It also make it possible to let
13864 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
13865 down. I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
13866 subtitle options intact. It also ensure that the entire film is one
13867 file on the disk. As this is for personal use, the ripping is
13868 perfectly legal here in Norway.
</p>
13870 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:
</p>
13874 # apt-get install lsdvd
13875 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
13876 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=
1M
13877 </pre></blockquote>
13879 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
13880 been looking for a better alternative. I have no idea why this I/O
13881 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
13882 something fishy with the DVDs in question. Or perhaps all three.
</p>
13884 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
13885 genisoimage. This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
13886 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
13891 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
13893 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
13894 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
13895 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
13896 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
13897 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
13898 </pre></blockquote>
13900 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?
</p>
13902 <p>Update
2011-
09-
18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
13903 readom program from the wodim package. It is specially written to
13904 read optical media, and is called like this:
<tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
13905 f=image.iso
</tt>. It got
6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
13906 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.
</p>
13908 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
13909 <a href=
"http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
13910 program python-dvdvideo
</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
13911 for. Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
13912 creating a ISO image. The git source built and installed just fine in
13913 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.
</p>
13919 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
13924 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13926 <div class=
"entry">
13927 <div class=
"title">
13928 <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>
13934 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
13935 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
13936 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
13937 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
13938 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
13939 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
13940 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
13941 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
13942 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
13945 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
13946 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
13947 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
13950 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
13951 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
13952 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
13953 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
13954 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
13955 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
13956 hard to explain.
</p>
13958 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
13959 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
13960 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
13961 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
13962 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
13963 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
13964 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
13965 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
13966 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
13967 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
13968 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
13971 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
13972 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
13973 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
13974 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
13975 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
13976 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
13977 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
13978 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
13979 after visiting single user mode.</p>
13981 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
13982 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
13983 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
13984 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
13985 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
13986 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
13987 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
13988 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
13990 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
13991 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
13992 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
13998 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>.
14003 <div class="padding
"></div>
14005 <div class="entry
">
14006 <div class="title
">
14007 <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>
14013 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
14014 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
14015 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
14016 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
14017 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
14018 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
14019 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
14020 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
14021 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
14022 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
14023 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
14024 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
14025 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
14027 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
14028 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
14029 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
14030 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
14031 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
14032 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
14033 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
14034 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
14035 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
14037 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
14038 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
14039 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
14042 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
14043 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
14044 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
14045 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
14046 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
14047 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
14048 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
14049 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
14050 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
14051 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
14052 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
14053 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
14054 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
14055 find time to push this forward.</p>
14061 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>.
14066 <div class="padding
"></div>
14068 <div class="entry
">
14069 <div class="title
">
14070 <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>
14076 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
14077 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
14078 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
14079 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
14082 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
14083 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
14084 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
14088 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
14089 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
14090 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
14091 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
14092 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
14093 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
14094 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
14097 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
14098 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
14099 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
14100 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
14101 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
14102 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
14103 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
14104 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
14105 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
14106 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
14107 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
14108 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
14109 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
14111 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
14112 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
14113 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
14114 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
14115 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
14116 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
14117 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
14118 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
14119 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
14120 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
14122 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
14123 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
14124 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
14125 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
14126 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
14127 latter behaviour.</li>
14131 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
14132 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
14133 it do not matter much.</p>
14135 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
14136 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
14137 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
14143 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
14148 <div class="padding
"></div>
14150 <div class="entry
">
14151 <div class="title
">
14152 <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>
14158 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
14159 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
14160 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
14161 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
14162 security support for a few years.</p>
14164 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
14165 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
14166 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
14167 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
14168 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
14169 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
14170 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
14171 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
14172 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
14173 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
14174 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
14175 easier in the future.</p>
14177 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
14178 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
14179 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
14180 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
14181 do not have time for.</p>
14187 Tags: <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>.
14192 <div class="padding
"></div>
14194 <div class="entry
">
14195 <div class="title
">
14196 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html
">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
14203 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/
2011/
06/
20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/
">the
14204 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
14206 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA
">Autodesk</a>
14208 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/
2011/
06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html
">Microsoft
14209 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
14210 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs. Whenever I take
14211 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
14217 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>.
14222 <div class="padding
"></div>
14224 <div class="entry
">
14225 <div class="title
">
14226 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html
">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
14232 <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
14233 <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
14234 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> started to
14235 work. It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
14236 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
14237 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
14238 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
14239 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
14240 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
14241 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
14243 <p>Where is it? Visit
14244 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/
">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
14245 to have a look. Please send feedback to the
14246 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
14247 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
14253 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311
">open311</a>.
14258 <div class="padding
"></div>
14260 <div class="entry
">
14261 <div class="title
">
14262 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html
">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
14268 <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
14269 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> in the
14270 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
14271 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
14272 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
14273 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/
">New Zealand version</a> of
14274 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
14275 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
14276 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
14277 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
14278 FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
14279 to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
14280 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
14282 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
14283 handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
14284 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
14285 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
14286 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
14287 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
14288 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
14289 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
14290 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
14291 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
14292 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
14293 know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
14294 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
14296 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
14297 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
14298 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
14299 each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
14300 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
14301 here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
14302 category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
14303 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
14306 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
14307 differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
14308 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
14309 quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
14310 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
14311 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
14312 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
14314 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
14315 near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
14316 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
14317 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
14318 and range= options.</p>
14320 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
14321 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
14322 to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
14323 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
14324 available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
14325 to best handle this. I've noticed
14326 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/
">SeeClickFix</a> added
14327 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
14328 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
14329 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
14331 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
14332 up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
14333 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/
">Gmane</a> to use for
14334 discussions instead of only
14335 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss
">a forum<a/>. Oh,
14336 well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
14337 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
14338 seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
14339 fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
14340 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
14346 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311
">open311</a>.
14351 <div class="padding
"></div>
14353 <div class="entry
">
14354 <div class="title
">
14355 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html
">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
14361 <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/
">The Gnash project</a> is still
14362 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
14363 A few days ago the project
14364 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/
2011-
04/msg00011.html
">announced</a>
14365 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many
14366 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
14373 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
14378 <div class="padding
"></div>
14380 <div class="entry
">
14381 <div class="title
">
14382 <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>
14388 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
14389 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
14390 update in English.</p>
14392 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
14393 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
14394 of the British service
14395 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
14396 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
14397 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
14398 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
14399 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
14400 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
14401 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
14402 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
14403 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
14404 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
14405 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
14406 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
14407 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
14409 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
14410 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
14411 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
14412 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
14413 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
14414 public infrastructure.</p>
14416 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
14423 Tags: <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>.
14428 <div class="padding
"></div>
14430 <div class="entry
">
14431 <div class="title
">
14432 <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>
14438 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
14439 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
14440 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
14441 available on the Internet, and check our locally
14442 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
14443 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
14444 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
14445 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
14446 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
14447 out which security holes were present in our free software
14450 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
14451 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
14452 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
14453 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
14454 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
14455 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
14456 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
14457 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
14458 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
14459 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
14460 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
14461 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
14462 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
14463 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
14464 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
14465 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
14467 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
14468 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
14469 check out, one could look up
14470 <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
14471 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
14472 The most recent one is
14473 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
14474 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
14475 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
14477 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
14478 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
14479 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
14480 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
14481 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
14482 security issues out.</p>
14484 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
14485 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
14486 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
14488 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
14489 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
14490 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
14492 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
14493 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
14494 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
14495 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
14496 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
14497 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
14498 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
14499 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
14500 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
14501 established soon.</p>
14503 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
14504 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
14505 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
14506 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
14507 for their packages.</p>
14513 Tags: <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>.
14518 <div class="padding
"></div>
14520 <div class="entry
">
14521 <div class="title
">
14522 <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>
14529 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
14530 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
14531 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
14532 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
14533 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
14534 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
14535 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
14536 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
14537 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
14538 one of my machines like this:</p>
14542 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
14545 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
14550 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
14554 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
14555 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
14558 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
14559 echo loaded pci modules:
14561 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
14562 for address in * ; do
14563 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
14564 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
14565 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
14566 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
14567 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
14577 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
14581 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
14582 echo loaded usb modules:
14584 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
14585 for address in * ; do
14586 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
14587 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
14588 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
14589 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
14590 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
14591 if [ "$id" ] ; then
14602 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
14609 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
14614 <div class=
"padding"></div>
14616 <div class=
"entry">
14617 <div class=
"title">
14618 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?
</a>
14624 <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
14625 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H
.264 and WebM. Most video sites
14626 seem to use H
.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough,
14627 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
14628 H
.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
14629 the Wikipedia article on
14630 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video
</a>,
14631 this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
14632 different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is
14633 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
14634 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
14635 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
14636 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
14637 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
14638 Firefox. H
.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
14639 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
14640 Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
14641 Safari can install plugins to get it.
</p>
14643 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
14644 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
14645 HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser
14646 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In
14647 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a>, we provide first fallback to a
14648 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
14649 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
14650 Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an
<a
14651 href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
14652 from last week
</a>.
</p>
14654 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H
.264 is
14655 the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H
.264
14656 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
14657 are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H
.264
14658 was without royalties and license terms, check out
14659 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
14660 Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
14662 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
14664 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos
">the
14665 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look. I'm not aware of a
14666 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
14668 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
14669 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
14670 <video> tag support in browsers and not the video support
14671 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
14677 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
14682 <div class="padding
"></div>
14684 <div class="entry
">
14685 <div class="title
">
14686 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html
">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video></a>
14692 <p>Today I discovered
14693 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome
">via
14694 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
14695 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
">yesterday
14696 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video> in
14697 the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
14698 open" codec technology. If you believe H
.264 was free for everyone
14699 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
14700 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
14701 Free That Matters
</a>". It is not free of cost for creators of video
14702 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
14703 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
14704 licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information
14705 on the Google announcement is available from
14706 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome
">OSnews</a>.
14707 A good read. :)</p>
14709 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
14710 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
14711 the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open
14712 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
14713 for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two
14714 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some
14715 browsers support H.264, and others support
14716 <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg Theora</a> and
14717 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/
">WebM</a>
14718 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/
">Dirac</a> is not really an option
14719 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
14720 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
14721 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
14722 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
">an
14723 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
14725 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
14726 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
14727 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/
2011/
01/simple_questions
">presents
14728 the mind set</a> of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions
14729 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
14730 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24245/
10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM
">presenting
14731 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
14733 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
14734 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This
14735 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
14736 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2011/
01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm
">todays
14737 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it
14738 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
14739 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
14741 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
14742 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
14743 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV
14744 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
14745 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
14746 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
14747 publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
14749 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the
14750 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
14751 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
14752 perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
14753 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
14754 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
14755 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
14756 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
14757 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
14758 video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be
14759 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
14760 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
14761 I guess time will tell.</p>
14763 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
14764 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html
">more
14765 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
14771 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>.
