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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Introducing_ical_archiver_to_split_out_old_iCalendar_entries.html">Introducing ical-archiver to split out old iCalendar entries</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          4th January 2017
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Do you have a large <a href="https://icalendar.org/">iCalendar</a>
  32 file with lots of old entries, and would like to archive them to save
  33 space and resources?  At least those of us using KOrganizer know that
  34 turning on and off an event set become slower and slower the more
  35 entries are in the set.  While working on migrating our calendars to a
  36 <a href="http://radicale.org/">Radicale CalDAV server</a> on our
  37 <a href="https://freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox server</a/>, my
  38 loved one wondered if I could find a way to split up the calendar file
  39 she had in KOrganizer, and I set out to write a tool.  I spent a few
  40 days writing and polishing the system, and it is now ready for general
  41 consumption.  The
  42 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/ical-archiver">code for
  43 ical-archiver</a> is publicly available from a git repository on
  44 github.  The system is written in Python and depend on
  45 <a href="http://eventable.github.io/vobject/">the vobject Python
  46 module</a>.</p>
  47
  48 <p>To use it, locate the iCalendar file you want to operate on and
  49 give it as an argument to the ical-archiver script.  This will
  50 generate a set of new files, one file per component type per year for
  51 all components expiring more than two years in the past.  The vevent,
  52 vtodo and vjournal entries are handled by the script.  The remaining
  53 entries are stored in a 'remaining' file.</p>
  54
  55 <p>This is what a test run can look like:
  56
  57 <p><pre>
  58 % ical-archiver t/2004-2016.ics
  59 Found 3612 vevents
  60 Found 6 vtodos
  61 Found 2 vjournals
  62 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2004.ics
  63 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2005.ics
  64 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2006.ics
  65 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2007.ics
  66 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2008.ics
  67 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2009.ics
  68 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2010.ics
  69 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2011.ics
  70 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2012.ics
  71 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2013.ics
  72 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vevent-2014.ics
  73 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vjournal-2007.ics
  74 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vjournal-2011.ics
  75 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-subset-vtodo-2012.ics
  76 Writing t/2004-2016.ics-remaining.ics
  77 %
  78 </pre></p>
  79
  80 <p>As you can see, the original file is untouched and new files are
  81 written with names derived from the original file.  If you are happy
  82 with their content, the *-remaining.ics file can replace the original
  83 the the others can be archived or imported as historical calendar
  84 collections.</p>
  85
  86 <p>The script should probably be improved a bit.  The error handling
  87 when discovering broken entries is not good, and I am not sure yet if
  88 it make sense to split different entry types into separate files or
  89 not.  The program is thus likely to change.  If you find it
  90 interesting, please get in touch. :)</p>
  91
  92 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  93 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  94 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
  95
  96       </div>
  97       <div class="tags">
  98
  99
 100         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>.
 101
 102
 103       </div>
 104     </div>
 105     <div class="padding"></div>
 106
 107     <div class="entry">
 108       <div class="title">
 109         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
 110       </div>
 111       <div class="date">
 112         23rd December 2016
 113       </div>
 114       <div class="body">
 115         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
 116 readers probably know, I have been working on the
 117 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
 118 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
 119 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
 120 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
 121 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
 122 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
 123 metadata format.  And today,
 124 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
 125 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
 126 ie using fnmatch():</p>
 127
 128 <p><pre>
 129 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
 130   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
 131 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
 132 Name: pymissile
 133 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
 134 Package: pymissile
 135 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
 136 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
 137 Name: libnxt
 138 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
 139 Package: libnxt
 140 ---
 141 Identifier: t2n [generic]
 142 Name: t2n
 143 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
 144 Package: t2n
 145 ---
 146 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
 147 Name: python-nxt
 148 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
 149 Package: python-nxt
 150 ---
 151 Identifier: nbc [generic]
 152 Name: nbc
 153 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
 154 Package: nbc
 155 %
 156 </pre></p>
 157
 158 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
 159 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
 160
 161 <p><pre>
 162 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
 163 pymissile
 164 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
 165 libnxt
 166 nbc
 167 python-nxt
 168 t2n
 169 %
 170 </pre></p>
 171
 172 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
 173 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
 174
 175 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
 176 make the most of the hardware they have, please
 177 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
 178 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
 179 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
 180 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
 181 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
 182 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
 183 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
 184 part of my involvement in
 185 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
 186 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
 187 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
 188 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
 189 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
 190 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
 191 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
 192 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
 193 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
 194
 195 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 196 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 197 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 198
 199       </div>
 200       <div class="tags">
 201
 202
 203         Tags: <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>.
 204
 205
 206       </div>
 207     </div>
 208     <div class="padding"></div>
 209
 210     <div class="entry">
 211       <div class="title">
 212         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
 213       </div>
 214       <div class="date">
 215         20th December 2016
 216       </div>
 217       <div class="body">
 218         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
 219 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
 220 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
 221 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
 222 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
 223 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
 224 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
 225 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
 226 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
 227 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
 228
 229 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
 230
 231 <p><pre>
 232 % isenkram-lookup
 233 bluez
 234 cheese
 235 ethtool
 236 fprintd
 237 fprintd-demo
 238 gkrellm-thinkbat
 239 hdapsd
 240 libpam-fprintd
 241 pidgin-blinklight
 242 thinkfan
 243 tlp
 244 tp-smapi-dkms
 245 tp-smapi-source
 246 tpb
 247 %
 248 </pre></p>
 249
 250 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
 251 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
 252 I have all the firmware my machine need:
 253
 254 <p><pre>
 255 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
 256 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
 257 %
 258 </pre></p>
 259
 260 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
 261 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
 262 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
 263 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
 264 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
 265 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
 266 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
 267 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
 268
 269 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
 270 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
 271 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
 272
 273 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
 274 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
 275 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
 276 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
 277 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
 278 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
 279 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
 280 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
 281 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
 282 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
 283 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
 284 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
 285 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
 286 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
 287 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
 288 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
 289 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
 290 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
 291 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
 292 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
 293 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
 294 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
 295 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
 296 zd1211-firmware</p>
 297
 298 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
 299 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
 300 maintainer to
 301 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
 302 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
 303 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
 304 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
 305
 306 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
 307 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
 308 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
 309 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
 310 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
 311
 312       </div>
 313       <div class="tags">
 314
 315
 316         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
 317
 318
 319       </div>
 320     </div>
 321     <div class="padding"></div>
 322
 323     <div class="entry">
 324       <div class="title">
 325         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
 326       </div>
 327       <div class="date">
 328         11th December 2016
 329       </div>
 330       <div class="body">
 331         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
 332
 333 <p>In my early years, I played
 334 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
 335 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
 336 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
 337 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
 338 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
 339 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
 340 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
 341 small.</p>
 342
 343 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
 344 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
 345 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
 346 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
 347 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
 348 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
 349 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
 350 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
 351 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
 352
 353 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
 354 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
 355 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
 356 advantages of the
 357 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
 358 where information about each planet is easily available with common
 359 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
 360 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
 361 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
 362 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
 363 after less then a week.</p>
 364
 365 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
 366 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
 367 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
 368
 369 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 370 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 371 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 372
 373       </div>
 374       <div class="tags">
 375
 376
 377         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
 378
 379
 380       </div>
 381     </div>
 382     <div class="padding"></div>
 383
 384     <div class="entry">
 385       <div class="title">
 386         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
 387       </div>
 388       <div class="date">
 389         25th November 2016
 390       </div>
 391       <div class="body">
 392         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
 393 installation system, observing how using
 394 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
 395 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
 396 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
 397 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
 398 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
 399 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
 400 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
 401 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
 402 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
 403 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
 404 up the process make perfect sense.
 405
 406 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
 407 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
 408 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
 409 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
 410 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
 411 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
 412 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
 413 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
 414 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
 415 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
 416
 417 <blockquote><pre>
 418 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
 419 </pre></blockquote>
 420
 421 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
 422 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
 423 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
 424 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
 425 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
 426 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
 427 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
 428 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
 429 tested its impact.</p>
 430
 431
 432       </div>
 433       <div class="tags">
 434
 435
 436         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>.
 437
 438
 439       </div>
 440     </div>
 441     <div class="padding"></div>
 442
 443     <div class="entry">
 444       <div class="title">
 445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
 446       </div>
 447       <div class="date">
 448         13th November 2016
 449       </div>
 450       <div class="body">
 451         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
 452 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
 453 multi-threaded program, finally
 454 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
 455 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
 456 months since
 457 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
 458 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
 459 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
 460 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
 461 JavaScript libraries.</p>
 462
 463 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
 464
 465 <p><blockquote>
 466 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
 467 </blockquote></p>
 468
 469 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
 470 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
 471 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
 472 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
 473 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
 474
 475 <p><blockquote>
 476 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
 477 </blockquote></p>
 478
 479 <p>See the project home page and the
 480 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
 481 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
 482 working.</p>
 483
 484       </div>
 485       <div class="tags">
 486
 487
 488         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 489
 490
 491       </div>
 492     </div>
 493     <div class="padding"></div>
 494
 495     <div class="entry">
 496       <div class="title">
 497         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_talk_with_your_loved_ones_in_private.html">How to talk with your loved ones in private</a>
 498       </div>
 499       <div class="date">
 500          7th November 2016
 501       </div>
 502       <div class="body">
 503         <p>A few days ago I ran a very biased and informal survey to get an
 504 idea about what options are being used to communicate with end to end
 505 encryption with friends and family.  I explicitly asked people not to
 506 list options only used in a work setting.  The background is the
 507 uneasy feeling I get when using Signal, a feeling shared by others as
 508 a blog post from Sander Venima about
 509 <a href="https://sandervenema.ch/2016/11/why-i-wont-recommend-signal-anymore/">why
 510 he do not recommend Signal anymore</a> (with
 511 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12883410">feedback from
 512 the Signal author available from ycombinator</a>).  I wanted an
 513 overview of the options being used, and hope to include those options
 514 in a less biased survey later on.  So far I have not taken the time to
 515 look into the individual proposed systems.  They range from text
 516 sharing web pages, via file sharing and email to instant messaging,
 517 VOIP and video conferencing.  For those considering which system to
 518 use, it is also useful to have a look at
 519 <a href="https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard">the EFF Secure
 520 messaging scorecard</a> which is slightly out of date but still
 521 provide valuable information.</p>
 522
 523 <p>So, on to the list.  There were some used by many, some used by a
 524 few, some rarely used ones and a few mentioned but without anyone
 525 claiming to use them.  Notice the grouping is in reality quite random
 526 given the biased self selected set of participants.  First the ones
 527 used by many:</p>
 528
 529 <ul>
 530
 531 <li><a href="https://whispersystems.org/">Signal</a></li>
 532 <li>Email w/<a href="http://openpgp.org/">OpenPGP</a> (Enigmail, GPGSuite,etc)</li>
 533 <li><a href="https://www.whatsapp.com/">Whatsapp</a></li>
 534 <li>IRC w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
 535 <li>XMPP w/<a href="https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/">OTR</a></li>
 536
 537 </ul>
 538
 539 <p>Then the ones used by a few.</p>
 540
 541 <ul>
 542
 543 <li><a href="https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Main_Page">Mumble</a></li>
 544 <li>iMessage (included in iOS from Apple)</li>
 545 <li><a href="https://telegram.org/">Telegram</a></li>
 546 <li><a href="https://jitsi.org/">Jitsi</a></li>
 547 <li><a href="https://keybase.io/download">Keybase file</a></li>
 548
 549 </ul>
 550
 551 <p>Then the ones used by even fewer people</p>
 552
 553 <ul>
 554
 555 <li><a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a></li>
 556 <li><a href="https://bitmessage.org/">Bitmessage</a></li>
 557 <li><a href="https://wire.com/">Wire</a></li>
 558 <li>VoIP w/<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP">ZRTP</a> or controlled <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Real-time_Transport_Protocol">SRTP</a> (e.g using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSipSimple">CSipSimple</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linphone">Linphone</a>)</li>
 559 <li><a href="https://matrix.org/">Matrix</a></li>
 560 <li><a href="https://kontalk.org/">Kontalk</a></li>
 561 <li><a href="https://0bin.net/">0bin</a> (encrypted pastebin)</li>
 562 <li><a href="https://appear.in">Appear.in</a></li>
 563 <li><a href="https://riot.im/">riot</a></li>
 564 <li><a href="https://www.wickr.com/">Wickr Me</a></li>
 565
 566 </ul>
 567
 568 <p>And finally the ones mentioned by not marked as used by
 569 anyone. This might be a mistake, perhaps the person adding the entry
 570 forgot to flag it as used?</p>
 571
 572 <ul>
 573
 574 <li>Email w/Certificates <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME">S/MIME</a></li>
 575 <li><a href="https://www.crypho.com/">Crypho</a></li>
 576 <li><a href="https://cryptpad.fr/">CryptPad</a></li>
 577 <li><a href="https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet">ricochet</a></li>
 578
 579 </ul>
 580
 581 <p>Given the network effect it seem obvious to me that we as a society
 582 have been divided and conquered by those interested in keeping
 583 encrypted and secure communication away from the masses.  The
 584 finishing remarks <a href="https://vimeo.com/97505679">from Aral Balkan
 585 in his talk "Free is a lie"</a> about the usability of free software
 586 really come into effect when you want to communicate in private with
 587 your friends and family.  We can not expect them to allow the
 588 usability of communication tool to block their ability to talk to
 589 their loved ones.</p>
 590
 591 <p>Note for example the option IRC w/OTR.  Most IRC clients do not
 592 have OTR support, so in most cases OTR would not be an option, even if
 593 you wanted to.  In my personal experience, about 1 in 20 I talk to
 594 have a IRC client with OTR.  For private communication to really be
 595 available, most people to talk to must have the option in their
 596 currently used client.  I can not simply ask my family to install an
 597 IRC client.  I need to guide them through a technical multi-step
 598 process of adding extensions to the client to get them going.  This is
 599 a non-starter for most.</p>
 600
 601 <p>I would like to be able to do video phone calls, audio phone calls,
 602 exchange instant messages and share files with my loved ones, without
 603 being forced to share with people I do not know.  I do not want to
 604 share the content of the conversations, and I do not want to share who
 605 I communicate with or the fact that I communicate with someone.
 606 Without all these factors in place, my private life is being more or
 607 less invaded.</p>
 608
 609       </div>
 610       <div class="tags">
 611
 612
 613         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>.