14776 <div class="padding
"></div>
14778 <div class="entry
">
14779 <div class="title
">
14780 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html
">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
14787 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html
">compare
14789 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">the Digistan
14790 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
14791 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
14792 this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
14793 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
14794 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
14795 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
14797 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
14798 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse
">the
14799 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
14800 to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
14801 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
14802 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
14803 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
14805 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
14806 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
14812 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
14817 <div class="padding
"></div>
14819 <div class="entry
">
14820 <div class="title
">
14821 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html
">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
14827 <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
14828 "<a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
14829 Open Standard
</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
14830 the term has been decided by Digistan. The term "Open Standard
" has
14831 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
14832 about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
14833 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
14834 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
14836 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
14837 standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
14838 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
14839 complete survey. More definitions are available on the
14840 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
">wikipedia
14843 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
14844 Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
14845 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
14846 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
14847 their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
14848 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
14849 specification on equal terms.</p>
14853 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
14854 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
14859 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
14860 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
14861 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
14862 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
14864 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
14865 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
14866 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
14869 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
14870 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
14873 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
14878 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
14879 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/
">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
14880 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/
">this
14881 definition</a> in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
14882 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/
20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm
">their
14883 definition of a open standard</a>. Another from a different part of
14884 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
14888 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
14892 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
14895 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
14896 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
14898 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
14899 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.
</li>
14905 <p>Then there is
<a href=
"http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
14906 definition
</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.
</p>
14910 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is
</p>
14914 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
14915 manner equally available to all parties;
</li>
14917 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
14918 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
14919 Standard themselves;
</li>
14921 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
14922 any party or in any business model;
</li>
14924 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
14925 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
14928 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
14929 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
14936 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
14938 <a href=
"http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
14939 Standards Checklist
</a> with a fairly detailed description.
</p>
14942 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
14946 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
14951 <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
14952 participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
14953 imposed by the organization under which it is developed
14956 <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
14957 method, can be changed through input from all
14960 <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
14961 the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.
</li>
14963 <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
14964 and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.
</li>
14966 <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
14967 public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
14968 comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.
</li>
14976 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard
</p>
14979 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
14980 and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
14981 implementations to the interface described in the standard without
14982 undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
14983 protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.
</li>
14985 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
14986 a technical or economic barriers
</li>
14988 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
14989 interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
14990 program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
14991 programs and mutually to use the information which has been
14992 exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
14993 file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
14994 conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
14995 computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
14996 intended to function.
</li>
14998 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
14999 standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
15000 must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.
</li>
15002 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
15003 fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
15004 perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
15005 sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
15006 terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
15007 outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
15008 patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
15009 only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
15013 <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
15014 licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
15015 (also known as a reciprocity clause)
</li>
15017 <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
15018 or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
15019 essential to practice that standard (also known as a
15020 "defensive suspension" clause)
</li>
15022 <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
15028 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
15029 implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
15030 or restricted licensing terms
</li>
15036 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
15037 there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
15038 open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
15039 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
15040 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
15041 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
15042 competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
15043 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
15050 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
15055 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15057 <div class=
"entry">
15058 <div class=
"title">
15059 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?
</a>
15065 <p><a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
15066 Digistan definition
</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:
</p>
15070 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
15075 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
15076 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
15077 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.
</li>
15079 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
15080 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
15081 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
15084 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
15085 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
15086 distribute, and use it freely.
</li>
15088 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
15089 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
</li>
15091 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
</li>
15095 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
15096 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
15097 products based on the standard.
</p>
15100 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
15101 and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
15102 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
15103 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
15104 <a href=
"http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
15105 July
2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
15106 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
15107 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.
</p>
15109 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?
</strong></p>
15111 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
15112 Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
15113 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation
</A> is such vendor, but
15114 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
15115 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
15116 obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
15117 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
15118 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've
15119 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
15120 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
15121 where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
15122 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
15123 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
15124 specification. But it seem unlikely.
</p>
15126 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?
</strong></p>
15128 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
15129 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
15130 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
15131 documentation indicating this.
</p>
15134 <a href=
"http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report
</a>
15135 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
15136 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
15137 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
15138 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
15139 report is correct.
</p>
15141 <p><strong>Specification freely available?
</strong></p>
15143 <p>The specification for the
<a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
15144 container format
</a> and both the
15145 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis
</a> and
15146 <a href=
"http://theora.org/doc/">Theora
</a> codeces are available on
15147 the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
15151 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
15152 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
15153 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
15154 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
15155 specification compliance.
15159 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
15160 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC
3533</a>, and
15161 this is the term:
<p>
15165 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
15166 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
15167 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
15168 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
15169 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
15170 included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
15171 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
15172 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
15173 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
15174 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
15175 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
15176 translate it into languages other than English.
</p>
15178 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
15179 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
</p>
15182 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
15183 this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
15184 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
15185 thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
15186 requirement for the Digistan definition.
</p>
15188 <p><strong>Royalty-free?
</strong></p>
15190 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
15192 <a href=
"http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA
</a>
15194 <a href=
"http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
15195 Jobs
</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
15196 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
15197 them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
15198 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
15199 without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
15200 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H
.264 codec
15201 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.
</p>
15203 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?
</strong></p>
15205 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.
</p>
15207 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
15209 <p>3 of
5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining
2
15210 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
15211 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
15212 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
15213 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
15216 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
15217 see if they are free and open standards.
</p>
15223 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
15228 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15230 <div class=
"entry">
15231 <div class=
"title">
15232 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru
</a>
15239 <a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
15240 article
</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
15242 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
15243 Interoperability Framework
</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
15244 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
15245 Nothing very surprising there, given
15246 <a href=
"http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
15247 reports
</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
15248 this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
15249 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
15250 open standard from version
1</a> was very good, and something I
15251 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
15252 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
15253 definition from Digistan
</A>. Version
2 have removed the open
15254 standard definition from its content.
</p>
15256 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
15257 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
15258 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
15259 in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
15260 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
15261 <a href=
"http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
15262 source
</a> to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
15263 background information about that story is available in
15264 <a href=
"http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article
</a> from
15265 Linux Journal in
2002.
</p>
15268 <p>Lima,
8th of April,
2002<br>
15269 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ
<br>
15270 General Manager of Microsoft Perú
</p>
15274 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March
25,
2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number
1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.
</p>
15276 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.
</p>
15278 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.
</p>
15280 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:
</p>
15284 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen.
</li>
15285 <li>Permanence of public data.
</li>
15286 <li>Security of the State and citizens.
</li>
15290 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.
</p>
15292 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.
</p>
15294 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*.
</p>
15296 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.
</p>
15298 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.
</p>
15301 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:
<br>
15302 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software
</li>
15303 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software
</li>
15304 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use
</li>
15305 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought
</li>
15306 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.
</li>
15310 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.
</p>
15312 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.
</p>
15314 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:
</p>
15316 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "
1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."
</p>
15318 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.
</p>
15320 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No.
012-
2001-PCM).
</p>
15322 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.
</p>
15324 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.
</p>
15326 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.
</p>
15328 <p>To continue; you note that:"
2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."
</p>
15330 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."
</p>
15332 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.
</p>
15334 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.
</p>
15336 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.
</p>
15338 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).
</p>
15340 <p>You add: "
3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."
</p>
15342 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph
6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.
</p>
15344 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.
</p>
15346 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.
</p>
15348 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.
</p>
15350 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.
</p>
15352 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.
</p>
15354 <p>Your letter continues: "
4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."
</p>
15356 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.
</p>
15358 <p>On security:
</p>
15360 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.
</p>
15362 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.
</p>
15364 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.
</p>
15366 <p>In respect of the guarantee:
</p>
15368 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.
</p>
15370 <p>On Intellectual Property:
</p>
15372 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on
27th September
2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of
3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).
</p>
15374 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."
</p>
15376 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).
</p>
15378 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.
</p>
15380 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.
</p>
15382 <p>You continue: "
6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only
8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other
92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."
</p>
15384 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph
5 and partly contradicts paragraph
3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only
8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.
</p>
15386 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph
3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.
</p>
15388 <p>You further state that: "
7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."
</p>
15390 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.
</p>
15392 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than
8% of the total.
</p>
15394 <p>You continue: "
8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."
</p>
15396 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.
</p>
15398 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.
</p>
15400 <p>You then say that: "
9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."
</p>
15402 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph
4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.
</p>
15404 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.
</p>
15406 <p>You continue by observing that: "
10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices
40 million US$/year, exports
4 million US$ (
10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."
</p>
15408 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.
</p>
15410 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.
</p>
15412 <p>You go on to say that: "
11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."
</p>
15414 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.
</p>
15416 <p>You then state that: "
12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."
</p>
15418 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.
</p>
15420 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "
13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"
</p>
15422 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.
</p>
15424 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.
</p>
15426 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.
</p>
15428 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.
</p>
15431 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ
<br>
15432 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.
</p>
15439 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
15444 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15446 <div class=
"entry">
15447 <div class=
"title">
15448 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong
</a>
15454 <p>Half a year ago I
15455 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
15456 a bit
</a> about
<a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots
</a>,
15457 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
15458 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.
</p>
15460 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
15461 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
15462 different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
15463 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
15464 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
15465 for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
15466 got such a great test tool available.
</p>
15472 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard
</a>.
15477 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15479 <div class=
"entry">
15480 <div class=
"title">
15481 <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>
15487 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
15488 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
15489 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
15490 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
15491 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
15492 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
15493 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
15494 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
15497 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
15498 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
15499 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
15500 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
15501 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
15502 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
15503 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
15504 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
15506 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
15507 I perform on a new model.
</p>
15511 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
15512 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
15513 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
15515 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
15516 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
15518 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
15519 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
15520 reported by the program.
</li>
15522 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
15523 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
15524 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
15525 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
15526 normally test this by playing
15527 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
15528 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
15530 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
15531 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
15533 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
15534 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
15536 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
15537 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
15539 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
15540 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
15543 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
15544 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
15547 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
15548 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
15551 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
15552 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
15553 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
15554 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
15557 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
15558 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
15559 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
15564 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
15565 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
15566 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
15567 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
15568 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
15569 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
15570 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
15571 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
15577 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>.
15582 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15584 <div class=
"entry">
15585 <div class=
"title">
15586 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
15592 <p>As I continue to explore
15593 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
15594 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
15595 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
15597 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
15598 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
15599 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
15600 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
15601 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
15602 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
15603 all transactions. There I can see that my address
15604 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
15605 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
15606 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
15607 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
15608 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
15609 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
15610 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
15611 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
15612 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
15613 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
15614 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
15615 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
15616 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
15618 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
15619 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
15620 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
15621 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
15622 If the Skolelinux foundation
15623 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
15624 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
15625 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
15626 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
15627 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
15628 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
15629 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
15630 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
15632 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
15633 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
15634 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
15635 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
15636 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
15637 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
15638 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
15639 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
15640 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
15641 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
15642 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
15643 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
15644 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
15645 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
15648 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
15649 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
15650 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
15651 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
15652 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
15653 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
15654 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
15655 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
15656 BitCoins. Check out
15657 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
15658 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
15659 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
15660 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
15663 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
15664 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
15665 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
15666 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
15667 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
15673 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>.
15678 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15680 <div class=
"entry">
15681 <div class=
"title">
15682 <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>
15688 <p>With this weeks lawless
15689 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
15690 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
15691 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
15692 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
15693 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
15695 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
15696 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
15697 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
15698 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
15699 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
15700 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
15701 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
15703 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
15704 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
15705 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
15706 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
15707 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
15708 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
15709 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
15710 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
15711 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
15712 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
15714 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
15715 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
15716 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
15717 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
15718 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
15719 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
15721 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
15722 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
15723 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
15724 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
15726 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
15727 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
15728 donations to the address
15729 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
15735 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>.
15740 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15742 <div class=
"entry">
15743 <div class=
"title">
15744 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap
3D printer
</a>
15750 <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
15751 student assosiation
<a href=
"http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
15752 Osloensis
</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
15753 get their own
3D printer. They wanted to learn from me based on my
15754 work in the area. After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
15755 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
15756 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon. I look
15757 forward to see how this goes. This monday their volunteer driver
15758 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
15759 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the
3D printer
15762 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
15763 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational. I really look
15764 forward to being able to print all the cool
3D designs published on
15765 <a href=
"http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse
</a>. I even got
15766 some
3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
15767 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
15768 very cool
3D scanner.
</p>
15774 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap
</a>.
15779 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15781 <div class=
"entry">
15782 <div class=
"title">
15783 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK
</a>
15789 <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
15790 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
15791 gathering
</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway. I
15792 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
15793 Squeeze release. The gathering is open for everyone interested in
15794 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
15796 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
15797 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
15799 <a href=
"http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
15800 for
2010</a>. Membership is open for all, and currently there are
388
15801 people registered as members. Last year
32 members cast their vote in
15802 the memberdb based election system. I hope more people find time to
15803 vote this year.
</p>
15809 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
15814 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15816 <div class=
"entry">
15817 <div class=
"title">
15818 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
15824 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
15825 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
15826 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
15827 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
15828 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
15829 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
15830 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
15831 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
15833 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
15834 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
15835 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
15836 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
15837 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
15838 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
15839 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
15840 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
15841 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
15842 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
15843 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
15845 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
15846 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
15847 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
15848 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
15849 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
15850 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
15851 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
15852 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
15853 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
15854 what is going on.
</p>
15860 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>.
15865 <div class=
"padding"></div>
15867 <div class=
"entry">
15868 <div class=
"title">
15869 <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>
15875 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
15876 upgrade testing of the
15877 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
15878 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
15879 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
15880 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
15882 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
15884 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
15891 browser-plugin-gnash
15898 freedesktop-sound-theme
15900 gconf-defaults-service
15913 gnome-codec-install
15915 gnome-desktop-environment
15919 gnome-session-canberra
15921 gnome-themes-extras
15924 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
15925 gstreamer0.10-tools
15927 gtk2-engines-pixbuf
15928 gtk2-engines-smooth
15930 libapache2-mod-dnssd
15933 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
15936 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
15937 libboost-python1.42
.0
15938 libboost-thread1.42
.0
15940 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
15942 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
15949 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
15962 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
15964 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
15969 libgtksourceview2.0-common
15970 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
15971 libmono-addins0.2-cil
15972 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
15973 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
15974 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
15975 libmono-posix2.0-cil
15976 libmono-security2.0-cil
15977 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
15978 libmono-system2.0-cil
15981 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
15982 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
15992 libtelepathy-farsight0
16001 nautilus-sendto-empathy
16005 python-aptdaemon-gtk
16007 python-beautifulsoup
16022 python-gtksourceview2
16033 python-pkg-resources
16040 python-twisted-conch
16041 python-twisted-core
16046 python-zope.interface
16048 remmina-plugin-data
16051 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
16058 system-config-printer-udev
16060 telepathy-mission-control-
5
16067 transmission-common
16073 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
16079 epiphany-extensions
16081 fast-user-switch-applet
16100 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
16102 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
16108 system-config-printer
16115 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
16118 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16121 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
16127 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
16129 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
16135 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
16139 network-manager-kde
16142 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
16158 kdeartwork-emoticons
16160 kdeartwork-theme-icon
16164 kdebase-workspace-bin
16165 kdebase-workspace-data
16177 konqueror-nsplugins
16179 kscreensaver-xsavers
16194 plasma-dataengines-workspace
16196 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
16197 plasma-runners-addons
16198 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
16199 plasma-scriptengine-python
16200 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
16201 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
16202 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
16203 plasma-scriptengines
16204 plasma-wallpapers-addons
16205 plasma-widget-folderview
16206 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
16209 update-notifier-kde
16210 xscreensaver-data-extra
16212 xscreensaver-gl-extra
16213 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
16216 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
16220 google-gadgets-common
16238 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
16243 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
16247 libkunitconversion4
16252 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
16254 libplasmagenericshell4
16268 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
16269 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
16271 libsmokektexteditor3
16279 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
16280 libsmokeqtopengl4-
3
16281 libsmokeqtscript4-
3
16285 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
16286 libsmokeqtwebkit4-
3
16297 plasma-dataengines-addons
16298 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
16299 plasma-widget-lancelot
16300 plasma-widgets-addons
16301 plasma-widgets-workspace
16305 update-notifier-common
16308 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
16309 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
16310 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
16311 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
16317 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>.
16322 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16324 <div class=
"entry">
16325 <div class=
"title">
16326 <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>
16332 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
16333 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
16334 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
16335 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
16336 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
16337 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
16338 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
16339 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
16340 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
16343 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
16344 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
16345 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
16346 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
16347 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
16348 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
16354 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
16359 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
16360 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
16366 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
16367 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
16371 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
16372 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
16373 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
16374 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
16377 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
16378 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
16380 parted $img mklabel msdos
16381 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
16382 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
16383 parted $img set
1 boot on
16386 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
16387 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
16389 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
16390 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
16391 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
16393 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
16394 losetup -d /dev/loop0
16397 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
16398 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
16400 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
16401 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
16402 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
16403 seem to work just fine.
</p>
16409 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>.
16414 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16416 <div class=
"entry">
16417 <div class=
"title">
16418 <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>
16424 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
16425 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
16426 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
16427 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
16429 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
16430 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
16431 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
16433 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
16435 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
16438 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
16439 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
16440 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
16441 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
16442 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
16443 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
16444 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
16445 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
16446 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
16447 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
16448 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
16449 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
16450 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
16451 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
16452 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
16453 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
16454 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
16455 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
16456 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
16457 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
16458 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
16459 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
16460 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
16461 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
16462 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
16463 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
16464 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
16465 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
16466 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
16467 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
16468 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
16469 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
16470 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
16471 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
16472 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
16473 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
16474 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
16475 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
16476 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
16477 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
16478 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
16479 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
16480 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
16481 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
16482 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
16483 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
16484 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
16485 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
16486 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
16487 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
16488 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
16489 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
16490 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
16491 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
16492 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
16493 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
16494 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
16495 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
16499 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
16502 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
16503 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
16504 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
16505 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
16506 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
16507 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
16508 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
16509 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
16510 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
16511 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
16512 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
16513 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
16514 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
16515 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
16516 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
16517 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
16518 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
16519 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
16520 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
16521 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
16522 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
16523 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
16524 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
16525 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
16526 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
16527 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
16528 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
16529 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
16530 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
16533 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
16536 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
16539 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
16545 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
16547 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
16550 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
16551 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
16552 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
16553 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
16554 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
16555 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
16556 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
16557 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
16558 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
16559 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
16560 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
16561 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
16562 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
16563 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
16564 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
16565 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
16566 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
16567 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
16568 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
16569 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
16570 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
16571 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
16572 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
16573 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
16574 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
16575 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
16576 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
16577 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
16578 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
16579 ttf-sazanami-gothic
16582 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
16585 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
16586 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
16587 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
16588 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
16589 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
16590 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
16591 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
16592 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
16593 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
16594 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
16595 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
16596 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
16597 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
16598 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
16599 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
16600 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
16601 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
16602 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
16603 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
16604 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
16605 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
16606 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
16607 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
16608 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
16609 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
16610 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
16611 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
16612 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
16613 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
16614 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
16615 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
16616 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
16617 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
16620 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
16623 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
16624 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
16625 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
16626 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
16627 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
16628 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
16629 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
16632 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
16635 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
16642 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>.
16647 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16649 <div class=
"entry">
16650 <div class=
"title">
16651 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
16658 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
16659 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
16660 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
16661 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
16662 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
16663 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
16664 releases out more often.
</p>
16666 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
16667 I have considered setting up a
<a
16668 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
16669 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
16670 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
16671 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
16672 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
16673 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
16674 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
16675 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
16676 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
16677 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
16678 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
16679 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
16685 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>.
16690 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16692 <div class=
"entry">
16693 <div class=
"title">
16694 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
16700 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
16702 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
16704 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
16705 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
16711 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>.
16716 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16718 <div class=
"entry">
16719 <div class=
"title">
16720 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
</a>
16726 <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
16727 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> DVD, which is
16728 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
16729 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard. Even
16730 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
16731 working using this DVD.
</p>
16733 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
16734 installing recommended packages by default. We want the same set of
16735 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
16736 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD. I created
16737 a patch for debian-cd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
16738 report #
601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
16739 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.
</p>
16741 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
16742 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
16743 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
16744 Debian archive.
</p>
16746 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
16747 were using most space. A few large packages are well know;
16748 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont. But I also
16749 discovered that lilypond used
106 MiB and fglrx-driver used
53 MiB.
16750 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
16751 when looking a bit closer I discovered that
99 MiB of the
106 MiB were
16752 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
16753 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
16754 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
16755 documentation. Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
16756 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
16757 free X driver should work.
</p>
16759 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
16760 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
16761 DVD more useful again.
</p>
16767 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
16772 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16774 <div class=
"entry">
16775 <div class=
"title">
16776 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
16782 <p>Some updates.
</p>
16784 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
16785 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
16786 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
16787 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
16788 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
16791 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
16792 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
16793 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
16795 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
16796 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
16797 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
16798 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
16799 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
16800 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
16802 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
16803 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
16804 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
16805 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
16806 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
16807 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
16808 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
16809 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
16810 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
16811 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
16817 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>.
16822 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16824 <div class=
"entry">
16825 <div class=
"title">
16826 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support
</a>
16832 <p><a href=
"http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project
</a> is the
16833 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
16834 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
16835 funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
16836 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
16837 AVM2 flash files.
</p>
16839 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
16840 <a href=
"http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge
</a> with the
16841 following text:
</P>
16845 <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
16846 only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
16848 <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer
</p>
16850 <p>Deadline to sign up by:
24th December
2010</p>
16852 <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
16853 format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
16854 web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
16855 format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
16856 days. The project web page is available from
16857 http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
16858 of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
16859 the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.