 614
 615
 616       </div>
 617     </div>
 618     <div class="padding"></div>
 619
 620     <div class="entry">
 621       <div class="title">
 622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
 623       </div>
 624       <div class="date">
 625          4th November 2016
 626       </div>
 627       <div class="body">
 628         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
 629 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
 630 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
 631 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
 632 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
 633 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
 634 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
 635 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
 636 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
 637 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
 638 and had
 639 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
 640 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
 641 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
 642 loved ones. :)</p>
 643
 644 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
 645 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
 646 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
 647 building
 648 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
 649 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
 650 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
 651 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
 652 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
 653 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
 654 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
 655 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
 656
 657 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
 658
 659 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
 660 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
 661 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
 662 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
 663 the battery status run low:</p>
 664
 665 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
 666    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
 667 </video></p>
 668
 669 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
 670 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
 671
 672 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
 673 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
 674 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
 675 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
 676 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
 677 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
 678 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
 679 should.</p>
 680
 681       </div>
 682       <div class="tags">
 683
 684
 685         Tags: <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>.
 686
 687
 688       </div>
 689     </div>
 690     <div class="padding"></div>
 691
 692     <div class="entry">
 693       <div class="title">
 694         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
 695       </div>
 696       <div class="date">
 697         10th October 2016
 698       </div>
 699       <div class="body">
 700         <p>In July
 701 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
 702 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
 703 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
 704 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
 705
 706 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
 707 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
 708 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
 709 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
 710 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
 711 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
 712 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
 713 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
 714 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
 715 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
 716 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
 717 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
 718 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
 719 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
 720 time.</p>
 721
 722 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
 723 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
 724 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
 725 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
 726 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
 727 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
 728 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
 729
 730 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
 731 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
 732 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
 733 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
 734 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
 735 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
 736 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
 737 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
 738 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
 739 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
 740
 741 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
 742
 743 <ol>
 744
 745 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
 746 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
 747 know, so you need to install it.
 748
 749 <pre>
 750 apt install git tor chromium
 751 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
 752 </pre></li>
 753
 754 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
 755 block below.</li>
 756
 757 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
 758 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
 759
 760 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
 761 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
 762 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
 763 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
 764 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
 765
 766 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
 767 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
 768 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
 769 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
 770 a associated contact database.</li>
 771
 772 </ol>
 773
 774 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
 775 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
 776 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
 777 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
 778 example
 779 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
 780 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
 781 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
 782 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
 783 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
 784 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
 785 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
 786 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
 787 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
 788 working on Debian Stable.</p>
 789
 790 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
 791 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
 792 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
 793
 794 <pre>
 795 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
 796 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
 797 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
 798 --- a/js/background.js
 799 +++ b/js/background.js
 800 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
 801          });
 802      });
 803
 804 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
 805 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
 806      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
 807 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
 808 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
 809      var messageReceiver;
 810      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
 811          if (messageReceiver) {
 812 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
 813 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
 814 --- a/js/expire.js
 815 +++ b/js/expire.js
 816 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 817  ;(function() {
 818      'use strict';
 819 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
 820 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
 821
 822      window.extension = window.extension || {};
 823
 824 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
 825 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
 826 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
 827 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
 828 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
 829              return {
 830                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
 831                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
 832 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
 833 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
 834 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
 835              };
 836          },
 837          clearQR: function() {
 838 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
 839 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
 840 --- a/options.html
 841 +++ b/options.html
 842 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
 843          &lt;div class='nav'>
 844            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
 845            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
 846 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
 847 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
 848 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
 849 +
 850 +         &lt;/div>
 851            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
 852            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
 853            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
 854 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
 855 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
 856 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
 857 +#!/bin/sh
 858 +set -e
 859 +cd $(dirname $0)
 860 +mkdir -p userdata
 861 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
 862 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
 863 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
 864 +fi
 865 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
 866 +exec chromium \
 867 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
 868 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
 869 EOF
 870 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
 871 </pre>
 872
 873 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 874 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 875 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 876
 877       </div>
 878       <div class="tags">
 879
 880
 881         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 882
 883
 884       </div>
 885     </div>
 886     <div class="padding"></div>
 887
 888     <div class="entry">
 889       <div class="title">
 890         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
 891       </div>
 892       <div class="date">
 893          7th October 2016
 894       </div>
 895       <div class="body">
 896         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
 897 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
 898 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
 899 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
 900 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
 901 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
 902 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
 903 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
 904 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
 905 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
 906 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
 907 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
 908 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
 909
 910 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
 911 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
 912 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
 913 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
 914 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
 915 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
 916
 917 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
 918 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
 919 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
 920 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
 921 identifiers.</p>
 922
 923 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
 924 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
 925 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
 926 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
 927 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
 928 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
 929 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
 930 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
 931 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
 932 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
 933 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
 934 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
 935 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
 936 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
 937
 938 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
 939 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
 940 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
 941 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
 942 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
 943 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
 944 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
 945
 946 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
 947 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
 948 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
 949 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
 950 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
 951 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
 952 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
 953 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
 954 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
 955 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
 956 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
 957 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
 958 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
 959 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
 960 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
 961 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
 962 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
 963
 964 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
 965 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
 966 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
 967 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
 968 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
 969 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
 970 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
 971
 972 <p><pre>
 973 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
 974     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
 975 </pre></p>
 976
 977 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
 978 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
 979 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
 980 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
 981 to detect this?</p>
 982
 983 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
 984 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
 985 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
 986 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
 987 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
 988 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
 989 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
 990 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
 991 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
 992 directly if no such class exist.</p>
 993
 994 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
 995 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
 996 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
 997
 998 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
 999 please join us on our IRC channel
1000 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
1001 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
1002 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
1003 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
1004
1005 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1006 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1007 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1008
1009       </div>
1010       <div class="tags">
1011
1012
1013         Tags: <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>.
1014
1015
1016       </div>
1017     </div>
1018     <div class="padding"></div>
1019
1020     <div class="entry">
1021       <div class="title">
1022         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
1023       </div>
1024       <div class="date">
1025         30th August 2016
1026       </div>
1027       <div class="body">
1028         <p>In April we
1029 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
1030 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
1031 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
1032 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
1033 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
1034 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
1035 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
1036 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
1037 contributing using
1038 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
1039 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
1040 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
1041 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
1042 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
1043 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
1044 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
1045
1046 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
1047 electronic form.</p>
1048
1049       </div>
1050       <div class="tags">
1051
1052
1053         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1054
1055
1056       </div>
1057     </div>
1058     <div class="padding"></div>
1059
1060     <div class="entry">
1061       <div class="title">
1062         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
1063       </div>
1064       <div class="date">
1065         11th August 2016
1066       </div>
1067       <div class="body">
1068         <p>This summer, I read a great article
1069 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
1070 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
1071 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
1072 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
1073 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
1074 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
1075 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
1076 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
1077 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
1078 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
1079 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
1080 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
1081
1082 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
1083 get the system into Debian.  I
1084 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
1085 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
1086 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
1087 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
1088 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
1089 profiling information included in the source package.
1090 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
1091
1092 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
1093 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
1094
1095 <p><blockquote><pre>
1096 coz run --- program-to-run
1097 </pre></blockquote></p>
1098
1099 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
1100 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
1101 most, use a web browser and either point it to
1102 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
1103 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
1104 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
1105 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
1106 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
1107 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
1108 targeted experiments.</p>
1109
1110 <p>A video published by ACM
1111 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
1112 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
1113 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
1114 titled
1115 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
1116 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
1117
1118 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
1119 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
1120 because it uses a
1121 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
1122 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
1123 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
1124 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
1125
1126 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
1127 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
1128 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
1129 C++ libraries.</p>
1130
1131       </div>
1132       <div class="tags">
1133
1134
1135         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1136
1137
1138       </div>
1139     </div>
1140     <div class="padding"></div>
1141
1142     <div class="entry">
1143       <div class="title">
1144         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sales_number_for_the_Free_Culture_translation__first_half_of_2016.html">Sales number for the Free Culture translation, first half of 2016</a>
1145       </div>
1146       <div class="date">
1147          5th August 2016
1148       </div>
1149       <div class="body">
1150         <p>As my regular readers probably remember, the last year I published
1151 a French and Norwegian translation of the classic
1152 <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book</a> by the
1153 founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig.  A bit less
1154 known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations,
1155 using docbook and po4a, I also recreated the English original.  And
1156 because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it
1157 too.  The revenue from the books are sent to the Creative Commons
1158 Corporation.  In other words, I do not earn any money from this
1159 project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available
1160 for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative
1161 Commons is needed.</p>
1162
1163 <p>Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at
1164 Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping.  Much to
1165 my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the
1166 French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been
1167 available in English since it was first published.  In total, 24 paper
1168 books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:</p>
1169
1170 <table border="0">
1171 <tr><th>Title / language</th><th>Quantity</th></tr>
1172 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td><td align="right">3</td></tr>
1173 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td><td align="right">7</td></tr>
1174 <tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td><td align="right">14</td></tr>
1175 </table>
1176
1177 <p>The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book
1178 stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble.  Most revenue, around $10 per
1179 book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold
1180 directly by Lulu.com.  The other channels give less revenue.  The
1181 summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10
1182 via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu.  And Lulu.com tells
1183 me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42.  No idea
1184 what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a
1185 good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not.  But it make me
1186 happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it
1187 as much as I did.</p>
1188
1189 <p>The ebook edition is available for free from
1190 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
1191
1192 <p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
1193 language, I would be happy to help make it happen.  Please get in
1194 touch.</p>
1195
1196       </div>
1197       <div class="tags">
1198
1199
1200         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>.
1201
1202
1203       </div>
1204     </div>
1205     <div class="padding"></div>
1206
1207     <div class="entry">
1208       <div class="title">
1209         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Techno_TV_broadcasting_live_across_Norway_and_the_Internet___debconf16___nuug__on__frikanalen.html">Techno TV broadcasting live across Norway and the Internet (#debconf16, #nuug) on @frikanalen</a>
1210       </div>
1211       <div class="date">
1212          1st August 2016
1213       </div>
1214       <div class="body">
1215         <p>Did you know there is a TV channel broadcasting talks from DebConf
1216 16 across an entire country?  Or that there is a TV channel
1217 broadcasting talks by or about
1218 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625529/">Linus Torvalds</a>,
1219 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599/">Tor</a>,
1220 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/624019/">OpenID</A>,
1221 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625624/">Common Lisp</a>,
1222 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625446/">Civic Tech</a>,
1223 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625090/">EFF founder John Barlow</a>,
1224 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625432/">how to make 3D
1225 printer electronics</a> and many more fascinating topics?  It works
1226 using only free software (all of it
1227 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from Github</a>), and
1228 is administrated using a web browser and a web API.</p>
1229
1230 <p>The TV channel is the Norwegian open channel
1231 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, and I am involved
1232 via <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG member association</a> in
1233 running and developing the software for the channel.  The channel is
1234 organised as a member organisation where its members can upload and
1235 broadcast what they want (think of it as Youtube for national
1236 broadcasting television).  Individuals can broadcast too.  The time
1237 slots are handled on a first come, first serve basis.  Because the
1238 channel have almost no viewers and very few active members, we can
1239 experiment with TV technology without too much flack when we make
1240 mistakes.  And thanks to the few active members, most of the slots on
1241 the schedule are free.  I see this as an opportunity to spread
1242 knowledge about technology and free software, and have a script I run
1243 regularly to fill up all the open slots the next few days with
1244 technology related video.  The end result is a channel I like to
1245 describe as Techno TV - filled with interesting talks and
1246 presentations.</p>
1247
1248 <p>It is available on channel 50 on the Norwegian national digital TV
1249 network (RiksTV).  It is also available as a multicast stream on
1250 Uninett.  And finally, it is available as
1251 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/">a WebM unicast stream</a> from
1252 Frikanalen and NUUG.  Check it out. :)</p>
1253
1254       </div>
1255       <div class="tags">
1256
1257
1258         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>.
1259
1260
1261       </div>
1262     </div>
1263     <div class="padding"></div>
1264
1265     <div class="entry">
1266       <div class="title">
1267         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
1268       </div>
1269       <div class="date">
1270          7th July 2016
1271       </div>
1272       <div class="body">
1273         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
1274 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
1275 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
1276 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
1277 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
1278 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
1279 microphone The initial idea had been to just
1280 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
1281 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
1282 until a few days ago.</p>
1283
1284 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
1285 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
1286 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
1287 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
1288 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
1289 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
1290 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
1291
1292 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
1293 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
1294 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
1295 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
1296 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
1297 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
1298 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
1299 him.</p>
1300
1301 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
1302 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
1303 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
1304 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
1305 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
1306 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
1307 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
1308 devices it would work for.</p>
1309
1310 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
1311 followed some instructions
1312 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
1313 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
1314 machine with Debian testing:</p>
1315
1316 <p><pre>
1317 adb reboot-bootloader
1318 fastboot oem rebootRUU
1319 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
1320 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
1321 fastboot reboot
1322 </pre></p>
1323
1324 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
1325 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
1326 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
1327 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
1328 too.</p>
1329
1330 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
1331 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
1332 like this:</p>
1333
1334 <p><pre>
1335 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
1336 </pre>
1337
1338 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
1339 this:</p>
1340
1341 <p><pre>
1342 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
1343 </pre></p>
1344
1345 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
1346 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
1347 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
1348 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
1349 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
1350
1351       </div>
1352       <div class="tags">
1353
1354
1355         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1356
1357
1358       </div>
1359     </div>
1360     <div class="padding"></div>
1361
1362     <div class="entry">
1363       <div class="title">
1364         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
1365       </div>
1366       <div class="date">
1367          3rd July 2016
1368       </div>
1369       <div class="body">
1370         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
1371 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
1372 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
1373 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
1374 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
1375 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
1376 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
1377 Github source, compared it to the source in
1378 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
1379 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
1380 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
1381 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
1382 the recipe how I did it.</p>
1383
1384 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
1385
1386 <pre>
1387 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
1388 </pre>
1389
1390 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
1391 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
1392
1393 <pre>
1394 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
1395 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
1396 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
1397 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
1398 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
1399          });
1400      });
1401
1402 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
1403 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
1404 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
1405 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
1406      var messageReceiver;
1407      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
1408          if (messageReceiver) {
1409 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
1410 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
1411 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
1412 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
1413  ;(function() {
1414      'use strict';
1415 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
1416 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
1417
1418      window.extension = window.extension || {};
1419
1420 EOF
1421 </pre>
1422
1423 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
1424 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
1425 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
1426 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
1427
1428 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
1429 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
1430
1431 <pre>
1432 #!/bin/sh
1433 cd $(dirname $0)
1434 mkdir -p userdata
1435 exec chromium \
1436   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
1437   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
1438 </pre>
1439
1440 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
1441 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
1442 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
1443 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
1444 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
1445
1446 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
1447 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
1448 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
1449 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
1450 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
1451 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
1452 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
1453 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
1454 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
1455 Signal from my laptop.
1456
1457 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
1458 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
1459 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
1460 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
1461 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
1462 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
1463 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
1464 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
1465 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
1466 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
1467 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
1468 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
1469
1470       </div>
1471       <div class="tags">
1472
1473
1474         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1475
1476
1477       </div>
1478     </div>
1479     <div class="padding"></div>
1480
1481     <div class="entry">
1482       <div class="title">
1483         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
1484       </div>
1485       <div class="date">
1486          6th June 2016
1487       </div>
1488       <div class="body">
1489         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
1490 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
1491 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
1492 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
1493 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
1494 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
1495 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
1496 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
1497 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
1498
1499 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
1500 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
1501 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
1502 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
1503 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
1504 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
1505 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
1506
1507 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
1508 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
1509 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
1510 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
1511 toten and parole.</p>
1512
1513 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
1514 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
1515 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
1516 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
1517 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
1518 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
1519 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
1520 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
1521 formats.</p>
1522
1523       </div>
1524       <div class="tags">
1525
1526
1527         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>.