</p>
16861 <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
16862 time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
16863 to get this to happen.
</p>
16865 <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
16866 <a href=
"http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/
32</a> .
</p>
16870 <p>I hope you will support this effort too. I hope more than
10
16871 people will participate to make this happen. The more money the
16872 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
16879 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
16884 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16886 <div class=
"entry">
16887 <div class=
"title">
16888 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot
</a>
16894 <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
16895 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
16896 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
16897 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
16898 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
16899 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
16902 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
16903 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them. There are
16904 a few less important features too.
</p>
16906 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
16907 but I never got around to releasing the current source. I decided
16908 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
16909 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.
</p>
16911 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
16912 published the source and deb. If you got a spykee robot, grab the
16913 source or binary package:
</p>
16916 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1.tar.gz
</a></li>
16917 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1.dsc
</a></li>
16918 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0
.20101009-
1_all.deb
</a></li>
16921 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
16922 please let me know.
</p>
16928 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
16933 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16935 <div class=
"entry">
16936 <div class=
"title">
16937 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for
2010-
10-
03</a>
16945 <li><a href=
"http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
16946 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly
</a></li>
16948 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
16949 <a href=
"http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
16950 already been misused at Heathrow
</a>.
</li>
16952 <li><a href=
"http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
16953 Webcasting
</a> - interesting alternative for
16954 <ahref=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch
</a> with
16963 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
16968 <div class=
"padding"></div>
16970 <div class=
"entry">
16971 <div class=
"title">
16972 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS
130 digital camera
</a>
16978 <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
16979 camera, a Canon IXUS
130. It was instructive and very disturbing to
16980 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
16981 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
16982 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
16983 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the
16984 problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-
4, H
.264 and the
16985 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
16986 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
16988 <p>On page
27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
16992 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-
4 standard
16993 and may be used for encoding MPEG-
4 compliant video and/or decoding
16994 MPEG-
4 compliant video that was encoded only (
1) for a personal and
16995 non-commercial purpose or (
2) by a video provider licensed under the
16996 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-
4 compliant video.
</p>
16998 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-
4
17002 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
17003 (MPEG-
4/H
.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
17004 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
17005 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.
</p>
17007 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
17009 "
<a href=
"http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
17010 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
17011 MPEG-LA
</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
17012 "<a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H
.264 Is Not
17013 The Sort Of Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
17014 the issue. The solution is to support the
17015 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and
17016 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg
17017 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
17023 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan
">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling
">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia
">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett
">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern
">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video
">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
17028 <div class="padding
"></div>
17030 <div class="entry
">
17031 <div class="title
">
17032 <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>
17038 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote
">Debian
17039 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
17040 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
17041 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
17042 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
17043 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
17046 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
17047 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf
">Skolelinux
17048 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
17049 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
17050 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian
17051 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
17052 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
17053 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
17054 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
17056 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
17057 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
17058 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
17059 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
17060 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
17061 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
17062 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
17063 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
17064 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
17065 pages they want to visit.</p>
17067 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
17068 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
17069 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
17070 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
17071 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
17072 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
17073 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
17074 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
17075 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
17076 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
17077 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
17083 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>.
17088 <div class="padding
"></div>
17090 <div class="entry
">
17091 <div class="title
">
17092 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html
">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
17098 <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application. The last few
17099 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
17100 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
17101 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
17102 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
17103 allow me to drive the robot around. I picked PerlQt as I have had
17104 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
17105 browsing the web for examples. Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
17106 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
17107 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
17108 libqt-perl. Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
17111 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
17112 controlling the robot. Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
17116 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
17117 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
17118 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
17119 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
17124 $spykee-
>forward();
17131 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
17132 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
17133 implement the protocol used by the robot. I've implemented several of
17134 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
17135 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote. First I
17136 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
17137 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
17138 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
17139 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
17142 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
17143 where to make it available first. I will add a link to
17144 <a href=
"http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki
</a> for
17145 those that want to check back later to find it.
</p>
17151 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot
</a>.
17156 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17158 <div class=
"entry">
17159 <div class=
"title">
17160 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs
</a>
17166 <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
17167 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
17168 post about sshfs
</a>. He reported another problem with sshfs. It
17169 fail to handle hard links properly. A simple way to spot this is to
17170 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree. These should have
17171 a link count
>1, but on sshfs the count is
1. I just tested to see
17172 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:
</p>
17176 ln: creating hard link `bar' =
> `foo': Function not implemented
17180 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
17181 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
17182 avoid surprised unix programs. Not as useful as working file locking
17183 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
17184 nevertheless. :)
</p>
17186 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
17188 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a></p>
17194 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17199 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17201 <div class=
"entry">
17202 <div class=
"title">
17203 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs
</a>
17209 <p>My file system sematics program
17210 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
17211 a few days ago
</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
17212 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit. I'm
17213 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
17214 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs. My friend
17215 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
17216 Edu, but stopped because of problems. I asked today what the problems
17217 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
17218 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
17222 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
17224 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
17227 struct stat statbuf;
17228 if (-
1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
17229 retval = statbuf.st_mode &
0x1ff;
17236 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
17237 int test_umask(void) {
17238 printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
17240 mode_t orig_umask = umask(
000);
17242 if (
0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
17243 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
000\n",
17247 if (
0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
17248 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
007\n",
17252 umask (orig_umask);
17256 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
17263 <p>Sure enough. On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:
</p>
17266 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17267 info: testing symlink creation
17268 info: testing subdirectory creation
17269 info: testing fcntl locking
17270 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
17271 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
17272 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
17273 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
17274 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
17275 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
17276 info: testing umask effect on file creation
17279 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
17283 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17284 info: testing symlink creation
17285 info: testing subdirectory creation
17286 info: testing fcntl locking
17287 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
17288 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
17289 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
17290 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
17291 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
17292 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
17293 info: testing umask effect on file creation
17294 error: Wrong file mode
644 when creating using mode
666 and umask
000
17295 error: Wrong file mode
640 when creating using mode
666 and umask
007
17298 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
17299 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
17302 <p>Update
2010-
08-
26: Reported the issue in
17303 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #
594498</a></p>
17305 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
17306 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
17307 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
17313 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17318 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17320 <div class=
"entry">
17321 <div class=
"title">
17322 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent
</a>
17328 <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
17329 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
17330 to crush dissent
</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
17331 well. Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
17332 should go down. In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
17339 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
17344 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17346 <div class=
"entry">
17347 <div class=
"title">
17348 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients
</a>
17354 <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
17355 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
17356 configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
17357 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
17358 generated configuration.
</p>
17360 <p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
17361 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
17362 without any manual configuration.
</p>
17364 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
17365 the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
17366 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
17367 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
17368 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
17369 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
17370 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
17371 after around
50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
17372 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
17373 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
17374 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
17375 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
17376 same username and password to the KDE
4.4 desktop. At no point during
17377 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
17378 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
17379 fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
17382 <p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
17383 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
17384 working properly out of the box:
</p>
17387 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.
</li>
17388 <li>Web proxy URL.
</li>
17389 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).
</li>
17390 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.
</li>
17391 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)
</li>
17392 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)
</li>
17393 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)
</li>
17396 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)
</p>
17398 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
17399 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
17400 administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
17401 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
17402 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.
</p>
17404 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
17405 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
17406 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
17407 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
17408 /etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
17409 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
17410 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
17411 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.
</p>
17413 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
17414 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
17415 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
17416 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
17417 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
17418 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
17419 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
17420 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
17421 LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
17422 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
17423 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
17424 such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
17425 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
17426 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
17427 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
17428 current DNS domain is used.
</p>
17430 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
17431 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
17432 found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
17433 Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
17434 server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
17435 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
17436 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
17437 log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
17438 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
17439 network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
17440 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
17441 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
17442 should switch those to use sssd too?
</p>
17444 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
17445 located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
17446 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
17447 attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
17448 path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
17449 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
17450 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
17451 smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
17452 edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
17453 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
17456 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
17457 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
17458 more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
17459 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
17460 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
17463 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
17464 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
17466 <p>Update
2010-
08-
09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
17467 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
17468 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
17469 implement it for Debian Edu. :)
</p>
17475 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17480 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17482 <div class=
"entry">
17483 <div class=
"title">
17484 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...
</a>
17490 <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
17491 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
17492 Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
17493 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
17494 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
17495 mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
17496 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.
</p>
17498 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
17499 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
17500 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
17501 underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
17502 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
17503 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
17504 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.
</p>
17506 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
17507 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
17508 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
17509 it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
17510 help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:
</p>
17514 * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
17515 * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
17517 * License: GPL v2 or later
17519 * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
17520 * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
17523 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS
64
17524 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE
1
17525 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
1
17527 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
17529 #include
<errno.h
>
17530 #include
<fcntl.h
>
17531 #include
<stdio.h
>
17532 #include
<string.h
>
17533 #include
<stdlib.h
>
17534 #include
<sys/file.h
>
17535 #include
<sys/stat.h
>
17536 #include
<sys/types.h
>
17537 #include
<unistd.h
>
17541 * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
17542 * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
17544 * See also
<URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5
>.
17546 #include
<sqlite3.h
>
17547 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
17548 "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
17549 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
17551 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
17554 int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
17556 printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
17561 /* create tables */
17562 rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,
0, &zErrMsg);
17563 if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
17564 printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
17568 printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
17572 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
17575 * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
17576 * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows
2003. This is
17577 * done in the sqlite3 library.
17579 *
<URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/
2001-
08/msg00854.html
> and the
17580 * POSIX specification
17581 *
<URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/
009695399/functions/fcntl.html
>.
17583 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
17585 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
17587 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0644);
17588 printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
17590 fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
17591 fl.l_pid = getpid();
17592 printf(" Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
17593 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
17595 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
17596 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17598 printf(" Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
17599 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
17601 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
17602 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17604 printf(" Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824");
17605 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
17607 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
17608 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17610 printf(" Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
17611 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
17613 fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
17614 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17616 printf(" Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
17617 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
17619 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17621 printf(" Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824");
17622 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
17624 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
17625 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
17632 * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
17633 * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
17634 * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
17635 * slowing down file operations.
17637 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
17639 char *path = strdup("test");
17640 char *dirs[LEVELS];
17642 printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
17643 for (level =
0; level
< LEVELS; level++) {
17644 char *newpath = NULL;
17645 if (-
1 == mkdir(path,
0777)) {
17646 printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
17647 path, strerror(errno));
17650 asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
17658 * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
17661 int test_symlinks(void) {
17662 printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
17664 if (-
1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
17665 printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
17669 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
17670 printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
17672 test_subdirectory_creation();
17674 test_sqlite_open();
17675 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
17676 test_gcompris_locking();
17681 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
17685 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
17686 info: testing symlink creation
17687 info: testing subdirectory creation
17688 info: sqlite worked
17689 info: testing fcntl locking
17690 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
17691 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
17692 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
17693 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
17694 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
17695 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
17698 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
17699 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
17700 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
17701 the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
17702 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
17703 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
17704 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
17705 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.
</p>
17707 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
17710 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
17711 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
17712 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
17718 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17723 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17725 <div class=
"entry">
17726 <div class=
"title">
17727 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu
</a>
17733 <p>A few days ago, I
17734 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
17735 to install
</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
17736 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
17737 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
17738 university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
17739 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
17740 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
17741 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
17742 around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.
</p>
17744 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
17745 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
17746 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
17747 servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
17748 configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
17749 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
17750 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
17751 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
17752 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
17753 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
17754 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
17755 a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
17756 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
17757 gave it a IP address.
</p>
17759 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
17760 entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
17761 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
17762 server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
17763 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
17764 pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
17765 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
17766 uppercase version of $domain.
</p>
17768 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
17769 directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
17770 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
17771 the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
17772 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
17773 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(
</p>
17775 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
17776 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
17777 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
17778 authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
17779 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
17780 with UID and GID values.
</p>
17782 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
17783 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
17789 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17794 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17796 <div class=
"entry">
17797 <div class=
"title">
17798 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo
</a>
17804 <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
17805 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
17806 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
17807 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
17808 infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
17809 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
17812 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
17813 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
17814 /etc/mklocaluser.d/
20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
17815 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
17816 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
17817 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
17818 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
17821 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
17822 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
17823 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
17824 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
17825 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
17826 university servers.
</p>
17828 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
17829 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
17830 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
17831 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
17832 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
17839 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
17844 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17846 <div class=
"entry">
17847 <div class=
"title">
17848 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
17854 <p>I discovered this while doing
17855 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
17856 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
17857 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
17858 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
17859 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
17861 <p>An example is from todays
17862 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
17863 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
17864 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
17865 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
17866 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
17867 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
17868 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
17870 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
17873 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
17874 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
17875 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
17876 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
17877 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
17878 </pre></blockquote>
17880 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
17881 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
17882 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
17883 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
17884 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
17885 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
17886 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
17887 of dependency loops.
</p>
17890 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
17891 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
17893 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
17894 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
17896 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
17897 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
17898 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
17899 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
17900 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
17907 Tags:
<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>.
17912 <div class=
"padding"></div>
17914 <div class=
"entry">
17915 <div class=
"title">
17916 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released
</a>
17922 <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
17923 with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
17927 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
17928 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
17929 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
17930 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
17931 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
17932 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
17933 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
17934 language of choice, please let us know too.
</p>
17936 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
17937 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
17938 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.
</p>
17940 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
17941 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
17944 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version
</p>
17947 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
17949 <li>Desktop environment KDE
4.4 =
> the new KDE desktop in
17950 combination with some new artwork
17951 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
3.5
17952 <li>OpenOffice.org
3.2
17953 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
9.3
17954 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
10.04.2
17955 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.6.10
17956 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.0
17957 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.10.4
17958 <li>3D modeler Blender
2.49.2 (new application)
17959 <li>Video editor Kdenlive
0.7.7 (new application)
17961 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
17967 <li>SMTP (sender verification)
17970 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
</li>
17971 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
17972 fetched from LDAP.
</li>
17973 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
</li>
17974 <li>General cleanup (not finished)
</li>
17976 <p>The following features are not working as they should
</p>
17979 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
17980 scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
17982 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
17983 and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
17984 clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.
</li>
17985 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.
</li>
17986 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.
</li>
17987 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.
</li>
17988 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
17989 netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.
</li>
17990 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
17991 some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
17992 jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.
</li>
17993 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
17994 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
17995 and help out with translations.
</li>
17998 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use
</p>
18001 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</a></li>
18002 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</a></li>
18003 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
18005 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use
</p>
18008 <li><a href=
"ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</a></li>
18009 <li><a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</a></li>
18010 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
18013 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
18014 get closer to the final release.
</p>
18016 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are
</p>
18019 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
18020 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
18023 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are
</p>
18025 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
18026 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
18028 <p>How to report bugs:
18029 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla
</p>
18031 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</p>
18038 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
18043 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18045 <div class=
"entry">
18046 <div class=
"title">
18047 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu
</a>
18053 <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
18054 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
18055 Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
18056 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
18057 getting rid of password questions one at the time.
</p>
18059 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
18060 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
18061 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
18062 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
18063 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
18064 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
18065 package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.
</p>
18067 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
18068 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
18069 password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
18070 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
18073 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
18074 Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
18075 also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.
</p>
18077 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
18078 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
18079 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
18080 the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
18081 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
18082 time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
18083 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
18084 release another day.
</p>
18086 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
18087 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
18093 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
18098 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18100 <div class=
"entry">
18101 <div class=
"title">
18102 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page
</a>
18109 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
18110 opengeodata blog entry
</a>, I just discovered that the
18111 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
18112 <a href=
"http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
18113 for calculating routes
</a>. The support is still experimental and
18114 only available from the development server, until more experience is
18115 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.
</p>
18117 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
18118 was provided by
<a href=
"http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade
</a>,
18119 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
18120 the issue. I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
18121 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
18122 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
18123 www.openstreetmap.org front page.
</p>
18129 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
18134 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18136 <div class=
"entry">
18137 <div class=
"title">
18138 <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>
18145 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
18147 <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
18149 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
18150 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
18152 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
18153 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
18154 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
18155 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
18157 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
18158 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
18159 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
18161 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
18163 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
18164 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
18167 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
18168 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
18169 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
18170 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
18171 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
18172 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
18174 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
18175 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
18176 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
18177 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
18178 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
18179 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
18180 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
18181 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
18182 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
18183 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
18184 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
18185 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
18186 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
18187 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
18188 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
18189 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
18192 ldapsearch -h ldap \
18193 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
18194 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
18195 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
18196 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
18197 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
18198 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
18200 ldapsearch -h ldap \
18201 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
18202 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
18203 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
18204 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
18205 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
18206 </pre></blockquote>
18208 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
18209 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
18210 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
18211 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18215 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18217 objectclass: dnsdomain
18218 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18221 associateddomain: tjener.intern
18223 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18225 objectclass: dnsdomain2
18226 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18228 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
18229 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
18230 </pre></blockquote>
18232 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
18233 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
18234 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
18235 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
18236 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
18237 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
18238 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
18239 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
18240 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
18241 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
18242 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
18245 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
18249 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
18250 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
18251 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
18252 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
18253 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
18254 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
18256 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
18257 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
18258 </pre></blockquote>
18260 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
18261 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
18262 reverse lookups.
</p>
18264 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
18265 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
18266 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
18267 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
18269 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
18270 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
18271 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
18273 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
18274 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
18275 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
18276 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
18277 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
18279 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
18280 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
18281 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
18282 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
18283 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
18285 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
18286 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
18287 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
18288 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
18289 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
18290 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
18293 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
18296 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
18297 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
18298 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
18299 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
18300 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
18302 </pre></blockquote>
18304 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
18305 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
18306 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
18307 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
18308 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
18309 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
18311 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
18313 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
18314 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
18315 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
18316 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
18317 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
18319 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
18320 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
18321 stored. These are the relevant entries from
18322 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
18325 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
18326 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
18327 </pre></blockquote>
18329 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
18330 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
18331 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
18332 search result is this entry:
</p>
18335 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18338 objectClass: dhcpServer
18339 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18340 </pre></blockquote>
18342 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
18343 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
18344 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
18345 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
18346 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
18347 The search result is this entry:
</p>
18350 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18353 objectClass: dhcpService
18354 objectClass: dhcpOptions
18355 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18356 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
18357 dhcpStatements: authoritative
18358 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
18359 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
18360 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
18361 </pre></blockquote>
18363 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
18364 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
18365 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
18366 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
18367 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
18368 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
18369 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
18370 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
18371 related computer objects.
</p>
18373 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
18374 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
18375 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
18376 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
18377 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
18381 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18384 objectClass: dhcpHost
18385 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
18386 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
18387 </pre></blockquote>
18389 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
18390 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
18391 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
18392 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
18393 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
18394 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
18395 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
18396 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
18397 structural object class.
18399 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
18401 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
18402 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
18403 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
18404 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
18405 in the configuration.
</p>
18407 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
18408 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
18409 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
18410 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
18411 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
18414 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
18415 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
18419 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
18420 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
18421 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
18422 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
18423 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
18424 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
18425 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
18426 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
18427 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
18428 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
18429 </pre></blockquote>
18431 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
18432 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
18433 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
18434 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
18436 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
18440 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18443 objectClass: dhcpHost
18444 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18445 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
18446 associateddomain: hostname.intern
18447 arecord:
10.11.12.13
18448 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
18449 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
18450 </pre></blockquote>
18452 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
18453 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
18454 auxiliary object class.
</p>
18460 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>.
18465 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18467 <div class=
"entry">
18468 <div class=
"title">
18469 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
18475 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
18476 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
18477 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
18478 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
18479 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
18481 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
18482 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
18484 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
18485 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
18486 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
18487 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
18488 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
18489 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
18491 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
18492 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
18493 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
18494 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
18495 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
18498 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
18499 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
18500 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
18504 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18506 objectClass: dhcphost
18507 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
18508 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
18509 associateddomain: hostname.intern
18510 arecord:
10.11.12.13
18511 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
18512 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
18514 </pre></blockquote>
18516 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
18517 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
18518 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
18519 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
18521 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
18522 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
18523 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
18524 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
18525 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
18526 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
18527 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
18528 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
18530 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18531 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
18537 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>.
18542 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18544 <div class=
"entry">
18545 <div class=
"title">
18546 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
18552 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
18553 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
18554 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
18555 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
18557 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
18558 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
18559 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
18560 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
18563 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
18564 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
18565 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
18567 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
18568 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
18569 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
18572 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
18574 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
18576 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
18577 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
18578 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
18580 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
18581 # existence of attribute names.
18583 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
18584 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
18585 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
18587 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
18588 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
18590 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
18593 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
18595 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
18596 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
18597 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
18598 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
18599 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
18600 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
18601 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
18602 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
18603 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
18604 # bass value on to clients
18605 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
18609 </pre></blockquote>
18611 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
18612 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
18613 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
18614 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
18615 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
18617 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18618 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
18620 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
18621 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
18622 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
18623 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
18624 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
18625 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
18631 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>.
18636 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18638 <div class=
"entry">
18639 <div class=
"title">
18640 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
18647 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
18648 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
18649 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
18650 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
18651 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
18652 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
18653 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
18654 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
18655 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
18656 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
18657 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
18658 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
18659 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
18665 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>.
18670 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18672 <div class=
"entry">
18673 <div class=
"title">
18674 <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>
18680 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
18681 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
18682 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
18683 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
18684 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
18685 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
18686 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
18687 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
18689 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
18690 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
18691 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
18692 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
18693 publish the difference.