1528
1529
1530       </div>
1531     </div>
1532     <div class="padding"></div>
1533
1534     <div class="entry">
1535       <div class="title">
1536         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
1537       </div>
1538       <div class="date">
1539          5th June 2016
1540       </div>
1541       <div class="body">
1542         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
1543 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
1544 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
1545 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
1546 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
1547 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
1548 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
1549 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
1550 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
1551 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
1552 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
1553 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
1554 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
1555 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
1556 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
1557 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
1558 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
1559 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
1560 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
1561 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
1562
1563 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
1564 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
1565 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
1566 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
1567 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
1568 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
1569 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
1570 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
1571 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
1572 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
1573 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
1574 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
1575 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
1576 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
1577
1578 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
1579 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
1580 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
1581 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
1582 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
1583 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
1584 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
1585 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
1586
1587 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
1588 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
1589 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
1590 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
1591 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
1592 information is collected from
1593 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
1594 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
1595 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
1596 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
1597 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
1598 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
1599 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
1600 type (preferably
1601 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
1602 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
1603 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
1604 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
1605
1606 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
1607 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
1608 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
1609
1610 <p><blockquote><pre>
1611 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
1612 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
1613   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
1614     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
1615     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
1616     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
1617   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
1618 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
1619 </pre></blockquote></p>
1620
1621 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
1622 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
1623 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
1624 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
1625
1626 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
1627 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
1628 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
1629
1630 <p><blockquote><pre>
1631 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
1632 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
1633 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
1634 %
1635 </pre></blockquote></p>
1636
1637 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
1638 MimeType= line.</p>
1639
1640 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
1641 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
1642 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
1643 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
1644 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
1645 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
1646 fixed. :)</p>
1647
1648       </div>
1649       <div class="tags">
1650
1651
1652         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1653
1654
1655       </div>
1656     </div>
1657     <div class="padding"></div>
1658
1659     <div class="entry">
1660       <div class="title">
1661         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html">Tor - from its creators mouth 11 years ago</a>
1662       </div>
1663       <div class="date">
1664         28th May 2016
1665       </div>
1666       <div class="body">
1667         <p>A little more than 11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
1668 the current President of <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">the Tor
1669 project</a>, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the
1670 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group</a> (NUUG).  A
1671 video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help
1672 from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk
1673 on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG
1674 currently publishes its talks.  You can
1675 <a href="http://frikanalen.no/se">watch the live stream using a web
1676 browser</a> with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
1677 on demand page for the talk
1678 "<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599">Tor: Anonymous
1679 communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.</a>".</p>
1680
1681 <p>Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
1682 HTML video and Ogg Theora support:</p>
1683
1684 <p><video width="70%" poster="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/large_thumb/20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg" controls>
1685   <source src="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/theora/20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv" type="video/ogg"/>
1686 </video></p>
1687
1688 <p>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you
1689 want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)</p>
1690
1691       </div>
1692       <div class="tags">
1693
1694
1695         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>.
1696
1697
1698       </div>
1699     </div>
1700     <div class="padding"></div>
1701
1702     <div class="entry">
1703       <div class="title">
1704         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
1705       </div>
1706       <div class="date">
1707         25th May 2016
1708       </div>
1709       <div class="body">
1710         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
1711 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
1712 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
1713 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
1714 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
1715 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
1716 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
1717 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
1718 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
1719 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
1720 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
1721 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
1722
1723 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
1724 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
1725 is going away and is generally being replaced by
1726 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
1727 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
1728 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
1729 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
1730 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
1731 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
1732 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
1733 and see if it is recognised.</p>
1734
1735 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
1736 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
1737 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
1738
1739 <p><blockquote><pre>
1740 % isenkram-lookup
1741 bluez
1742 cheese
1743 fprintd
1744 fprintd-demo
1745 gkrellm-thinkbat
1746 hdapsd
1747 libpam-fprintd
1748 pidgin-blinklight
1749 thinkfan
1750 tleds
1751 tp-smapi-dkms
1752 tp-smapi-source
1753 tpb
1754 %p
1755 </pre></blockquote></p>
1756
1757 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
1758 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
1759 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
1760 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
1761 See
1762 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
1763 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>
1764
1765       </div>
1766       <div class="tags">
1767
1768
1769         Tags: <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>.
1770
1771
1772       </div>
1773     </div>
1774     <div class="padding"></div>
1775
1776     <div class="entry">
1777       <div class="title">
1778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
1779       </div>
1780       <div class="date">
1781         23rd May 2016
1782       </div>
1783       <div class="body">
1784         <p>Yesterday I updated the
1785 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
1786 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
1787 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
1788 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
1789 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
1790 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
1791 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
1792 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
1793 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
1794 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
1795
1796 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
1797 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
1798 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
1799 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
1800 capacity.</p>
1801
1802 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
1803
1804 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
1805 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
1806 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
1807 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
1808
1809 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
1810
1811 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
1812 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
1813 shrinking. :(</p>
1814
1815 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
1816 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
1817 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
1818 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
1819 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
1820 machine.</p>
1821
1822 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
1823 check out the
1824 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
1825 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
1826 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
1827 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
1828 Patches are very welcome.</p>
1829
1830 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1831 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1832 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1833
1834       </div>
1835       <div class="tags">
1836
1837
1838         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1839
1840
1841       </div>
1842     </div>
1843     <div class="padding"></div>
1844
1845     <div class="entry">
1846       <div class="title">
1847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_edition_of_Lawrence_Lessigs_book_Cultura_Libre_on_Amazon_and_Barnes___Noble.html">French edition of Lawrence Lessigs book Cultura Libre on Amazon and Barnes & Noble</a>
1848       </div>
1849       <div class="date">
1850         21st May 2016
1851       </div>
1852       <div class="body">
1853         <p>A few weeks ago the French paperback edition of Lawrence Lessigs
1854 2004 book Cultura Libre was published.  Today I noticed that the book
1855 is now available from book stores.  You can now buy it from
1856 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Libre-French-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018260">Amazon</a>
1857 ($19.99),
1858 <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/culture-libre-lawrence-lessig/1123776705">Barnes
1859 & Noble</a> ($?) and as always from
1860 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Lulu.com</a>
1861 ($19.99).  The revenue is donated to the Creative Commons project.  If
1862 you buy from Lulu.com, they currently get $10.59, while if you buy
1863 from one of the book stores most of the revenue go to the book store
1864 and the Creative Commons project get much (not sure how much
1865 less).</p>
1866
1867 <p>I was a bit surprised to discover that there is a kindle edition
1868 sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC on Amazon.  Not quite sure how
1869 that edition was created, but if you want to download a electronic
1870 edition (PDF, EPUB, Mobi) generated from the same files used to create
1871 the paperback edition, they are
1872 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">available
1873 from github</a>.</p>
1874
1875       </div>
1876       <div class="tags">
1877
1878
1879         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>.
1880
1881
1882       </div>
1883     </div>
1884     <div class="padding"></div>
1885
1886     <div class="entry">
1887       <div class="title">
1888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_want_the_courts_to_be_involved_before_the_police_can_hijack_a_news_site_DNS_domain___domstolkontroll_.html">I want the courts to be involved before the police can hijack a news site DNS domain (#domstolkontroll)</a>
1889       </div>
1890       <div class="date">
1891         19th May 2016
1892       </div>
1893       <div class="body">
1894         <p>I just donated to the
1895 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">NUUG defence
1896 "fond"</a> to fund the effort in Norway to get the seizure of the news
1897 site popcorn-time.no tested in court.  I hope everyone that agree with
1898 me will do the same.</p>
1899
1900 <p>Would you be worried if you knew the police in your country could
1901 hijack DNS domains of news sites covering free software system without
1902 talking to a judge first?  I am.  What if the free software system
1903 combined search engine lookups, bittorrent downloads and video playout
1904 and was called Popcorn Time?  Would that affect your view?  It still
1905 make me worried.</p>
1906
1907 <p>In March 2016, the Norwegian police seized (as in forced NORID to
1908 change the IP address pointed to by it to one controlled by the
1909 police) the DNS domain popcorn-time.no, without any supervision from
1910 the courts.  I did not know about the web site back then, and assumed
1911 the courts had been involved, and was very surprised when I discovered
1912 that the police had hijacked the DNS domain without asking a judge for
1913 permission first.  I was even more surprised when I had a look at
1914 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://popcorn-time.no">the web
1915 site content on the Internet Archive</A>, and only found news coverage
1916 about Popcorn Time, not any material published without the right
1917 holders permissions.</p>
1918
1919 <p>The seizure was widely covered in the Norwegian press (see for
1920 example <a href="http://www.hegnar.no/Nyheter/Naeringsliv/2016/03/Popcorn-time.no-beslaglagt-av-OEkokrim">Hegnar Online</a> and
1921 <a href="http://itavisen.no/2016/03/08/okokrim-har-beslaglagt-popcorn-time-no/">ITavisen<a/>
1922 and
1923 <a href="http://www.nrk.no/kultur/okokrim-gar-til-aksjon-mot-popcorn-time-1.12842452">NRK</a>),
1924 at first due to the press release sent out by Økokrim, but then based
1925 on
1926 <a href="http://blogg.torvund.net/2016/03/09/okokrims-beslag-i-domenet-popcorn-time-no/">protests
1927 from the law professor Olav Torvund</a> and
1928 <a href="http://www.klassekampen.no/article/20160311/ARTICLE/160319995">lawyer
1929 Jon Wessel-Aas</a>.  It even got some
1930 <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/norwegian-authorities-sued-over-popcorn-time-domain-seizure-160418/">coverage
1931 on TorrentFreak</a>.</p>
1932
1933 <p>I
1934 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html">
1935 wrote about the case a month ago</a>, when the
1936 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> (NUUG),
1937 where I am an active member, decided to ask the courts to test this seizure.
1938 The request was denied, but NUUG and its co-requestor EFN have not
1939 given up, and now they are rallying for support to get the seizure
1940 legally challenged.  They accept both bank and Bitcoin transfer for
1941 those that want to support the request.</p>
1942
1943 <p>If you as me believe news sites about free software should not be
1944 censored, even if the free software have both legal and illegal
1945 applications, and that DNS hijacking should be tested by the courts, I
1946 suggest you <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dns-beslag-donasjon.shtml">show
1947 your support by donating to NUUG</a>.</a>
1948
1949       </div>
1950       <div class="tags">
1951
1952
1953         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1954
1955
1956       </div>
1957     </div>
1958     <div class="padding"></div>
1959
1960     <div class="entry">
1961       <div class="title">
1962         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
1963       </div>
1964       <div class="date">
1965         12th May 2016
1966       </div>
1967       <div class="body">
1968         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
1969 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
1970 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
1971 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
1972 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
1973 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
1974 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
1975 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
1976 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
1977 great if you could help out with
1978 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
1979 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
1980
1981       </div>
1982       <div class="tags">
1983
1984
1985         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1986
1987
1988       </div>
1989     </div>
1990     <div class="padding"></div>
1991
1992     <div class="entry">
1993       <div class="title">
1994         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
1995       </div>
1996       <div class="date">
1997          8th May 2016
1998       </div>
1999       <div class="body">
2000         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
2001 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
2002
2003 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
2004 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
2005 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
2006 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
2007 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
2008 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
2009 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
2010 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
2011 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
2012 players.</p>
2013
2014 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
2015 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
2016 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
2017 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
2018 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
2019 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
2020 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
2021 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
2022 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
2023 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
2024 support most file formats.</p>
2025
2026 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
2027 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
2028 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
2029 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
2030 listed first in the table.</p>
2031
2032 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
2033 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
2034 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
2035 support?</p>
2036
2037       </div>
2038       <div class="tags">
2039
2040
2041         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>.