</p>
18695 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
18698 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18699 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
18700 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
18701 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18702 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
18703 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
18704 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
18705 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
18708 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
18711 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
18712 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
18713 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
18714 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
18715 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
18716 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
18717 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18718 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
18719 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
18720 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
18721 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
18722 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
18723 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
18724 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
18725 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
18726 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
18727 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
18728 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
18729 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
18730 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
18733 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
18736 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
18737 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
18738 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
18739 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
18740 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
18741 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
18742 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
18743 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
18744 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
18745 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
18746 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
18747 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
18748 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
18749 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
18750 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
18751 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
18752 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
18753 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
18754 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
18755 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
18756 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
18759 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
18762 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
18763 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
18764 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
18767 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
18768 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
18769 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
18770 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
18771 the difference somewhat.
18777 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>.
18782 <div class=
"padding"></div>
18784 <div class=
"entry">
18785 <div class=
"title">
18786 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop
</a>
18792 <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
18793 a bit troubling. Laptops are typically used also when not connected
18794 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
18795 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
18796 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
18797 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
18798 in Debian. Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
18799 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
18800 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.
</p>
18802 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
18804 This is the traditional method with a twist. The password caching is
18805 provided by libpam-ccreds (version
10-
4 or later is needed on
18806 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd. The directory
18807 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP. If one want to use
18808 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
18809 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal. If one is happy having a
18810 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
18811 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
18812 using libpam-mklocaluser. A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
18813 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
18814 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #
568577</a> is in the
18815 archive. Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
18816 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
18817 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/. This
18818 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.
</p>
18820 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured
</p>
18823 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
18824 </pre></blockquote>
18826 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
18827 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site. Make sure the
18828 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
18829 sent in clear text to the LDAP server. I've been unable to get TLS
18830 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
18831 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
18832 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
18833 on how to get this working.
</p>
18835 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
18836 caching until
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #
485282</a>
18837 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
18838 currently in /etc/nscd.conf. The changes are in the fields
18839 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
18840 instructions I found in the
18841 <a href=
"http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops
</a>
18842 instructions by Flyn Computing.
</p>
18846 reload-count unlimited
18849 enable-cache passwd yes
18850 positive-time-to-live passwd
2592000
18851 negative-time-to-live passwd
20
18852 suggested-size passwd
211
18853 check-files passwd yes
18854 persistent passwd yes
18856 max-db-size passwd
33554432
18857 auto-propagate passwd yes
18859 enable-cache group yes
18860 positive-time-to-live group
2592000
18861 negative-time-to-live group
20
18862 suggested-size group
211
18863 check-files group yes
18864 persistent group yes
18866 max-db-size group
33554432
18867 auto-propagate group yes
18869 enable-cache hosts no
18870 positive-time-to-live hosts
2592000
18871 negative-time-to-live hosts
20
18872 suggested-size hosts
211
18873 check-files hosts yes
18874 persistent hosts yes
18876 max-db-size hosts
33554432
18878 enable-cache services yes
18879 positive-time-to-live services
2592000
18880 negative-time-to-live services
20
18881 suggested-size services
211
18882 check-files services yes
18883 persistent services yes
18884 shared services yes
18885 max-db-size services
33554432
18886 </pre></blockquote>
18888 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
18889 automatically like the one provided in
18890 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #
496915</a>, the file
18891 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
18892 directory service on the machine. /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
18893 look like this:
</p>
18899 hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
18905 netgroup: files ldap
18906 </pre></blockquote>
18908 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
18909 shadow and netgroup.
</p>
18911 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
18912 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
18913 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
18916 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
18917 libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
18919 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
18920 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
18921 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
18922 LDAP database is available. I have not tested such setup, because I
18923 discovered sssd.
</p>
18925 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser
</h2>
18927 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
18928 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
18929 <a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd
</a> package from Redhat.
18930 It is part of the
<a href=
"http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA
</A> project
18931 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
18932 machines. The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
18933 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
18934 libpam-ccreds. It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS. Version
18935 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
18936 in version
1.5 expected to show up later in
2010. Because the
18937 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package
</a>
18938 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
18939 version
1.2 is now in testing.
18941 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
18942 roaming setup I want
</p>
18945 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
18946 </pre></blockquote>
18948 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
18949 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf
</tt>.
18953 config_file_version =
2
18954 reconnection_retries =
3
18956 services = nss, pam
18960 filter_groups = root
18961 filter_users = root
18962 reconnection_retries =
3
18965 reconnection_retries =
3
18969 cache_credentials = true
18972 auth_provider = ldap
18973 chpass_provider = ldap
18975 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
18976 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
18977 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
18978 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
18979 </pre></blockquote>
18981 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking. Had to set
18982 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.
</p>
18984 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
18985 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
18986 modify it manually.
</p>
18988 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
18989 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
18995 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
19000 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19002 <div class=
"entry">
19003 <div class=
"title">
19004 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
19010 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
19011 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
19012 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
19013 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
19014 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
19015 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
19016 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
19017 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
19018 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
19019 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
19021 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
19022 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
19023 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
19024 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
19027 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
19028 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
19029 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
19030 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
19032 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
19033 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
19035 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
19036 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
19037 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
19038 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
19039 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
19045 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>.
19050 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19052 <div class=
"entry">
19053 <div class=
"title">
19054 <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>
19061 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
19062 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
19063 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
19064 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
19066 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
19067 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
19068 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
19069 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
19071 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
19072 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
19073 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
19076 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
19078 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
19079 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
19080 available today from IETF.
</p>
19083 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
19084 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
19085 @@ -
376,
7 +
376,
7 @@
19086 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
19088 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
19090 + SUP top AUXILIARY
19092 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
19093 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
19096 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
19097 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
19098 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
19100 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19101 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
19107 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>.
19112 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19114 <div class=
"entry">
19115 <div class=
"title">
19116 <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>
19122 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
19123 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
19124 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
19125 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
19126 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
19130 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19131 tasksel --new-install
19132 </pre></blockquote>
19134 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
19135 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
19136 any output what so ever.
19138 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
19139 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
19140 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
19141 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
19142 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
19143 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
19147 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19148 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
19150 </pre></blockquote>
19152 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
19153 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
19154 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
19155 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
19156 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
19157 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
19160 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
19161 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
19168 Tags: <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>.
19173 <div class="padding
"></div>
19175 <div class="entry
">
19176 <div class="title
">
19177 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html
">Officeshots taking shape</a>
19183 <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
19184 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/
">OfficeShots</a>
19185 is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
19186 <a href="http://browsershots.org/
">BrowserShots</a> is for web
19189 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
19190 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
19191 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
19192 interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
19193 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
19194 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
19195 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
19196 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
19197 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
19198 see how the project is doing.</p>
19200 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
19201 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
19202 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
19203 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
19204 Windows. This is great.</p>
19210 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
19215 <div class="padding
"></div>
19217 <div class="entry
">
19218 <div class="title
">
19219 <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>
19226 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
19227 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
19228 finally made the upgrade logs available from
19229 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
19230 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
19231 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
19232 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
19234 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
19235 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
19236 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
19237 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
19238 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
19239 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
19240 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
19241 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
19243 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
19244 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
19245 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
19246 too surprising.</p>
19248 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
19249 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
19250 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
19251 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
19252 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
19253 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
19254 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
19257 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
19258 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
19259 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
19260 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
19261 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
19262 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
19263 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
19264 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19265 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19266 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
19267 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
19268 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
19269 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
19270 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19271 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19272 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19273 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19274 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19275 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
19276 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
19277 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
19278 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
19279 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
19280 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
19281 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
19282 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
19283 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
19284 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
19285 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
19286 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
19288 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
19290 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
19291 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
19292 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
19293 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
19294 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
19295 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
19296 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
19297 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
19298 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
19299 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
19300 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
19301 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
19302 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
19303 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
19304 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
19305 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
19306 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
19307 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
19308 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
19309 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
19310 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
19311 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
19312 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
19313 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
19314 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
19315 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
19316 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
19317 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
19318 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
19319 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19320 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
19323 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
19325 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
19326 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
19327 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
19328 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
19329 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
19330 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
19331 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
19332 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
19333 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
19334 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
19335 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
19336 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
19337 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
19338 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
19339 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19340 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
19341 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
19342 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
19343 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
19344 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
19345 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
19346 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
19347 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
19348 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
19349 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
19350 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
19351 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
19352 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
19354 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
19355 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
19356 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
19357 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
19358 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
19359 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
19360 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
19361 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
19362 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
19363 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
19364 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
19365 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
19366 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
19367 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
19368 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
19369 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
19370 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
19371 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
19372 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
19373 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
19374 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
19375 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
19376 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
19377 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
19378 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
19379 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
19380 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
19381 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
19382 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
19383 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
19384 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
19385 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
19386 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
19387 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
19388 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
19389 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
19390 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
19398 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>.
19403 <div class="padding
"></div>
19405 <div class="entry
">
19406 <div class="title
">
19407 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
19413 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
19414 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
19415 have been discovered and reported in the process
19416 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
19417 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
19418 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
19419 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
19420 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
19422 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
19423 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
19424 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
19425 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
19426 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
19427 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
19429 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
19430 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
19431 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
19432 is created. The bug report
19433 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
19434 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
19435 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
19436 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
19437 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
19438 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
19439 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
19440 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
19441 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
19442 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
19443 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
19444 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
19445 Debian Squeeze.</p>
19447 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
19448 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
19464 exec
< /dev/null
19466 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
19467 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
19469 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
19470 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19471 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
19475 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
19477 umount $tmpdir/proc
19479 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
19480 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
19481 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
19483 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
19485 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
19486 # to return the correct answers.
19487 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
19488 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
19490 # Include the desktop and laptop task
19491 for test in desktop laptop ; do
19492 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
19496 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
19499 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
19500 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
19501 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
19502 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
19504 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
19505 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
19506 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
19507 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
19509 </pre></blockquote>
19511 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
19512 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
19513 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
19514 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
19515 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
19516 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
19518 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
19519 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
19520 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
19521 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
19522 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
19523 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
19524 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
19526 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
19527 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
19528 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
19529 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
19530 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
19537 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>.
19542 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19544 <div class=
"entry">
19545 <div class=
"title">
19546 <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>
19552 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
19553 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
19554 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
19555 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
19556 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
19557 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
19558 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
19560 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
19561 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
19570 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
19572 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
19573 </pre></blockquote>
19575 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
19579 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
19584 </pre></blockquote>
19586 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
19587 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
19588 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
19590 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
19591 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
19598 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>.
19603 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19605 <div class=
"entry">
19606 <div class=
"title">
19607 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
19614 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
19615 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
19616 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
19617 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
19618 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
19624 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>.
19629 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19631 <div class=
"entry">
19632 <div class=
"title">
19633 <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>
19639 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
19640 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
19641 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
19642 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
19643 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
19646 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
19648 Dell Computer Corporation
1
19651 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
19655 </pre></blockquote>
19657 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
19658 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
19659 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
19660 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
19661 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
19663 <p>A larger list is
19664 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
19665 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
19666 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
19667 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
19668 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
19669 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
19676 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>.
19681 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19683 <div class=
"entry">
19684 <div class=
"title">
19685 <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>
19691 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
19692 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
19693 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
19694 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
19697 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
19698 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
19699 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
19700 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
19701 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
19702 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
19704 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
19705 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
19706 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
19707 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
19708 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
19709 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
19710 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
19711 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
19713 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
19719 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>.
19724 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19726 <div class=
"entry">
19727 <div class=
"title">
19728 <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>
19734 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
19735 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
19736 issues are known and should be solved:
19740 <li>The wicd package seen to
19741 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
19742 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
19743 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
19744 seem to be on the case.
</li>
19746 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
19747 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
19748 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
19749 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
19751 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
19752 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
19753 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
19754 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
19755 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
19756 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
19757 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
19758 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
19762 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
19763 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
19764 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
19765 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
19767 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
19768 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
19769 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
19770 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
19772 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
19778 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>.
19783 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19785 <div class=
"entry">
19786 <div class=
"title">
19787 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
19793 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
19794 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
19795 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
19796 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
19798 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
19799 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
19800 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
19801 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
19802 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
19803 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
19804 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
19805 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
19806 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
19807 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
19808 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
19809 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
19810 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
19813 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
19814 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
19815 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
19816 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
19817 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
19818 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
19819 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
19820 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
19821 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
19822 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
19825 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
19826 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
19827 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
19828 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
19829 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
19830 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
19832 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
19833 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
19839 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>.
19844 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19846 <div class=
"entry">
19847 <div class=
"title">
19848 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian
</a>
19854 <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
19855 Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
19856 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser
</a>
19857 package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
19859 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python
</a>
19860 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
19861 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd
</a> package
19862 passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
19863 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
19864 package we need is in experimental (version
10-
4) since Saturday, and
19865 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.
</p>
19867 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
19868 roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
19869 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
19870 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
19871 for nscd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
19872 #
485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
19873 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
19874 care of the caching of passwords and group information.
</p>
19876 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
19877 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
19878 problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
19879 package to version
1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
19880 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
19881 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
19882 and I am sure we will find a good solution.
</p>
19884 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
19885 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
19886 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
19887 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
19888 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
19889 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
19890 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
19891 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
19892 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
19893 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
19894 on the home directory servers.
</p>
19896 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
19897 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
19898 is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
19899 message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
19900 a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
19901 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.
</p>
19903 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
19904 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
19910 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
19915 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19917 <div class=
"entry">
19918 <div class=
"title">
19919 <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>
19925 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
19926 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
19927 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
19928 expected, if I am to believe the
19929 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
19930 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
19931 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
19932 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
19933 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
19934 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
19937 More information about
19938 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
19939 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
19940 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
19941 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
19945 </pre></blockquote>
19947 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
19948 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
19949 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
19950 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
19956 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>.
19961 <div class=
"padding"></div>
19963 <div class=
"entry">
19964 <div class=
"title">
19965 <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>
19971 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
19972 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
19973 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
19974 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
19975 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
19976 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
19977 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
19978 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
19980 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
19981 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
19982 this on the collector host:
</p>
19985 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
19986 </pre></blockquote>
19988 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
19989 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
19991 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
19992 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
19993 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
19994 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
20001 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>.
20006 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20008 <div class=
"entry">
20009 <div class=
"title">
20010 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
20016 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
20017 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
20019 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
20021 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
20022 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
20023 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
20024 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
20025 based boot system. Tollef is
20026 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
20027 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
20028 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
20029 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
20030 at the moment do not.
</p>
20032 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
20033 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
20034 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
20035 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
20036 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
20039 <p>In the mean time, based on the
20040 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
20041 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
20042 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
20043 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
20044 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
20045 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
20046 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
20047 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
20053 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>.
20058 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20060 <div class=
"entry">
20061 <div class=
"title">
20062 <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>
20068 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
20069 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
20070 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
20071 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
20072 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
20073 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
20074 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
20077 CONCURRENCY=makefile
20078 </pre></blockquote>
20080 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
20081 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
20082 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
20083 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
20084 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
20085 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
20086 make this happen.
</p>
20088 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
20089 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
20090 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
20091 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
20092 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
20094 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
20095 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
20096 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
20097 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
20099 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
20100 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
20101 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
20102 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
20108 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>.
20113 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20115 <div class=
"entry">
20116 <div class=
"title">
20117 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login
</a>
20123 <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
20124 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
20125 change the password on the first login attempt.
</p>
20127 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
20128 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
20129 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
20130 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
20131 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.
</p>
20133 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
20134 settings in /etc/shadow:
</p>
20137 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
20138 Last password change : May
02,
2010
20139 Password expires : never
20140 Password inactive : never
20141 Account expires : never
20142 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
20143 Maximum number of days between password change :
99999
20144 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
20146 </pre></blockquote>
20148 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
20149 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
20150 lowest value possible (January
1th
1970), and the maximum password age
20151 to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
20152 simple, I went for
30 years (
30 *
365 =
10950) and January
2th (to
20153 avoid testing if
0 is a valid value).
</p>
20155 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
20159 root@tjener:~# chage -d
1 test; chage -M
10950 test
20160 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
20161 Last password change : Jan
02,
1970
20162 Password expires : never
20163 Password inactive : never
20164 Account expires : never
20165 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
20166 Maximum number of days between password change :
10950
20167 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
20169 </pre></blockquote>
20171 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
20172 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
20173 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).
</p>
20175 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
20176 sure only the user itself have the account password?
</p>
20178 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
20179 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
20181 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02 17:
20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
20182 shadow(
8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
20183 last password change to zero (
0) will force the password to be changed
20184 on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
20185 I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
20186 Squeeze, and '
<tt>chage -d
0 username
</tt>' do work there. I have not
20187 tested it on Lenny yet.
</p>
20189 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02-
19:
05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
20190 equivalent command to expire a password is '
<tt>passwd -e
20191 username
</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
20198 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>.
20203 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20205 <div class=
"entry">
20206 <div class=
"title">
20207 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu
</a>
20213 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
20214 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
20215 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
20218 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
20219 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
20220 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
20221 The setup would consist of the following:
</p>
20225 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
20226 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
20227 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
20228 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
20229 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
20230 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
20231 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
20232 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
20233 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
20234 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
20235 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
20236 the fish protocol in KDE?
</li>
20238 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
20239 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
20240 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
20241 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
20242 <a href=
"http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
20243 or the Fedora developed
20244 <a href=
"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
20245 Security Services Daemon
</a> packages.
</li>
20247 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
20248 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
20249 directory, using unison.
</li>
20251 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
20252 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
20253 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
20254 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
20257 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
20258 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.
</li>
20260 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
20261 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
20262 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.
</li>
20266 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
20267 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
20268 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
20269 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
20270 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#
566718</a>) and nslcd (or
20271 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
20272 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
20273 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
20274 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.
</p>
20276 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20277 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
20283 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
20288 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20290 <div class=
"entry">
20291 <div class=
"title">
20292 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"
</a>
20298 <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
20299 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
20300 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
20301 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
20302 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
20303 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
20304 restrictions on the web, for example from
20305 <a href=
"http://craphound.com/content/">his own site
</a>. I read the
20307 <a href=
"http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks
</a> using
20308 <a href=
"http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader
</a> and my N810. I
20309 strongly recommend this book.
</p>
20315 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
20320 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20322 <div class=
"entry">
20323 <div class=
"title">
20324 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?
</a>
20330 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
20331 NUUG presentation
</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
20332 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
20333 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
20334 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
20335 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
20336 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
20337 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
20338 users and cryptographic keys instead.
</p>
20340 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
20341 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
20342 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
20343 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
20344 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.
</p>
20346 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
20347 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?
</p>
20349 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
20350 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
20351 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
20352 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
20353 to work properly.
</p>
20355 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
20356 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
20357 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
20358 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
20359 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
20362 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
20363 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
20364 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
20365 up in a few days.
</p>
20371 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
20376 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20378 <div class=
"entry">
20379 <div class=
"title">
20380 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After
6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented
</a>
20386 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
20387 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
20388 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
20389 package in
2004 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#
230422</a>),
20390 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
20391 Today, this finally paid off.
</p>
20393 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
20394 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
20395 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
20396 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.
</p>
20398 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
20399 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
20400 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
20401 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
20402 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
20403 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.
<p>
20409 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
20414 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20416 <div class=
"entry">
20417 <div class=
"title">
20418 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues
</a>
20424 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
20425 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> was finally
20426 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
20427 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
20428 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
20429 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
20430 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.
</p>
20432 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?
</p>
20434 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
20435 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
20436 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
20437 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.
</p>
20443 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
20448 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20450 <div class=
"entry">
20451 <div class=
"title">
20452 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration
</a>
20458 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
20459 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
20460 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
20461 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
20462 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
20465 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
20466 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
20467 configured to be a server for the
20468 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
20469 system
</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
20470 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
20471 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
20472 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
20473 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
20474 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
20475 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
20476 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
20477 and Nagios configuration.
</p>
20479 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
20480 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
20481 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
20482 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
</p>
20484 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
20485 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
20486 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
20487 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
20488 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
20489 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
20492 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
20493 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
20494 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
20495 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
</p>
20497 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
20498 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
20499 administrator need to run "
<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
20500 nagiosadmin
</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
20501 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
20502 everything is taken care of.</p>
20508 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary
">sitesummary</a>.
20513 <div class="padding
"></div>
20515 <div class="entry
">
20516 <div class="title
">
20517 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html
">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
20523 <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
20524 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
20525 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage. I searched using
20526 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
20529 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20530 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
20531 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
20532 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
20535 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
20536 got these numbers:</p>
20539 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20540 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
20541 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299 </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
20542 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187 </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
20545 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
20547 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
20548 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
20549 they are conduced in another country. Because of this, I did the same
20550 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
20551 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
20555 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20556 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
20557 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
20558 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
20561 <p>And with 'site:no':
20564 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
20565 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
20566 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
20567 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186 </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
20570 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
20577 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web
">web</a>.
20582 <div class="padding
"></div>
20584 <div class="entry
">
20585 <div class="title
">
20586 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html
">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
20593 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/
2009/
08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html
">a
20594 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
20595 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages. His interesting point is that the
20596 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
20597 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
20598 can be fixed in ISO. Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
20599 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
20600 close to solving the problems. I was part of the Norwegian committee
20601 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
20602 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
20604 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
20605 with the future ahead of it. We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
20606 seminar this autumn.</p>
20612 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug
">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard
">standard</a>.
20617 <div class="padding
"></div>
20619 <div class="entry
">
20620 <div class="title
">
20621 <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>
20627 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
20628 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
20629 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
20630 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
20631 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
20632 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
20633 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
20635 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
20636 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
20637 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
20643 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>.
20648 <div class="padding
"></div>
20650 <div class="entry
">
20651 <div class="title
">
20652 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html
">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
20658 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
20659 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
20660 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
20661 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
20662 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
20663 the package up to date.</p>
20665 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
20666 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
20667 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
20668 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
20669 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
20670 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
20671 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
20672 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/
">Savannah</a>, and continue
20673 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
20674 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
20675 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
20676 working on the future release.</p>
20678 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
20679 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
20685 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>.