2042
2043
2044       </div>
2045     </div>
2046     <div class="padding"></div>
2047
2048     <div class="entry">
2049       <div class="title">
2050         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
2051       </div>
2052       <div class="date">
2053          4th May 2016
2054       </div>
2055       <div class="body">
2056         A friend of mine made me aware of
2057 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
2058 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
2059 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
2060
2061 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
2062 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
2063 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
2064 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
2065 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
2066 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
2067 production started.</p>
2068
2069 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
2070 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
2071 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
2072
2073       </div>
2074       <div class="tags">
2075
2076
2077         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2078
2079
2080       </div>
2081     </div>
2082     <div class="padding"></div>
2083
2084     <div class="entry">
2085       <div class="title">
2086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUG_contests_Norwegian_police_DNS_seizure_of_popcorn_time_no.html">NUUG contests Norwegian police DNS seizure of popcorn-time.no</a>
2087       </div>
2088       <div class="date">
2089         18th April 2016
2090       </div>
2091       <div class="body">
2092         <p>It is days like today I am really happy to be a member of
2093 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User group</a>, a
2094 member association for those of us believing in free software, open
2095 standards and unix-like operating systems.  NUUG announced today it
2096 will
2097 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__NUUG_og_EFN_begj_rer_rettslig_pr_ving_for_DNS_domenebeslag_av_popcorn_time_no.shtml">try
2098 to bring the seizure of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no as
2099 unlawful</a>, to stand up for the principle that writing about a
2100 controversial topic is not infringing copyrights, and censuring web
2101 pages by hijacking DNS domain should be decided by the courts, not the
2102 police.  The DNS domain was seized by the Norwegian National Authority
2103 for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime
2104 a month ago.  I hope this bring more paying members to NUUG to give
2105 the association the financial muscle needed to bring this case as far
2106 as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.</p>
2107
2108       </div>
2109       <div class="tags">
2110
2111
2112         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
2113
2114
2115       </div>
2116     </div>
2117     <div class="padding"></div>
2118
2119     <div class="entry">
2120       <div class="title">
2121         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_F__Stone___an_inspiration_for_us_all.html">I.F. Stone - an inspiration for us all</a>
2122       </div>
2123       <div class="date">
2124         13th April 2016
2125       </div>
2126       <div class="body">
2127         <p>I first got to know I.F. Stone when I came across an article by Jon
2128 Schwarz on The Intercept
2129 <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/new-documentary-legacy-f-stone/">about
2130 his extraordinary contribution to investigative journalism in
2131 USA</a>. The article is about a new documentary in two parts
2132 (<a href="https://vimeo.com/123974841">part one is 12 minutes</a> and
2133 <a href="https://vimeo.com/123974842">part two is 30 minutes</a>), and
2134 I found both truly fascinating.  It is amazing what he was able to
2135 find by digging up public sources and government papers.  He
2136 documented lots of government abuse and cover ups, and I find
2137 <a href="http://www.ifstone.org/weekly.php">his weekly news letters</a>
2138 inspiring to read even today.</p>
2139
2140 <p><blockquote>
2141 All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
2142 <br>- I. F. Stone
2143 </blockquote></p>
2144
2145 <p>His starting point was that reporters should not assume governments
2146 and corporations are telling the truth, but verify all their claims as
2147 much as possible.  I wonder how many Norwegian reporters can be said
2148 to follow the principles of I. F. Stone.  They are definitely in short
2149 supply.  If you, like me half a year ago, have never heard of him,
2150 check him out.</p>
2151
2152       </div>
2153       <div class="tags">
2154
2155
2156         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
2157
2158
2159       </div>
2160     </div>
2161     <div class="padding"></div>
2162
2163     <div class="entry">
2164       <div class="title">
2165         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_French_paperback_edition_of_the_book_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig_is_now_available.html">A French paperback edition of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig is now available</a>
2166       </div>
2167       <div class="date">
2168         12th April 2016
2169       </div>
2170       <div class="body">
2171         <p>I'm happy to report that
2172 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">the
2173 French paperback edition</a> of
2174 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
2175 project to translate</a> the <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free
2176 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig is now available for sale on
2177 Lulu.com.  Once I have formally verified my proof reading copy, which
2178 should be in the mail, the paperback edition should be available in
2179 book stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble too.</p>
2180
2181 <p>This French edition, Culture Libre, is the work of the
2182 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> developer Benoît
2183 Guillon, who created the PO file from the initial translation
2184 available from
2185 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">the Wikilivres
2186 wiki pages</a> and completed and corrected the translation to match
2187 the original docbook edition my project is using, as well as
2188 coordinated the proof reading of the final result.  I believe the end
2189 result look great, but I am biased and do not read French.  In
2190 addition to the paperback edition, the book is available in PDF, EPUB
2191 and Mobi format from the github project page linked to above.</p>
2192
2193 <p>When enabling book store distribution on Lulu.com, I had to nearly
2194 triple the price to allow the book stores some profit.  I also had to
2195 accept that I will get some revenue when a book is sold via Lulu.com.
2196 But because of the non-commercial clause in the book license
2197 (CC-BY-NC), this might be a problem.  To bypass the problem I
2198 discussed how to handle the revenue with the author, and we agreed
2199 that the revenue for these editions go to the
2200 <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons non-profit
2201 Corporation</a> who handle donations to the Creative Commons project.
2202 So far they have earned around USD 70 on sales of the
2203 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>
2204 and
2205 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
2206 Bokmål</a> editions, according to Lulu.com.  They will get the revenue
2207 for the French edition too.  Their revenue is higher if you buy the
2208 book directly from Lulu.com instead of via a book store, so I
2209 recommend you buy directly from Lulu.com.</p>
2210
2211 <p>Perhaps you would like to get the book published in your language?
2212 The translation is done using a web based translator service, so the
2213 technical bar to enter is fairly low.  Get in touch if you would like
2214 to make this happen.</p>
2215
2216       </div>
2217       <div class="tags">
2218
2219
2220         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>.
2221
2222
2223       </div>
2224     </div>
2225     <div class="padding"></div>
2226
2227     <div class="entry">
2228       <div class="title">
2229         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
2230       </div>
2231       <div class="date">
2232         10th April 2016
2233       </div>
2234       <div class="body">
2235         <p>During this weekends
2236 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
2237 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
2238 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
2239 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
2240 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
2241 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
2242 contributing using
2243 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2244 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
2245 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2246 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
2247 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2248 contributors</a>.</p>
2249
2250 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
2251 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
2252 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
2253 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
2254 available for many more languages.</p>
2255
2256       </div>
2257       <div class="tags">
2258
2259
2260         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2261
2262
2263       </div>
2264     </div>
2265     <div class="padding"></div>
2266
2267     <div class="entry">
2268       <div class="title">
2269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
2270       </div>
2271       <div class="date">
2272          7th April 2016
2273       </div>
2274       <div class="body">
2275         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
2276 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
2277 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
2278 But I might be wrong.</p>
2279
2280 <p>According to
2281 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
2282 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
2283 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
2284 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
2285 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
2286 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
2287 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
2288 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
2289 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
2290 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
2291
2292 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
2293 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
2294 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
2295 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
2296 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
2297 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
2298 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
2299 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
2300 team status page</a>, and
2301 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
2302 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
2303
2304 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
2305 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
2306 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
2307 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
2308 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
2309 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
2310 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
2311 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
2312 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
2313 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
2314 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
2315 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
2316
2317       </div>
2318       <div class="tags">
2319
2320
2321         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2322
2323
2324       </div>
2325     </div>
2326     <div class="padding"></div>
2327
2328     <div class="entry">
2329       <div class="title">
2330         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/syslog_trusted_timestamp___chain_of_trusted_timestamps_for_your_syslog.html">syslog-trusted-timestamp - chain of trusted timestamps for your syslog</a>
2331       </div>
2332       <div class="date">
2333          2nd April 2016
2334       </div>
2335       <div class="body">
2336         <p>Two years ago, I had
2337 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">a
2338 look at trusted timestamping options available</a>, and among
2339 other things noted a still open
2340 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/742553">bug in the tsget script</a>
2341 included in openssl that made it harder than necessary to use openssl
2342 as a trusted timestamping client.  A few days ago I was told
2343 <a href="https:/www.difi.no/">the Norwegian government office DIFI</a> is
2344 close to releasing their own trusted timestamp service, and in the
2345 process I was happy to learn about a replacement for the tsget script
2346 using only curl:</p>
2347
2348 <p><pre>
2349 openssl ts -query -data "/etc/shells" -cert -sha256 -no_nonce \
2350   | curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/timestamp-query" \
2351          --data-binary "@-" http://zeitstempel.dfn.de > etc-shells.tsr
2352 openssl ts -reply -text -in etc-shells.tsr
2353 </pre></p>
2354
2355 <p>This produces a binary timestamp file (etc-shells.tsr) which can be
2356 used to verify that the content of the file /etc/shell with the
2357 calculated sha256 hash existed at the point in time when the request
2358 was made.  The last command extract the content of the etc-shells.tsr
2359 in human readable form.  The idea behind such timestamp is to be able
2360 to prove using cryptography that the content of a file have not
2361 changed since the file was stamped.</p>
2362
2363 <p>To verify that the file on disk match the public key signature in
2364 the timestamp file, run the following commands.  It make sure you have
2365 the required certificate for the trusted timestamp service available
2366 and use it to compare the file content with the timestamp.  In
2367 production, one should of course use a better method to verify the
2368 service certificate.</p>
2369
2370 <p><pre>
2371 wget -O ca-cert.txt https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt
2372 openssl ts -verify -data /etc/shells -in etc-shells.tsr -CAfile ca-cert.txt -text
2373 </pre></p>
2374
2375 <p>Wikipedia have a lot more information about
2376 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
2377 Timestamping</a> and
2378 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping">linked
2379 timestamping</a>, and there are several trusted timestamping services
2380 around, both as commercial services and as free and public services.
2381 Among the latter is
2382 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">the
2383 zeitstempel.dfn.de service</a> mentioned above and
2384 <a href="https://freetsa.org/">freetsa.org service</a> linked to from the
2385 wikipedia web site.  I believe the DIFI service should show up on
2386 https://tsa.difi.no, but it is not available to the public at the
2387 moment.  I hope this will change when it is into production.  The
2388 <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC 3161</a> trusted
2389 timestamping protocol standard is even implemented in LibreOffice,
2390 Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, making it possible to verify when
2391 a document was created.</p>
2392
2393 <p>I would find it useful to be able to use such trusted timestamp
2394 service to make it possible to verify that my stored syslog files have
2395 not been tampered with.  This is not a new idea.  I found one example
2396 implemented on the Endian network appliances where
2397 <a href="http://help.endian.com/entries/21518508-Enabling-Timestamping-on-log-files-">the
2398 configuration of such feature was described in 2012</a>.</p>
2399
2400 <p>But I could not find any free implementation of such feature when I
2401 searched, so I decided to try to
2402 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/syslog-trusted-timestamp">build
2403 a prototype named syslog-trusted-timestamp</a>.  My idea is to
2404 generate a timestamp of the old log files after they are rotated, and
2405 store the timestamp in the new log file just after rotation.  This
2406 will form a chain that would make it possible to see if any old log
2407 files are tampered with.  But syslog is bad at handling kilobytes of
2408 binary data, so I decided to base64 encode the timestamp and add an ID
2409 and line sequence numbers to the base64 data to make it possible to
2410 reassemble the timestamp file again.  To use it, simply run it like
2411 this:
2412
2413 <p><pre>
2414 syslog-trusted-timestamp /path/to/list-of-log-files
2415 </pre></p>
2416
2417 <p>This will send a timestamp from one or more timestamp services (not
2418 yet decided nor implemented) for each listed file to the syslog using
2419 logger(1).  To verify the timestamp, the same program is used with the
2420 --verify option:</p>
2421
2422 <p><pre>
2423 syslog-trusted-timestamp --verify /path/to/log-file /path/to/log-with-timestamp
2424 </pre></p>
2425
2426 <p>The verification step is not yet well designed.  The current
2427 implementation depend on the file path being unique and unchanging,
2428 and this is not a solid assumption.  It also uses process number as
2429 timestamp ID, and this is bound to create ID collisions.  I hope to
2430 have time to come up with a better way to handle timestamp IDs and
2431 verification later.</p>
2432
2433 <p>Please check out
2434 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/syslog-trusted-timestamp">the
2435 prototype for syslog-trusted-timestamp on github</a> and send
2436 suggestions and improvement, or let me know if there already exist a
2437 similar system for timestamping logs already to allow me to join
2438 forces with others with the same interest.</p>
2439
2440 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2441 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2442 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2443
2444       </div>
2445       <div class="tags">
2446
2447
2448         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>.
2449
2450
2451       </div>
2452     </div>
2453     <div class="padding"></div>
2454
2455     <div class="entry">
2456       <div class="title">
2457         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
2458       </div>
2459       <div class="date">
2460         23rd March 2016
2461       </div>
2462       <div class="body">
2463         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
2464 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
2465 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
2466 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
2467 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
2468 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
2469 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
2470 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
2471
2472 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
2473 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
2474 and lifetime prediction by running:
2475
2476 <p><pre>
2477 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
2478 </pre></p>
2479
2480 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
2481
2482 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
2483 entry yet):</p>
2484
2485 <p><pre>
2486 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
2487 </pre></p>
2488
2489 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
2490 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
2491 few years of data.</p>
2492
2493 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
2494 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
2495 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
2496 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
2497 know.  The issue is reported as
2498 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
2499 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
2500 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
2501 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
2502 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
2503
2504 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
2505 check out the
2506 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
2507 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
2508 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
2509 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
2510 As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
2511
2512       </div>
2513       <div class="tags">
2514
2515
2516         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2517
2518
2519       </div>
2520     </div>
2521     <div class="padding"></div>
2522
2523     <div class="entry">
2524       <div class="title">
2525         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html">UsingQR - "Electronic" paper invoices using JSON and QR codes</a>
2526       </div>
2527       <div class="date">
2528         19th March 2016
2529       </div>
2530       <div class="body">
2531         <p>Back in 2013 I proposed
2532 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">a
2533 way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
2534 adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice</a>.  I
2535 suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
2536 for name and address, but any format would work.  I did not do
2537 anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
2538 something like it.  It would make it possible to efficiently send
2539 machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.</p>
2540
2541 <p>This was the background when I came across a proposal and
2542 specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
2543 <a href="http://www.visma.com/">Visma</a> in Sweden called
2544 <a href="http://usingqr.com/">UsingQR</a>.  Their PDF invoices contain
2545 a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
2546 This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
2547 specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
2548 get a more bogus entry).  I've reformatted the JSON to make it easier
2549 to read.  Normally this is all on one long line:</p>
2550
2551 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-19-qr-invoice.png" align="right"><pre>
2552 {
2553  "vh":500.00,
2554  "vm":0,
2555  "vl":0,
2556  "uqr":1,
2557  "tp":1,
2558  "nme":"Din Leverandør",
2559  "cc":"NO",
2560  "cid":"997912345 MVA",
2561  "iref":"12300001",
2562  "idt":"20151022",
2563  "ddt":"20151105",
2564  "due":2500.0000,
2565  "cur":"NOK",
2566  "pt":"BBAN",
2567  "acc":"17202612345",
2568  "bc":"BIENNOK1",
2569  "adr":"0313 OSLO"
2570 }
2571 </pre></p>
2572
2573 </p>The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
2574 <a href="http://usingqr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UsingQR_specification1.pdf">format
2575 specification</a> (revision 2 from june 2014).  The format seem to
2576 have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
2577 of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
2578 Norway.</p>
2579
2580 <p>Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
2581 the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
2582 specification.  Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
2583 November to clarify.  Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
2584 visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
2585 protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
2586 usage limitations for the format.  I urged her to make sure this was
2587 explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
2588 unfortunately this has not happened yet.  So I guess if there is
2589 submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
2590 infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
2591 risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
2592 the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so.  At least
2593 with patents, there is always
2594 <a href="http://www.paperspecs.com/paper-news/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/">a
2595 chance of getting sued...</a></p>
2596
2597 <p>I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
2598 independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
2599 they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
2600 with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this.  Their plan was
2601 to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
2602 evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular.  I hope
2603 they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
2604 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> is the correct place to
2605 maintain such specification.</p>
2606
2607 <p><strong>Update 2016-03-20</strong>: Via Twitter I became aware of
2608 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319492">some comments
2609 about this blog post</a> that had several useful links and references to
2610 similar systems.  In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association
2611 standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment
2612 information.  More information is available from the Wikipedia page on
2613 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor">Short
2614 Payment Descriptor</a>.  And in Germany, there is a system named
2615 <a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/">BezahlCode</a>,
2616 (<a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/wp-content/uploads/BezahlCode_TechDok.pdf">specification
2617 v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF</a>), which uses QR codes with
2618 URL-like formatting using "bank:" as the URI schema/protocol to
2619 provide the payment information.  There is also the
2620 <a href="http://www.ferd-net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231">ZUGFeRD</a>
2621 file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am
2622 not sure if it is done already.  Last, in Bolivia there are reports
2623 that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR
2624 format on invoices.  I have not been able to track down a
2625 specification for this format, because of my limited language skill
2626 sets.</p>
2627
2628       </div>
2629       <div class="tags">
2630
2631
2632         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>.
2633
2634
2635       </div>
2636     </div>
2637     <div class="padding"></div>
2638
2639     <div class="entry">
2640       <div class="title">
2641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
2642       </div>
2643       <div class="date">
2644         15th March 2016
2645       </div>
2646       <div class="body">
2647         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
2648 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
2649 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
2650 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
2651 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
2652 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
2653 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
2654 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
2655 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
2656 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
2657 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
2658
2659 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
2660 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
2661 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
2662 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
2663 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
2664 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
2665 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
2666 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
2667 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
2668 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
2669 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
2670
2671 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
2672
2673 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
2674 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
2675 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
2676 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
2677 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
2678 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
2679
2680 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
2681 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
2682 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
2683 and graphing.</p>
2684
2685 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
2686 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
2687 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
2688 on
2689 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
2690 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
2691
2692       </div>
2693       <div class="tags">
2694
2695
2696         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2697
2698
2699       </div>
2700     </div>
2701     <div class="padding"></div>
2702
2703     <div class="entry">
2704       <div class="title">
2705         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
2706       </div>
2707       <div class="date">
2708         19th February 2016
2709       </div>
2710       <div class="body">
2711         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
2712 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
2713 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
2714 the code in the package in question, preferably in
2715 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
2716 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
2717
2718 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
2719 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
2720 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
2721 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
2722 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
2723 out what was wrong with
2724 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
2725 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
2726 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
2727 semi-automatically.</p>
2728
2729 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
2730 file based on the code in the source package,
2731 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
2732 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
2733 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
2734 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
2735 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
2736 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
2737 option in
2738 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
2739 blog posts from 2014</a>.
2740
2741 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
2742
2743 <p><pre>
2744 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
2745 </pre></p>
2746
2747 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
2748 this might not be the best option.</p>
2749
2750 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
2751 this approach in
2752 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
2753 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
2754 dpkg-copyright' option:
2755
2756 <p><pre>
2757 cme update dpkg-copyright
2758 </pre></p>
2759
2760 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
2761 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
2762
2763 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
2764 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
2765 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
2766 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
2767 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
2768 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
2769 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
2770 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
2771 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
2772 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
2773
2774 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
2775 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
2776 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
2777 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
2778
2779 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
2780 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
2781 planet.debian.org.</p>
2782
2783 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2784 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2785 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2786
2787 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
2788 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
2789
2790 <p><pre>
2791 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
2792   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
2793 </pre></p>
2794
2795 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
2796 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
2797 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
2798 with my packages in the future.</p>
2799
2800 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
2801 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
2802 command line.</p>
2803
2804       </div>
2805       <div class="tags">
2806
2807
2808         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2809
2810
2811       </div>
2812     </div>
2813     <div class="padding"></div>
2814
2815     <div class="entry">
2816       <div class="title">
2817         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
2818       </div>
2819       <div class="date">
2820          4th February 2016
2821       </div>
2822       <div class="body">
2823         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
2824 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
2825 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
2826 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
2827 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
2828 about. :)</p>
2829
2830 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
2831 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
2832 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
2833 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
2834 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
2835 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
2836
2837 <blockquote><pre>
2838 % apt install appstream
2839 [...]
2840 % apt update
2841 [...]
2842 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
2843   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
2844 firmware-qlogic
2845 %
2846 </pre></blockquote>
2847
2848 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
2849 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
2850 a way appstream can use.</p>
2851
2852 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
2853 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
2854 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
2855 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
2856 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
2857 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
2858
2859 <blockquote><pre>
2860 % apt install appstream
2861 [...]
2862 % apt update
2863 [...]
2864 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
2865   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
2866 bkchem
2867 phototonic
2868 inkscape
2869 shutter
2870 tetzle
2871 geeqie
2872 xia
2873 pinta
2874 gthumb
2875 karbon
2876 comix
2877 mirage
2878 viewnior
2879 postr
2880 ristretto
2881 kolourpaint4
2882 eog
2883 eom
2884 gimagereader
2885 midori
2886 %
2887 </pre></blockquote>
2888
2889 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
2890 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
2891
2892       </div>
2893       <div class="tags">
2894
2895
2896         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2897
2898
2899       </div>
2900     </div>
2901     <div class="padding"></div>
2902
2903     <div class="entry">
2904       <div class="title">
2905         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
2906       </div>
2907       <div class="date">
2908         24th January 2016
2909       </div>
2910       <div class="body">
2911         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
2912 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
2913 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
2914 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
2915 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
2916 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
2917 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
2918 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
2919 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
2920 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
2921 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
2922 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
2923 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
2924 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
2925 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
2926 entities.</p>
2927
2928 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
2929
2930 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
2931 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
2932 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
2933 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
2934 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
2935 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
2936 tool to do so is called
2937 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
2938 discovered it when I read
2939 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
2940 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
2941 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
2942 The python program was in Debian, but
2943 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
2944 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
2945 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
2946 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
2947 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
2948 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
2949 are now included
2950 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
2951
2952 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
2953 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
2954 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
2955 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
2956 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
2957 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
2958 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
2959 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
2960 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
2961 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
2962 about yourself with the services.</p>
2963
2964 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
2965 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
2966 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
2967 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
2968 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
2969 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
2970 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
2971 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
2972 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
2973 things.  A similar technique have been
2974 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
2975 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
2976 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
2977 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
2978 public.</p>
2979
2980 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
2981 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
2982 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
2983 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
2984
2985 <p>(I have uploaded
2986 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
2987 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
2988 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
2989
2990       </div>
2991       <div class="tags">
2992
2993
2994         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2995
2996
2997       </div>
2998     </div>
2999     <div class="padding"></div>
3000
3001     <div class="entry">
3002       <div class="title">
3003         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
3004       </div>
3005       <div class="date">
3006         15th January 2016
3007       </div>
3008       <div class="body">
3009         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
3010 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
3011 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
3012 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
3013 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
3014 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
3015 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
3016 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
3017 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
3018 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
3019 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
3020 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
3021 was not the first to propose this, as the
3022 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
3023 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
3024 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
3025 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
3026
3027 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
3028 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
3029 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
3030 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
3031 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
3032
3033 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
3034 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
3035 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
3036 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
3037 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
3038 done in /etc/.</p>
3039
3040 <blockquote><pre>
3041 apt install apt-transport-tor
3042 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
3043 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
3044 </pre></blockquote>
3045
3046 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
3047 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
3048 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
3049 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
3050
3051 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
3052 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
3053 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
3054 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
3055 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
3056 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
3057
3058 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
3059 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
3060 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
3061 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
3062 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
3063
3064 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
3065 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
3066 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
3067 system.</p>
3068
3069       </div>
3070       <div class="tags">
3071
3072
3073         Tags: <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>.
3074
3075
3076       </div>
3077     </div>
3078     <div class="padding"></div>
3079
3080     <div class="entry">
3081       <div class="title">
3082         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
3083       </div>
3084       <div class="date">
3085         23rd December 2015
3086       </div>
3087       <div class="body">
3088         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
3089 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
3090 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
3091 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
3092 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
3093 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
3094
3095 <p>A few days I came across
3096 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
3097 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
3098 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
3099 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
3100 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
3101 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
3102 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
3103 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
3104 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
3105 discovered the developer
3106 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
3107 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
3108 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
3109 archive.</p>
3110
3111 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
3112 it into Debian, where it currently
3113 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
3114 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
3115
3116 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
3117 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
3118 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
3119 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
3120 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
3121 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
3122 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
3123 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
3124 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
3125 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
3126 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
3127 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
3128
3129 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
3130 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
3131 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
3132 package show up in unstable.</p>
3133
3134       </div>
3135       <div class="tags">
3136
3137
3138         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3139
3140
3141       </div>
3142     </div>
3143     <div class="padding"></div>
3144
3145     <div class="entry">
3146       <div class="title">
3147         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
3148       </div>
3149       <div class="date">
3150         20th December 2015
3151       </div>
3152       <div class="body">
3153         <p>Around three years ago, I created
3154 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
3155 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
3156 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
3157 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
3158 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
3159 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
3160 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
3161 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
3162 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
3163 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
3164 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
3165 with.</p>
3166
3167 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
3168 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
3169 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
3170 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
3171 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
3172 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
3173 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
3174 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
3175 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
3176 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
3177 Debian version of appstream.</p>
3178
3179 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
3180 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
3181 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
3182 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
3183 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
3184 how do add the required
3185 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
3186 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
3187 this content:</p>
3188
3189 <blockquote><pre>
3190 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
3191 &lt;component&gt;
3192   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
3193   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
3194   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
3195   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
3196   &lt;description&gt;
3197     &lt;p&gt;
3198       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
3199       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
3200       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
3201       launcher.
3202     &lt;/p&gt;
3203   &lt;/description&gt;
3204   &lt;provides&gt;
3205     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
3206   &lt;/provides&gt;
3207 &lt;/component&gt;
3208 </pre></blockquote>
3209
3210 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
3211 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
3212 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
3213 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
3214 0202.</p>
3215
3216 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
3217 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
3218 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
3219 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
3220 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
3221 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
3222 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
3223 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
3224
3225 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
3226 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
3227 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
3228 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
3229 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
3230
3231 <blockquote><pre>
3232 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
3233 </pre></blockquote>
3234
3235 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
3236 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
3237 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
3238 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
3239 question.</p>
3240
3241 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
3242 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
3243
3244 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
3245 try running this command on the command line:</p>
3246
3247 <blockquote><pre>
3248 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
3249 </pre></blockquote>
3250
3251 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
3252 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
3253 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
3254
3255       </div>
3256       <div class="tags">
3257
3258
3259         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3260
3261
3262       </div>
3263     </div>
3264     <div class="padding"></div>
3265
3266     <div class="entry">
3267       <div class="title">
3268         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
3269       </div>
3270       <div class="date">
3271         30th November 2015
3272       </div>
3273       <div class="body">
3274         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
3275 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
3276 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
3277 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
3278 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
3279
3280 <blockquote>
3281
3282 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
3283
3284 <blockquote>
3285 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
3286
3287 The first step is to choose a
3288 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
3289 code.<br/>
3290
3291 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
3292 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
3293
3294 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
3295 work<br/>
3296
3297 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
3298 </blockquote>
3299
3300 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
3301 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
3302 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
3303 0x57</a></small></p>
3304
3305 <p>As the Debian Website
3306 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
3307 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
3308 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
3309 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
3310 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
3311 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
3312 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
3313 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
3314 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
3315 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
3316 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
3317 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
3318 Freedom">FaiF</a>
3319 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
3320 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
3321 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
3322 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
3323 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
3324 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
3325 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
3326 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
3327 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
3328 In March the SFC supported a
3329 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
3330 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
3331 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
3332 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
3333 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
3334 conferences
3335 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
3336 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
3337 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
3338 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
3339 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
3340 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
3341 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
3342 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
3343 Software.</p>
3344
3345 <p>If you support Free Software,
3346 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
3347 what the SFC do, agree with their
3348 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
3349 principles</a>, are happy about their
3350 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
3351 work on a project that is an SFC
3352 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
3353 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
3354 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
3355 Allan Webber</a>,
3356 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
3357 Smith</a>,
3358 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
3359 Bacon</a>, myself and
3360 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
3361 becoming a
3362 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
3363 next week your donation will be
3364 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
3365 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
3366 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
3367 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
3368 social media accounts.</p>
3369
3370 </blockquote>
3371
3372 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
3373 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
3374 supporter too?</p>
3375
3376       </div>
3377       <div class="tags">
3378
3379
3380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3381
3382
3383       </div>
3384     </div>
3385     <div class="padding"></div>
3386
3387     <div class="entry">
3388       <div class="title">
3389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
3390       </div>
3391       <div class="date">
3392         17th November 2015
3393       </div>
3394       <div class="body">
3395         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
3396 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
3397 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
3398 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
3399 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
3400 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
3401 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
3402 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
3403 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
3404 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
3405
3406 <pre>
3407 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
3408       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
3409 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
3410 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
3411 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3412 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3413 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3414 </pre>
3415
3416 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
3417 my old key.</p>
3418
3419 <p>If you signed my old key
3420 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
3421 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
3422 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
3423 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
3424
3425       </div>
3426       <div class="tags">
3427
3428
3429         Tags: <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>.
3430
3431
3432       </div>
3433     </div>
3434     <div class="padding"></div>
3435
3436     <div class="entry">
3437       <div class="title">
3438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html">Is Pentagon deciding the Norwegian negotiating position on Internet governance?</a>
3439       </div>
3440       <div class="date">
3441          3rd November 2015
3442       </div>
3443       <div class="body">
3444         <p>In Norway, all government offices are required by law to keep a
3445 list of every document or letter arriving and leaving their offices.
3446 Internal notes should also be documented.  The document list (called a mail
3447 journal - "postjournal" in Norwegian) is public information and thanks
3448 to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) the mail
3449 journal is available for everyone.  Most offices even publish the mail
3450 journal on their web pages, as PDFs or tables in web pages.  The state-level offices even have a shared web based search service (called
3451 <a href="https://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
3452 OEP</a>) to make it possible to search the entries in the list.  Not
3453 all journal entries show up on OEP, and the search service is hard to
3454 use, but OEP does make it easier to find at least some interesting
3455 journal entries .</p>
3456
3457 <p>In 2012 I came across a document in the mail journal for the
3458 Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications on OEP that
3459 piqued my interest.  The title of the document was
3460 "<a href="https://www.oep.no/search/resultSingle.html?journalPostId=4192362">Internet
3461 Governance and how it affects national security</a>" (Norwegian:
3462 "Internet Governance og påvirkning på nasjonal sikkerhet").  The
3463 document date was 2012-05-22, and it was said to be sent from the
3464 "Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations".  I asked for a
3465 copy, but my request was rejected with a reference to a legal clause said to authorize them to reject it
3466 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20,
3467 letter c</a>) and an explanation that the document was exempt because
3468 of foreign policy interests as it contained information related to the
3469 Norwegian negotiating position, negotiating strategies or similar.  I
3470 was told the information in the document related to the ongoing
3471 negotiation in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).  The
3472 explanation made sense to me in early January 2013, as a ITU
3473 conference in Dubay discussing Internet Governance
3474 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29">World
3475 Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12</a>) had just
3476 ended,
3477 <a href="http://www.digi.no/kommentarer/2012/12/18/tvil-om-usas-rolle-pa-teletoppmote">reportedly
3478 in chaos</a> when USA walked out of the negotiations and 25 countries
3479 including Norway refused to sign the new treaty.  It seemed
3480 reasonable to believe talks were still going on a few weeks later.