20690 <div class="padding
"></div>
20692 <div class="entry
">
20693 <div class="title
">
20694 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html
">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
20700 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
20701 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
20702 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
20704 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint
">developer
20705 gathering</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
20706 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
20707 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
20708 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
20709 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.</p>
20711 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
20712 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
20717 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
20719 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
20720 clock is in UTC.</li>
20722 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
20723 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot
">dependency
20724 based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
20728 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
20729 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/
">Carlos
20732 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
20733 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
20734 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
20735 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
20736 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
20739 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
20740 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
20741 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
20742 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
20743 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
20744 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
20745 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
20751 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>.
20756 <div class="padding
"></div>
20758 <div class="entry
">
20759 <div class="title
">
20760 <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>
20766 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
20767 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
20768 do not yet know them.</p>
20770 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/
">valgrind</a>, a
20771 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
20772 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
20773 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
20774 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
20775 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
20776 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
20777 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
20778 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
20779 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
20780 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
20782 <p>The second one is
20783 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity
">Coverity</a> which is
20784 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
20785 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
20786 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
20787 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
20788 and the company behind it is running
20789 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/
">a community service</a> for the
20790 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
20791 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
20792 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
20793 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
20794 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
20795 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
20796 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
20798 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
20799 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
20800 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
20801 surrounded by today.</p>
20807 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
20812 <div class="padding
"></div>
20814 <div class="entry
">
20815 <div class="title
">
20816 <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>
20823 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/
2009/
04/
12/
214">claim that no
20824 patch is better than a useless patch</a>. I completely disagree, as a
20825 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
20826 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
20827 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
20834 Tags: <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>.
20839 <div class="padding
"></div>
20841 <div class="entry
">
20842 <div class="title
">
20843 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html
">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
20849 <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
20850 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net. The
20851 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
20852 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
20853 vlc. I finally found a way to do it today. I spent an hour or so
20854 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation. The
20855 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
20856 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
20858 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
20860 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
20861 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
20862 --intf=dummy
</pre></blockquote>
20864 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
20865 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
20866 dummy interface. The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
20867 sure no X interface is needed.
</p>
20869 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
20870 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
20871 the vlc process with SIGTERM. Here is a complete script
20872 <tt>vlc-record
</tt> to use from
<tt>at
</tt> or
<tt>cron
</tt>:
</p>
20874 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
20879 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
20880 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
20881 --intf=dummy < /dev/null
> /dev/null
2>&
1 &
20885 wait $pid
</pre></blockquote>
20891 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
20896 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20898 <div class=
"entry">
20899 <div class=
"title">
20900 <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>
20906 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
20907 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
20908 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
20909 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
20910 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
20911 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
20912 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
20915 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
20916 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
20917 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
20918 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
20919 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
20920 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
20921 blocked from doing so.
</p>
20923 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
20924 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
20925 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
20926 requirements change.
</p>
20928 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
20929 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
20930 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
20936 Tags:
<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>.
20941 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20943 <div class=
"entry">
20944 <div class=
"title">
20945 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
20951 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
20952 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
20953 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
20954 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
20955 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
20956 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
20957 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
20958 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
20959 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
20960 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
20961 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
20962 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
20963 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
20964 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
20971 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>.
20976 <div class=
"padding"></div>
20978 <div class=
"entry">
20979 <div class=
"title">
20980 <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>
20986 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
20987 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
20988 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
20989 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
20990 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
20991 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
20993 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
20994 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
20995 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
20996 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
20997 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
20998 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
20999 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
21000 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
21001 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
21002 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
21003 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
21004 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
21005 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
21007 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
21008 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
21009 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
21010 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
21012 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
21013 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
21015 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
21016 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
21017 new IETF work group?
</p>
21023 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>.
21028 <div class=
"padding"></div>
21030 <div class=
"entry">
21031 <div class=
"title">
21032 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers
</a>
21038 <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
21039 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
21040 contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service)
21041 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
21042 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
21043 each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract
21044 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
21045 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
21046 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
21047 machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import
21048 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
21049 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
21050 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
21051 for the relevant machines. This make the support status information
21052 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
21053 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
21054 The result of this work documented that
27% of the machines in the
21055 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
21056 them.
27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
21057 using machines a bit longer than the
3 years a normal support contract
21058 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
21059 services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
21060 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
21061 them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
21062 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
21065 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
21066 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
21067 Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
21068 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
21069 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML
21070 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
21071 introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:
</p>
21076 use WWW::Mechanize;
21079 sub get_support_info {
21080 my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
21083 if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
21084 # fetch website from Dell support
21085 my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no
&cs=nodhs1
&l=no
&s=dhs
&ServiceTag=$serial";
21086 my $webpage = get($url);
21087 return undef unless ($webpage);
21090 my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
21091 foreach my $line (@lines) {
21092 next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
21093 $line =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
21094 $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$
1/;
21096 my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
21097 @f = @f[
13 .. $#f];
21099 while ($f[
3] eq "DELL") {
21100 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[
0,
5,
7,
10];
21102 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21103 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
21104 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21105 localtime(str2time($endstr)));
21106 $str .= "$type $start -
> $end ";
21107 @f = @f[
14 .. $#f];
21108 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
21110 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21111 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21112 if ($lastend lt $today);
21114 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
21115 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-
>new();
21117 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
21120 'BODServiceID' =
> 'NA',
21121 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' =
> '',
21123 'productNumber' =
> $productnumber,
21124 'serialNumber1' =
> $serial,
21126 $mech-
>submit_form( form_number =
> 2,
21127 fields =
> $fields );
21128 # Next step is screen scraping
21129 my $content = $mech-
>content();
21131 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
21132 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
21133 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
21134 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
21136 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21138 while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
21139 my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
21140 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
21141 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
21142 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21143 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
21144 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
21145 localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
21147 $str .= "$type ($status) $start -
> $end ";
21149 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21150 if ($end lt $today);
21152 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
21153 # This code ignore extended support contracts.
21154 my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{
4}).+\]-/;
21155 if ($producttype
&& $serial) {
21157 get("http://www-
947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty
&brandind=
5000008&Submit=Submit
&type=$producttype
&serial=$serial");
21159 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
21160 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
21161 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
21162 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
21164 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
21165 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
21167 $str .= "($status) -
> $end ";
21169 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
21170 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
21171 if ($end lt $today);
21179 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
21180 serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched
21181 from dmidecode.
</p>
21184 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "
1234567890"
21186 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge
2950", "
1234567");
21187 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries
345 -[
867061X]-",
21191 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
21192 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)
</p>
21194 <p>Update
2009-
03-
06: The IBM page do not include extended support
21195 contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do
21196 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
21203 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
21208 <div class=
"padding"></div>
21210 <div class=
"entry">
21211 <div class=
"title">
21212 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center
</a>
21218 <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
21219 in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the
21220 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
21221 removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a
21222 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
21223 the "missing" computer.
</p>
21225 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
21226 <a href=
"http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx
</a> to write and read bar
21227 code blocks as defined in the
21228 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
21229 Standard
</a>. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
21230 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
21231 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard
21232 allow up to
2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project
21233 with
<a href=
"http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
21234 writer written in postscript
</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
21235 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
21238 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
21239 machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are
21240 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
21241 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
21242 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
21243 locations, and can detect movements and removals.
</p>
21245 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
21246 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I
21247 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
21248 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked
21249 fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
21250 side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space
21251 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
21252 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
21253 about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
21254 to
60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.
</p>
21256 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
21257 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
21258 easier automatic tracking of computers.
</p>
21264 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>.
21269 <div class=
"padding"></div>
21271 <div class=
"entry">
21272 <div class=
"title">
21273 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...
</a>
21279 <p>As part of the work we do in
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no">NUUG
</a>
21280 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
21281 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a
21282 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
21283 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this
21284 will become easier when the
<video
> tag is implemented in all
21285 browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several
21286 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H
.264 and Quicktime, and want the
21287 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
21288 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
21289 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
21290 <video
> tag, the
<object
> tag, the
<embed
> tag and
21291 the
<applet
> tag. All of these take a lot of options, and
21292 finding the best options is a major challenge.
</p>
21294 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from
<a
21295 href=
"http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com
</a>, to see how it handled
21296 a
<video
> tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
21297 I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture
21298 from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
21299 definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next,
21300 instead of streaming the
76 MiB video file, it start to download all
21301 of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait
21302 for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download
21303 is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the
21304 download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I
21305 discover that I have to add the
controls="true" attribute to be able
21306 to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding
21307 autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
21308 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
21309 <video
> tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
21310 playing when the download is done.
</p>
21312 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
21313 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
21314 from the nuug site
</a>. Will have to test it with the new Firefox
21317 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable
21318 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
21319 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I
21320 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)
</p>
21326 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web
</a>.
21331 <div class=
"padding"></div>
21333 <div class=
"entry">
21334 <div class=
"title">
21335 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick
</a>
21341 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> is
21342 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
21343 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
21344 directly with the video stream. For this, we use the
21345 <a href=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch
</a> package from
21346 the Debian video team. As this require quite one computer per video
21347 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
21348 borrow laptops. And to avoid having to install extra software on
21349 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
21350 bootable USB stick. The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
21351 source, sink and mixer applications and
21352 <a href=
"http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab
</a>. To allow this setup to
21353 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
21354 <a href=
"http://www.avahi.org/">avahi
</a> to connect the various parts
21355 together. And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
21356 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
21357 with USB sources. We have not yet tested this setup in a production
21358 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
21359 video mixer in a very short time frame. We will need it for
21360 <a href=
"http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open
2009</a>.
</p>
21362 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
21363 USB image
</a> is for a
1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
21364 larger stick as well.
</p>
21370 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video
</a>.
21375 <div class=
"padding"></div>
21377 <div class=
"entry">
21378 <div class=
"title">
21379 <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>
21385 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
21386 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
21387 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
21388 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
21389 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
21390 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
21391 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
21392 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
21394 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
21395 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
21396 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
21397 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
21398 of these cards.
</p>
21404 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>.
21409 <div class=
"padding"></div>
21411 <div class=
"entry">
21412 <div class=
"title">
21413 <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>
21419 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
21420 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
21421 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
21422 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
21423 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
21424 notes are available on
21425 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
21426 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
21427 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
21428 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
21429 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
21430 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
21431 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
21432 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
21433 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
21435 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
21436 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
21442 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>.
21447 <div class=
"padding"></div>
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"text-align: right;"><a href=
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
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8)
</a></li>
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8)
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</a></li>
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7)
</a></li>
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48)
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76)
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1)
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3)
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9)
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4)
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45)
</a></li>
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3)
</a></li>
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9)
</a></li>
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27)
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2)
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8)
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44)
</a></li>
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4)
</a></li>
21753 <li><a href=
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33)
</a></li>
21759 <p style=
"text-align: right">
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<a href=
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