3481 Norway was represented at the ITU meeting by two authorities, the
3482 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/">Norwegian Communications Authority</a>
3483 and the <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dep/sd/">Ministry of
3484 Transport and Communications</a>.  This might be the reason the letter
3485 was sent to the ministry.  As I was unable to find the document in the
3486 mail journal of any Norwegian UN mission, I asked the ministry who had
3487 sent the document to the ministry, and was told that it was the Deputy
3488 Permanent Representative with the Permanent Mission of Norway in
3489 Geneva.</p>
3490
3491 <p>Three years later, I was still curious about the content of that
3492 document, and again asked for a copy, believing the negotiation was
3493 over now.  This time
3494 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/kopi_av_dokumenter_i_sak_2012914">I
3495 asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
3496 receiver</a> and
3497 <a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/brev_om_internet_governance_og_p">asked
3498 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender</a> for a
3499 copy, to see if they both agreed that it should be withheld from the
3500 public.  The ministry upheld its rejection quoting the same law
3501 reference as before, while the permanent mission rejected it quoting a
3502 different clause
3503 (<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20
3504 letter b</a>), claiming that they were required to keep the
3505 content of the document from the public because it contained
3506 information given to Norway with the expressed or implied expectation
3507 that the information should not be made public.  I asked the permanent
3508 mission for an explanation, and was told that the document contained
3509 an account from a meeting held in the Pentagon for a limited group of NATO
3510 nations where the organiser of the meeting did not intend the content
3511 of the meeting to be publicly known.  They explained that giving me a
3512 copy might cause Norway to not get access to similar information in
3513 the future and thus hurt the future foreign interests of Norway.  They
3514 also explained that the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was not
3515 the author of the document, they only got a copy of it, and because of
3516 this had not listed it in their mail journal.</p>
3517
3518 <p>Armed with this
3519 knowledge I asked the Ministry to reconsider and asked who was the
3520 author of the document, now realising that it was not same as the
3521 "sender" according to Ministry of Transport and Communications.  The
3522 ministry upheld its rejection but told me the name of the author of
3523 the document.  According to
3524 <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/unga69_rapport1/id2001204/">a
3525 government report</a> the author was with the Permanent Mission of
3526 Norway in New York a bit more than a year later (2014-09-22), so I
3527 guessed that might be the office responsible for writing and sending
3528 the report initially and
3529 <a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/mote_2012_i_pentagon_om_itu">asked
3530 them for a copy</a> but I was obviously wrong as I was told that the
3531 document was unknown to them and that the author did not work there
3532 when the document was written.  Next, I asked the Permanent Mission of
3533 Norway in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider and at least
3534 tell me who sent the document to Deputy Permanent Representative with
3535 the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva.  The Foreign Ministry also
3536 upheld its rejection, but told me that the person sending the document
3537 to Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was the defence attaché with
3538 the Norwegian Embassy in Washington.  I do not know if this is the
3539 same person as the author of the document.</p>
3540
3541 <p>If I understand the situation correctly, someone capable of
3542 inviting selected NATO nations to a meeting in Pentagon organised a
3543 meeting where someone representing the Norwegian defence attaché in
3544 Washington attended, and the account from this meeting is interpreted
3545 by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to expose Norways
3546 negotiating position, negotiating strategies and similar regarding the
3547 ITU negotiations on Internet Governance.  It is truly amazing what can
3548 be derived from mere meta-data.</p>
3549
3550 <p>I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
3551 And what exactly was said and done at the meeting?  Anyone know?</p>
3552
3553       </div>
3554       <div class="tags">
3555
3556
3557         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
3558
3559
3560       </div>
3561     </div>
3562     <div class="padding"></div>
3563
3564     <div class="entry">
3565       <div class="title">
3566         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_book___Fri_kultur__by__lessig__a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of__Free_Culture__from_2004.html">New book, "Fri kultur" by @lessig, a Norwegian Bokmål translation of "Free Culture" from 2004</a>
3567       </div>
3568       <div class="date">
3569         31st October 2015
3570       </div>
3571       <div class="body">
3572         <p>People keep asking me where to get the various forms of the book I
3573 published last week, the Norwegian Bokmål edition of Lawrence Lessigs
3574 book <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>.  It was
3575 published on paper via lulu.com, and is also available in PDF, ePub
3576 and MOBI format.  I currently sell the paper edition for self cost
3577 from lulu.com, but might extend the distribution to book stores like
3578 Amazon and Barnes & Noble later.  This will double the price and force
3579 me to make a profit from selling the book.  Anyway, here are links to
3580 get the book in different formats:</p>
3581
3582 <ul>
3583
3584   <li><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22406445.html">Buy
3585     paper edition from lulu.com</a></li>
3586
3587   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf">Download
3588     PDF, size 7.9 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
3589
3590   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub">Download
3591     ePub, size 11 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
3592
3593   <li><a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi">Download
3594     MOBI, size 3.8 MiB</a> (gratis/free)</li>
3595
3596 </ul>
3597
3598 <p>Note that the MOBI version have problems with the table of content,
3599 at least with the viewers I have been able to test.  And the ePub file
3600 have several problems according to
3601 <a href="https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck">epubcheck</a>, but seem
3602 to display fine in the viewers I have tested.  All the files needed to
3603 create the book in various forms are available from
3604 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">the
3605 github project page</a>.</p>
3606
3607 <p>The project got press coverage from the Norwegian IT news site
3608 digi.no.  Check out the article
3609 "<a href="http://www.digi.no/juss_og_samfunn/2015/10/29/vil-apne-politikernes-oyne-for-creative-commons">Vil
3610 åpne politikernes øyne for Creative Commons</a>".</li>
3611
3612 <p>I've <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">blogged
3613 about the project</a> as it moved along.  The blogs document the translation
3614 progress and insights I had along the way.</p>
3615
3616       </div>
3617       <div class="tags">
3618
3619
3620         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>.
3621
3622
3623       </div>
3624     </div>
3625     <div class="padding"></div>
3626
3627     <div class="entry">
3628       <div class="title">
3629         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Free_Culture__by__lessig___The_background_story_for_Creative_Commons___new_edition_available.html">"Free Culture" by @lessig - The background story for Creative Commons - new edition available</a>
3630       </div>
3631       <div class="date">
3632         23rd October 2015
3633       </div>
3634       <div class="body">
3635         <p><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">Click
3636 here to buy the book</a>.</p>
3637
3638 <p>In 2004, as the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons
3639 movement</a> gained momentum, its creator Lawrence Lessig wrote the
3640 book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_(book)">Free
3641 Culture</a> to explain the problems with increasing copyright
3642 regulation and suggest some solutions.  I read the book back then and
3643 was very moved by it.  Reading the book inspired me and changed the
3644 way I looked on copyright law, and I would love it if more people
3645 would read it too.</p>
3646
3647 <p>Because of this, I decided in the summer of 2012 to translate it to
3648 Norwegian Bokmål and publish it for those of my friends and family
3649 that prefer to read books in Norwegian.  I translated the book using
3650 docbook and a gettext PO file, and a byproduct of this process is a
3651 new edition of the English original.  I've been in touch with the
3652 author during by work, and he said it was fine with him if I also
3653 published an English version.  So I decided to do so.  Today, I made
3654 this edition
3655 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html">available
3656 for sale on Lulu.com</a>, for those interested in a paper book.  This
3657 is the cover:
3658
3659 <p align="center"><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22402863.html"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-10-23-free-culture-english-published-cover.png"/></a></p>
3660
3661 <p>The Norwegian Bokmål version will be available for purchase in a
3662 few days.  I also plan to publish a French version in a few weeks or
3663 months, depending on the amount of people with knowledge of French to
3664 join the translation project.  So far there is only one active
3665 person, but the French book is almost completely translated but
3666 need some proof reading.</p>
3667
3668 <p>The book is also available in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats from
3669 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
3670 github project page</a>.  Note the ePub and MOBI versions have some
3671 formatting problems I believe is due to bugs in the docbook tool
3672 dbtoepub (Debian BTS issues
3673 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=795842">#795842</a>
3674 and
3675 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796871">#796871</a>),
3676 but I have not taken the time to investigate.  I recommend the PDF and
3677 ePub version for now, as they seem to show up fine in the viewers I
3678 have available.</p>
3679
3680 <p>After the translation to Norwegian Bokmål was complete, I was able
3681 to secure some sponsoring from
3682 <a href="http://www.nuugfoundation.no/">the NUUG Foundation</a> to
3683 print the book.  This is the reason their logo is located on the back
3684 cover. I am very grateful for their contribution, and will use it to
3685 give a copy of the Norwegian edition to members of the Norwegian
3686 Parliament and other decision makers here in Norway.</p>
3687
3688       </div>
3689       <div class="tags">
3690
3691
3692         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>.
3693
3694
3695       </div>
3696     </div>
3697     <div class="padding"></div>
3698
3699     <div class="entry">
3700       <div class="title">
3701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html">Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago</a>
3702       </div>
3703       <div class="date">
3704         19th October 2015
3705       </div>
3706       <div class="body">
3707         <p>Last year, <a href="https://lessig2016.us/">US president candidate
3708 in the Democratic Party</a> Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden.  The
3709 one hour interview was
3710 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE">published by
3711 Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube</a>, and the meeting took
3712 place 2014-10-20.</p>
3713
3714 <p>The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful
3715 information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about
3716 being raised.  Please check it out.</p>
3717
3718 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o_Sr96TFQQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
3719
3720 <p>I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try
3721 to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any
3722 luck.  It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the
3723 Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament,
3724 <a href="https://tale.holderdeord.no/speeches/s131106/68">claiming
3725 Snowden is no Whistle-Blower</a> because he should have taken up his
3726 concerns internally and using official channels.  It make me sad
3727 that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.</p>
3728
3729       </div>
3730       <div class="tags">
3731
3732
3733         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>.
3734
3735
3736       </div>
3737     </div>
3738     <div class="padding"></div>
3739
3740     <div class="entry">
3741       <div class="title">
3742         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html">The Story of Aaron Swartz - Let us all weep!</a>
3743       </div>
3744       <div class="date">
3745          8th October 2015
3746       </div>
3747       <div class="body">
3748         <p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
3749 Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
3750 and depressing at the same time.  The work of Aaron Swartz has
3751 inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
3752 was able to initiate or complete.  I wish I am able to do as much good
3753 in my life as he did in his.  Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
3754 inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
3755 improving the society and this world.  And it is depressing in
3756 documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
3757 corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
3758 downloading too many scientific articles.  Aaron is dead.  Let us all
3759 weep.</p>
3760
3761 <p>The movie is also available on
3762 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>.  I
3763 wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
3764 my parents.</p>
3765
3766       </div>
3767       <div class="tags">
3768
3769
3770         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>.
3771
3772
3773       </div>
3774     </div>
3775     <div class="padding"></div>
3776
3777     <div class="entry">
3778       <div class="title">
3779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html">French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</a>
3780       </div>
3781       <div class="date">
3782          1st October 2015
3783       </div>
3784       <div class="body">
3785         <p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
3786 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
3787 Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
3788 reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
3789 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
3790 developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
3791 to try to create a French version of the book.  He started with the
3792 French translation available from the
3793 <a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
3794 pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
3795 the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
3796 to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition.  We meet
3797 on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
3798 channel</a> to discuss the work.  If you want to help create a French
3799 edition, check out
3800 <a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
3801 repository</a> and join us on IRC.  If the French edition look good,
3802 we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com.  A French version of
3803 the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
3804
3805       </div>
3806       <div class="tags">
3807
3808
3809         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>.
3810
3811
3812       </div>
3813     </div>
3814     <div class="padding"></div>
3815
3816     <div class="entry">
3817       <div class="title">
3818         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
3819       </div>
3820       <div class="date">
3821         24th September 2015
3822       </div>
3823       <div class="body">
3824         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
3825 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
3826 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
3827 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
3828 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
3829 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
3830 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
3831
3832 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
3833
3834 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
3835 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
3836 by someone else.  I found
3837 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
3838 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
3839 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
3840 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
3841 from him.  Via
3842 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
3843 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
3844 discovered
3845 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
3846 available in Debian.</p>
3847
3848 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
3849 battery stats ever since. Now my
3850 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
3851 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
3852 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
3853 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
3854
3855 <pre>
3856 #!/bin/sh
3857 # Inspired by
3858 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
3859 # See also
3860 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
3861 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
3862
3863 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
3864     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
3865
3866 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
3867     (
3868         printf "timestamp,"
3869         for f in $files; do
3870             printf "%s," $f
3871         done
3872         echo
3873     ) > "$logfile"
3874 fi
3875
3876 log_battery() {
3877     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
3878     # when several log processes run in parallel.
3879     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
3880         for f in $files; do \
3881             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
3882         done)
3883     echo "$msg"
3884 }
3885
3886 cd /sys/class/power_supply
3887
3888 for bat in BAT*; do
3889     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
3890 done
3891 </pre>
3892
3893 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
3894 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
3895 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
3896 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
3897 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
3898 The code for the Debian package
3899 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
3900 available on github</a>.</p>
3901
3902 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
3903
3904 <pre>
3905 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
3906 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
3907 [...]
3908 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
3909 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
3910 </pre>
3911
3912 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
3913 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
3914 battery.</p>
3915
3916 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
3917 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
3918 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
3919 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
3920 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
3921 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
3922 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
3923 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
3924 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
3925 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
3926 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
3927 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
3928 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
3929 Linux too.</p>
3930
3931 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
3932 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
3933 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
3934 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
3935 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
3936 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
3937 load).</p>
3938
3939 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
3940 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
3941 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
3942 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
3943 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
3944 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
3945 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
3946 those.</p>
3947
3948 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
3949 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
3950 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
3951 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
3952 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
3953 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
3954 specific.</p>
3955
3956       </div>
3957       <div class="tags">
3958
3959
3960         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3961
3962
3963       </div>
3964     </div>
3965     <div class="padding"></div>
3966
3967     <div class="entry">
3968       <div class="title">
3969         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
3970       </div>
3971       <div class="date">
3972          3rd September 2015
3973       </div>
3974       <div class="body">
3975         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
3976 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
3977 the
3978 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
3979 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
3980 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
3981 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
3982
3983 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
3984 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
3985 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
3986 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
3987 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
3988 version.  Not only did he create a
3989 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
3990 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
3991 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
3992 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
3993 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
3994 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
3995 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
3996 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
3997 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
3998 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
3999
4000 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
4001 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
4002 current english version look like this:</p>
4003
4004 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
4005
4006 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
4007 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
4008 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
4009 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
4010 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
4011
4012 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
4013 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
4014 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
4015 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
4016 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
4017 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
4018
4019       </div>
4020       <div class="tags">
4021
4022
4023         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>.
4024
4025
4026       </div>
4027     </div>
4028     <div class="padding"></div>
4029
4030     <div class="entry">
4031       <div class="title">
4032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
4033       </div>
4034       <div class="date">
4035         19th August 2015
4036       </div>
4037       <div class="body">
4038         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
4039 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
4040 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
4041 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
4042 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
4043 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
4044 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
4045 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
4046 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
4047 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
4048 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
4049 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
4050 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
4051 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
4052 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
4053 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
4054 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
4055
4056 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
4057 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
4058 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
4059 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
4060 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
4061 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
4062
4063       </div>
4064       <div class="tags">
4065
4066
4067         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>.
4068
4069
4070       </div>
4071     </div>
4072     <div class="padding"></div>
4073
4074     <div class="entry">
4075       <div class="title">
4076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
4077       </div>
4078       <div class="date">
4079          9th August 2015
4080       </div>
4081       <div class="body">
4082         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
4083 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
4084 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
4085 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
4086 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
4087 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
4088 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
4089 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
4090 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
4091
4092 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
4093 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
4094 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
4095 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
4096 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
4097
4098 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
4099 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
4100 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
4101 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
4102 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
4103 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
4104
4105 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
4106 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
4107 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
4108 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
4109 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
4110 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
4111 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
4112 bring the prize down further.</p>
4113
4114 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
4115 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
4116 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
4117 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
4118 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
4119 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
4120 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
4121 to the task.</p>
4122
4123 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
4124 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
4125 status can as usual be found on
4126 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
4127 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
4128 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
4129 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
4130 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
4131 formatting.</p>
4132
4133 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
4134 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
4135 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
4136 result in a few months.</p>
4137
4138       </div>
4139       <div class="tags">
4140
4141
4142         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>.
4143
4144
4145       </div>
4146     </div>
4147     <div class="padding"></div>
4148
4149     <div class="entry">
4150       <div class="title">
4151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
4152       </div>
4153       <div class="date">
4154         16th July 2015
4155       </div>
4156       <div class="body">
4157         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
4158 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
4159 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
4160 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
4161 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
4162 chapter.  Based on the
4163 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
4164 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
4165 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
4166 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
4167 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
4168 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
4169 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
4170 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
4171
4172 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
4173 and add this text there:</p>
4174
4175 <pre>
4176 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
4177 </pre>
4178
4179 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
4180 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
4181 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
4182
4183 <pre>
4184 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
4185 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
4186   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
4187     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
4188 \usepackage{endnotes}
4189 \let\footnote=\endnote
4190 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
4191 \begin{document}
4192     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
4193   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
4194 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
4195 </pre>
4196
4197 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
4198 this:</p>
4199
4200 <pre>
4201 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
4202 </pre>
4203
4204 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
4205 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
4206 book project</a> is located.</p>
4207
4208       </div>
4209       <div class="tags">
4210
4211
4212         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>.
4213
4214
4215       </div>
4216     </div>
4217     <div class="padding"></div>
4218
4219     <div class="entry">
4220       <div class="title">
4221         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
4222       </div>
4223       <div class="date">
4224          7th July 2015
4225       </div>
4226       <div class="body">
4227         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
4228 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
4229 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
4230 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
4231 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
4232 does not.</p>
4233
4234 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
4235 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
4236 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
4237 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
4238
4239 <p><blockquote>
4240
4241 <p>According to
4242 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
4243 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
4244 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
4245 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
4246 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
4247 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
4248
4249 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
4250 PDF named
4251 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
4252 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
4253 fees:</p>
4254
4255 <ul>
4256  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
4257   <ul>
4258    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
4259      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
4260      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
4261      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
4262
4263    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
4264      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
4265   </ul></li>
4266
4267  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
4268   <ul>
4269    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
4270      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
4271      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
4272
4273    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
4274      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
4275   </ul></li>
4276 </ul>
4277
4278 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
4279 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
4280 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
4281 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
4282 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
4283 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
4284
4285 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
4286 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
4287 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
4288 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
4289 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
4290 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
4291 access to personalized services?</p>
4292
4293 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
4294 Internet.</p>
4295 </blockquote></p>
4296
4297 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
4298 with the MPEG LA:</p>
4299
4300 <p><blockquote>
4301 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
4302 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
4303
4304 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
4305 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
4306 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
4307 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
4308 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
4309 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
4310 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
4311
4312 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
4313 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
4314 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
4315 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
4316 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
4317 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
4318 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
4319 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
4320 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
4321 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
4322 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
4323 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
4324
4325 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
4326 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
4327 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
4328 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
4329 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
4330 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
4331 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
4332
4333 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
4334 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
4335 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
4336 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
4337
4338 <p>For your reference, I have attached
4339 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
4340 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
4341 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
4342 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
4343 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
4344 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
4345 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
4346 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
4347 be used for execution.</p>
4348
4349 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
4350 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
4351 free to contact me directly.</p>
4352 </blockquote></p>
4353
4354 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
4355 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
4356 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
4357 But I still had a few questions:</p>
4358
4359 <p><blockquote>
4360 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
4361 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
4362 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
4363 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
4364 typically look similar to this:
4365
4366 <p><blockquote>
4367   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
4368   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
4369   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
4370   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
4371   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
4372   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
4373   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
4374   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
4375 </blockquote></p>
4376
4377 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
4378 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
4379 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
4380 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
4381 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
4382 </blockquote></p>
4383
4384 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
4385 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
4386
4387 <p><blockquote>
4388
4389 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
4390 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
4391 reads:</p>
4392
4393 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
4394 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
4395 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
4396 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
4397 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
4398 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
4399 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
4400 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
4401
4402 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
4403 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
4404 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
4405 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
4406 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
4407 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
4408 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
4409 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
4410
4411 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
4412 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
4413 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
4414 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
4415 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
4416 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
4417 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
4418 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
4419 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
4420
4421 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
4422 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
4423 Norway.</p>
4424
4425 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
4426 assistance, just let me know.</p>
4427 </blockquote></p>
4428
4429 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
4430 asked for more information:</p>
4431
4432 <p><blockquote>
4433
4434 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
4435 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
4436 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
4437 list available from &lt;URL:
4438 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
4439 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
4440 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
4441 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
4442 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
4443
4444 </blockquote></p>
4445
4446 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
4447 in that list:</p>
4448
4449 <p><blockquote>
4450
4451 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
4452 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
4453 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
4454 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
4455 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
4456 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
4457 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
4458 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
4459 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
4460
4461 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
4462 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
4463 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
4464 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
4465 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
4466 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
4467 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
4468 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
4469 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
4470 Portfolio Patents.</p>
4471 </blockquote></p>
4472
4473 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
4474 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
4475 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
4476 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
4477 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
4478 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
4479 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
4480 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
4481 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
4482
4483       </div>
4484       <div class="tags">
4485
4486
4487         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4488
4489
4490       </div>
4491     </div>
4492     <div class="padding"></div>
4493
4494     <div class="entry">
4495       <div class="title">
4496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
4497       </div>
4498       <div class="date">
4499          5th July 2015
4500       </div>
4501       <div class="body">
4502         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
4503 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
4504 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
4505 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
4506 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
4507 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
4508 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
4509 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
4510 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
4511 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
4512 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
4513
4514 <p>One tip I got was to use the
4515 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
4516 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
4517 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
4518 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
4519 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
4520 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
4521
4522 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
4523 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
4524 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
4525 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
4526 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
4527 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
4528 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
4529 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
4530 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
4531 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
4532 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
4533 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
4534 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
4535 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
4536 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
4537
4538 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
4539 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
4540 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
4541 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
4542
4543 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
4544 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
4545
4546 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
4547 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
4548 different
4549 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
4550 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
4551
4552       </div>
4553       <div class="tags">
4554
4555
4556         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4557
4558
4559       </div>
4560     </div>
4561     <div class="padding"></div>
4562
4563     <div class="entry">
4564       <div class="title">
4565         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
4566       </div>
4567       <div class="date">
4568          3rd July 2015
4569       </div>
4570       <div class="body">
4571         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
4572 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
4573 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
4574 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
4575 flickering.</p>
4576
4577 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
4578 still as
4579 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
4580 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
4581 good help from
4582 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
4583 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
4584 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
4585 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
4586 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
4587 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
4588 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
4589 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
4590 deteriorated since X41.</p>
4591
4592 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
4593 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
4594 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
4595 have suggestions.</p>
4596
4597 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
4598 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
4599 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
4600
4601       </div>
4602       <div class="tags">
4603
4604
4605         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4606
4607
4608       </div>
4609     </div>
4610     <div class="padding"></div>
4611
4612     <div class="entry">
4613       <div class="title">
4614         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
4615       </div>
4616       <div class="date">
4617          2nd July 2015
4618       </div>
4619       <div class="body">
4620         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
4621 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
4622 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
4623 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
4624 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
4625 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
4626 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
4627 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
4628 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
4629 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
4630 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
4631 Youtube too</a>.</p>
4632
4633 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
4634 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
4635 pages</a> to view them.</p>
4636
4637 <ul>
4638
4639   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
4640       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
4641
4642   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
4643
4644   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
4645       (Olav Helland)</li>
4646
4647   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
4648       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
4649
4650   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
4651
4652   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
4653
4654   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
4655       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
4656
4657   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
4658
4659   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
4660
4661   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
4662
4663   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
4664
4665   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
4666       Sevens)</li>
4667
4668   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
4669       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
4670
4671   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
4672       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
4673
4674   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
4675       Dyvik)</li>
4676
4677   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
4678
4679 </ul>
4680
4681 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
4682 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
4683 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
4684 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
4685 which sent me on a detour to
4686 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
4687 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
4688 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
4689
4690       </div>
4691       <div class="tags">
4692
4693
4694         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>.
4695
4696
4697       </div>
4698     </div>
4699     <div class="padding"></div>
4700
4701     <div class="entry">
4702       <div class="title">
4703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
4704       </div>
4705       <div class="date">
4706         15th June 2015
4707       </div>
4708       <div class="body">
4709         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
4710 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
4711 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
4712 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
4713 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
4714 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
4715 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
4716 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
4717 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
4718
4719 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
4720 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
4721 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
4722 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
4723
4724 <pre>
4725 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
4726
4727 real    0m2.841s
4728 user    0m0.184s
4729 sys     0m0.036s
4730 %
4731 </pre>
4732
4733 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
4734 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
4735 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
4736 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
4737 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
4738
4739 <pre>
4740 digraph ownership {
4741 rankdir = LR;
4742 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
4743 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
4744 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
4745 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
4746 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
4747 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
4748 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
4749 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
4750 }
4751 </pre>
4752
4753 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
4754 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
4755 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
4756
4757 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
4758
4759 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
4760 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
4761 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
4762 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
4763 of the ownership links.</p>
4764
4765 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
4766 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
4767
4768 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
4769 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
4770 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
4771 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
4772 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
4773 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
4774 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
4775
4776       </div>
4777       <div class="tags">
4778
4779
4780         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
4781
4782
4783       </div>
4784     </div>
4785     <div class="padding"></div>
4786
4787     <div class="entry">
4788       <div class="title">
4789         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
4790       </div>
4791       <div class="date">
4792         11th June 2015
4793       </div>
4794       <div class="body">
4795         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
4796 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
4797 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
4798 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
4799 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
4800 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
4801 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
4802 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
4803 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
4804 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
4805 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
4806 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
4807 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
4808
4809 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
4810 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
4811 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
4812 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
4813 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
4814 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
4815 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
4816 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
4817 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
4818 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
4819
4820 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
4821 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
4822 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
4823 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
4824 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
4825 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
4826 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
4827 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
4828 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
4829
4830 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
4831 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
4832 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
4833 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
4834 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
4835 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
4836 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
4837 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
4838 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
4839 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
4840 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
4841
4842       </div>
4843       <div class="tags">
4844
4845
4846         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>.
4847
4848
4849       </div>
4850     </div>
4851     <div class="padding"></div>
4852
4853     <div class="entry">
4854       <div class="title">
4855         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
4856       </div>
4857       <div class="date">
4858         10th May 2015
4859       </div>
4860       <div class="body">
4861         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
4862 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
4863 criminal or not, are
4864 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
4865 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
4866 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
4867 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
4868 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
4869 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
4870 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
4871 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
4872 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
4873 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
4874 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
4875 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
4876 the police.</p>
4877
4878 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
4879 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
4880 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
4881 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
4882 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
4883 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
4884 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
4885 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
4886 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
4887 is good to know that
4888 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
4889 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
4890 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
4891 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
4892 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
4893 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
4894 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
4895 business getting access to that information.</p>
4896
4897 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
4898 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
4899 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
4900 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
4901 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
4902 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
4903 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
4904
4905 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
4906 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
4907 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
4908 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
4909
4910 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
4911 really could make such decision, I wrote
4912 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
4913 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
4914 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
4915
4916       </div>
4917       <div class="tags">
4918
4919
4920         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4921
4922
4923       </div>
4924     </div>
4925     <div class="padding"></div>
4926
4927     <div class="entry">
4928       <div class="title">
4929         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
4930       </div>
4931       <div class="date">
4932          1st May 2015
4933       </div>
4934       <div class="body">
4935         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
4936 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
4937 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
4938 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
4939 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
4940 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
4941 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
4942
4943 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
4944 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
4945 the 2012 numbers are from
4946 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
4947 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
4948 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
4949 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
4950 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
4951
4952 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
4953 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
4954 enough.  See for example a
4955 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
4956 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
4957 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
4958 to get the storage requirements.</p>
4959
4960 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
4961 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
4962 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
4963 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
4964 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
4965
4966 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
4967 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
4968 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
4969 and large organisations:</p>
4970
4971 <table border="1">
4972 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
4973 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
4974 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
4975 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
4976 </table>
4977
4978 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
4979 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
4980 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
4981 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
4982 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
4983 collecting the data?</p>
4984
4985       </div>
4986       <div class="tags">
4987
4988
4989         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
4990
4991
4992       </div>
4993     </div>
4994     <div class="padding"></div>
4995
4996     <div class="entry">
4997       <div class="title">
4998         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
4999       </div>
5000       <div class="date">
5001         26th April 2015
5002       </div>
5003       <div class="body">
5004         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
5005 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
5006 announcement today</a>:</p>
5007
5008 <pre>
5009 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
5010 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
5011 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
5012 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
5013
5014 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
5015 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
5016 later today ;)
5017
5018 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
5019 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
5020 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
5021 be possible and encouraged!
5022
5023 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
5024 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
5025
5026 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
5027 operating system for schools, universities and other
5028 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
5029 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
5030 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
5031 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
5032 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
5033 days.
5034
5035 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
5036 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
5037 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
5038 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
5039
5040 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
5041 installation instructions are available, including detailed
5042 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
5043 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
5044 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
5045 least 5 characters!
5046
5047 == Where to download ==
5048
5049 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
5050 can be downloaded at the following locations:
5051
5052     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
5053     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
5054
5055 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
5056
5057 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
5058 available, with more software included (saving additional download
5059 time):
5060
5061     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
5062     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
5063
5064 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
5065
5066 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
5067 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
5068 options.
5069
5070 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
5071
5072 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
5073 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
5074
5075 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
5076 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
5077 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
5078 online version of the translated manual.
5079
5080 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
5081 release notes and the installation manual:
5082 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
5083 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
5084
5085
5086 == Errata / known problems ==
5087
5088     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
5089     DHCP (#780461).
5090
5091     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
5092
5093 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
5094 hostname immediately.
5095
5096 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
5097 more current and complete list.
5098
5099 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
5100
5101 === Software updates ===
5102
5103 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
5104
5105  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
5106    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
5107    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
5108
5109  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
5110    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
5111    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
5112    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
5113      the others see the manual.
5114  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
5115  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
5116  * GOsa 2.7.4
5117  * LTSP 5.5.4
5118  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
5119  * new boot framework: systemd
5120  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
5121  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
5122  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
5123  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
5124  * golearn 0.9
5125  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
5126  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
5127  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
5128  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
5129    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
5130
5131 === Installation changes ===
5132
5133     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
5134     for the hardware present.
5135
5136 === Fixed bugs ===
5137
5138 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
5139 from a user perspective:
5140
5141  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
5142    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
5143    information is corrected (710362)
5144
5145  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
5146
5147 === Sugar desktop removed ===
5148
5149 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
5150 available in Debian Edu jessie.
5151
5152
5153 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
5154
5155 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
5156 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
5157 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
5158 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
5159 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
5160 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
5161 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
5162 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
5163 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
5164 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
5165 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
5166 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
5167 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
5168 environment.
5169
5170 == About Debian ==
5171
5172 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
5173 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
5174 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
5175 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
5176 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
5177 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
5178 operating system.
5179
5180 == Thanks ==
5181
5182 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
5183 You rock.
5184 </pre>
5185
5186       </div>
5187       <div class="tags">
5188
5189
5190         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5191
5192
5193       </div>
5194     </div>
5195     <div class="padding"></div>
5196
5197     <div class="entry">
5198       <div class="title">
5199         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
5200       </div>
5201       <div class="date">
5202         15th April 2015
5203       </div>
5204       <div class="body">
5205         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
5206 computer system for schools I've involved in,
5207 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
5208 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
5209 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
5210 Agarwal.</p>
5211
5212 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5213
5214 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
5215 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
5216 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
5217 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
5218 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
5219 few software start-ups as well.</p>
5220
5221 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5222 project?</strong></p>
5223
5224 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
5225 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
5226 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
5227 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
5228 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
5229 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
5230 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
5231
5232 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5233 Edu?</strong></p>
5234
5235 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
5236 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
5237 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
5238 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
5239 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
5240 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
5241 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
5242 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
5243
5244 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
5245 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
5246 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
5247 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
5248 for the developer per-se.</p>
5249
5250 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5251 Edu?</strong></p>
5252
5253 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
5254 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
5255 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
5256
5257 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
5258 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
5259 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
5260 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
5261 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
5262 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
5263 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
5264
5265 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
5266 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
5267 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
5268
5269 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
5270 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
5271 interactive manner. While sites such as the
5272 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
5273 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
5274 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
5275 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
5276 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
5277 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
5278 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
5279 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
5280 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
5281 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
5282 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
5283
5284 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
5285 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
5286 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
5287 also be used.</p>
5288
5289 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
5290 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
5291 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
5292 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
5293 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
5294 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
5295 the user's input.</p>
5296
5297 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
5298 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
5299 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
5300 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
5301 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
5302 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
5303 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
5304 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
5305
5306 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
5307 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
5308 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
5309 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
5310 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
5311 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
5312 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
5313 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
5314
5315 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5316
5317 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
5318 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
5319 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
5320 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
5321 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
5322
5323 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5324 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5325
5326 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
5327 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
5328 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
5329 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
5330 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
5331 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
5332
5333 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
5334 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
5335 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
5336 well.</p>
5337
5338 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
5339 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
5340 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
5341 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
5342
5343 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
5344 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
5345 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
5346 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
5347 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
5348 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
5349 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
5350 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
5351 releases.</p>
5352
5353 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
5354 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
5355 is aimed at.
5356
5357 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
5358 around 2 years, and
5359 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
5360 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
5361 there was :</p>
5362
5363 <ol>
5364
5365   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
5366    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
5367    portion/syllabus given.</li>
5368
5369   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
5370    is in the syllabus.</li>
5371
5372   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
5373    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
5374    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
5375    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
5376    as recognizable as say a
5377    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
5378    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
5379    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
5380    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
5381    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
5382    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
5383
5384 </ol>
5385
5386       </div>
5387       <div class="tags">
5388
5389
5390         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5391
5392
5393       </div>
5394     </div>
5395     <div class="padding"></div>
5396
5397     <div class="entry">
5398       <div class="title">
5399         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
5400       </div>
5401       <div class="date">
5402          7th April 2015
5403       </div>
5404       <div class="body">
5405         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
5406 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
5407 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
5408
5409 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
5410 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
5411 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
5412 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
5413 part of my involvement with the
5414 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
5415 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
5416 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
5417 Hackathon with our friends
5418 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
5419 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
5420 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
5421 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
5422
5423 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
5424 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
5425
5426       </div>
5427       <div class="tags">
5428
5429
5430         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
5431
5432
5433       </div>
5434     </div>
5435     <div class="padding"></div>
5436
5437     <div class="entry">
5438       <div class="title">
5439         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
5440       </div>
5441       <div class="date">
5442          4th April 2015
5443       </div>
5444       <div class="body">
5445         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
5446 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
5447 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
5448 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
5449 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
5450 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
5451 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
5452 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
5453 project pages.  You can also check out the
5454 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
5455 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
5456 and HTML version available in the
5457 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
5458 directory</a>.</p>
5459
5460 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
5461 you find any.</p>
5462
5463       </div>
5464       <div class="tags">
5465
5466
5467         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>.
5468
5469
5470       </div>
5471     </div>
5472     <div class="padding"></div>
5473
5474     <div class="entry">
5475       <div class="title">
5476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
5477       </div>
5478       <div class="date">
5479          9th March 2015
5480       </div>
5481       <div class="body">
5482         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
5483 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
5484 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
5485 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
5486 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
5487 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
5488 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
5489 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
5490 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
5491 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
5492 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
5493 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
5494 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
5495 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
5496
5497 <p>The list of NUUG videos
5498 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
5499 include things like a
5500 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
5501 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
5502 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
5503 re-implementation</a>, the
5504 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
5505 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
5506 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
5507 video</A> and many others.</p>
5508
5509 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
5510 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
5511 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
5512 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
5513 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
5514 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
5515 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
5516 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
5517 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
5518 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
5519
5520 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
5521 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
5522 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
5523 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
5524 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
5525 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
5526 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
5527 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
5528 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
5529 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
5530
5531       </div>
5532       <div class="tags">
5533
5534
5535         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5536
5537
5538       </div>
5539     </div>
5540     <div class="padding"></div>
5541
5542     <div class="entry">
5543       <div class="title">
5544         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
5545       </div>
5546       <div class="date">
5547         28th February 2015
5548       </div>
5549       <div class="body">
5550         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
5551 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
5552 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
5553 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
5554 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
5555 made for
5556 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
5557 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
5558 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
5559 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
5560 a friend have
5561 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
5562 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
5563 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
5564 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
5565 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
5566 it happen ourselves.
5567 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
5568 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
5569 is.</p>
5570
5571 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
5572 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
5573
5574       </div>
5575       <div class="tags">
5576
5577
5578         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5579
5580
5581       </div>
5582     </div>
5583     <div class="padding"></div>
5584
5585     <div class="entry">
5586       <div class="title">
5587         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
5588       </div>
5589       <div class="date">
5590         25th February 2015
5591       </div>
5592       <div class="body">
5593         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
5594 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
5595 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
5596 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
5597 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
5598 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
5599 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
5600 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
5601 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
5602 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
5603 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
5604 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
5605 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
5606 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
5607 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
5608 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
5609 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
5610
5611 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
5612 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
5613 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
5614 with VLC.</p>
5615
5616 <ul>
5617   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
5618   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
5619 </ul>
5620
5621 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
5622 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
5623 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
5624 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
5625 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
5626 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
5627 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
5628
5629 <blockquote><pre>
5630 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
5631  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
5632  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
5633 </pre></blockquote>
5634
5635 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
5636 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
5637 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
5638 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
5639
5640       </div>
5641       <div class="tags">
5642
5643
5644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5645
5646
5647       </div>
5648     </div>
5649     <div class="padding"></div>
5650
5651     <div class="entry">
5652       <div class="title">
5653         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
5654       </div>
5655       <div class="date">
5656         10th February 2015
5657       </div>
5658       <div class="body">
5659         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
5660 that
5661 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
5662 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
5663 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
5664 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
5665 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
5666 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
5667 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
5668 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
5669 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
5670 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
5671 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
5672 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
5673 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
5674 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
5675 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
5676
5677 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
5678 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
5679 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
5680 controversy about these scanners.</p>
5681
5682 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
5683 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
5684 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
5685
5686       </div>
5687       <div class="tags">
5688
5689
5690         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>.
5691
5692
5693       </div>
5694     </div>
5695     <div class="padding"></div>
5696
5697     <div class="entry">
5698       <div class="title">
5699         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
5700       </div>
5701       <div class="date">
5702          8th February 2015
5703       </div>
5704       <div class="body">
5705         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
5706 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
5707 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
5708 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
5709 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
5710 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
5711 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
5712 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
5713 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
5714 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
5715 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
5716 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
5717
5718 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
5719 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
5720 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
5721 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
5722
5723 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
5724 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
5725 distribute the TV content.  The
5726 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
5727 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
5728 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
5729 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
5730 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
5731 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
5732 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
5733 following activity, we now have the schedule
5734 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
5735 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
5736 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
5737 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
5738
5739 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
5740 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
5741 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
5742 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
5743 streams are working as they should.</p>
5744
5745       </div>
5746       <div class="tags">
5747
5748
5749         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>.
5750
5751
5752       </div>
5753     </div>
5754     <div class="padding"></div>
5755
5756     <div class="entry">
5757       <div class="title">
5758         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
5759       </div>
5760       <div class="date">
5761         12th January 2015
5762       </div>
5763       <div class="body">
5764         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
5765 Foundation</a> announced a new video
5766 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
5767 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
5768 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
5769 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
5770 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
5771 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
5772
5773 <p>But today I was told that
5774 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
5775 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
5776 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
5777 available in
5778 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
5779 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
5780 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
5781
5782 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
5783 Libreplanet
5784 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
5785 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
5786
5787       </div>
5788       <div class="tags">
5789
5790
5791         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5792
5793
5794       </div>
5795     </div>
5796     <div class="padding"></div>
5797
5798     <div class="entry">
5799       <div class="title">
5800         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
5801       </div>
5802       <div class="date">
5803         30th December 2014
5804       </div>
5805       <div class="body">
5806         <p>I am very happy that we in the
5807 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
5808 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
5809 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
5810 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
5811 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
5812 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
5813 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
5814 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
5815 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
5816 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
5817
5818 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
5819 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
5820 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
5821 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
5822 reports in public.</p>
5823
5824       </div>
5825       <div class="tags">
5826
5827
5828         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>.
5829
5830
5831       </div>
5832     </div>
5833     <div class="padding"></div>
5834
5835     <div class="entry">
5836       <div class="title">
5837         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
5838       </div>
5839       <div class="date">
5840         19th December 2014
5841       </div>
5842       <div class="body">
5843         <p>So, Sony caved in
5844 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
5845 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
5846 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
5847 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
5848 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
5849 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
5850 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
5851 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
5852 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
5853 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
5854 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
5855 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
5856 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
5857
5858 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
5859 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
5860 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
5861 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
5862
5863 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
5864 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
5865 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
5866 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
5867 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
5868 income. :)</p>
5869
5870       </div>
5871       <div class="tags">
5872
5873
5874         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5875
5876
5877       </div>
5878     </div>
5879     <div class="padding"></div>
5880
5881     <div class="entry">
5882       <div class="title">
5883         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
5884       </div>
5885       <div class="date">
5886         22nd November 2014
5887       </div>
5888       <div class="body">
5889         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
5890 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
5891 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
5892 courtesy of
5893 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
5894 Schubert</a> and
5895 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
5896 McVittie</a>.
5897
5898 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
5899 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
5900 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
5901 you upgrade:</p>
5902
5903 <p><blockquote><pre>
5904 Package: systemd-sysv
5905 Pin: release o=Debian
5906 Pin-Priority: -1
5907 </pre></blockquote><p>
5908
5909 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
5910 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
5911 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
5912 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
5913 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
5914
5915 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
5916 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
5917 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
5918 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
5919 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
5920 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
5921
5922 <p><blockquote><pre>
5923 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
5924 </pre></blockquote><p>
5925
5926 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
5927
5928 <p><blockquote><pre>
5929 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
5930 </pre></blockquote><p>
5931
5932 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
5933 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
5934
5935 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
5936 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
5937 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
5938 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
5939 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
5940 Jessie is released.</p>
5941
5942 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
5943 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
5944 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
5945 line.</p>
5946
5947       </div>
5948       <div class="tags">
5949
5950
5951         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>.
5952
5953
5954       </div>
5955     </div>
5956     <div class="padding"></div>
5957
5958     <div class="entry">
5959       <div class="title">
5960         <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>
5961       </div>
5962       <div class="date">
5963         10th November 2014
5964       </div>
5965       <div class="body">
5966         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
5967 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
5968 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
5969
5970 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
5971 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
5972 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
5973 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
5974 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
5975 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
5976 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
5977 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
5978 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
5979 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
5980 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
5981 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
5982 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
5983 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
5984 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
5985
5986 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
5987 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
5988 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
5989 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
5990 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
5991 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
5992 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
5993 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
5994 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
5995 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
5996 were fairly easy, and
5997 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
5998 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
5999 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
6000 useful approach.</p>
6001
6002 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
6003 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
6004 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
6005 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
6006 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
6007 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
6008 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
6009 this:</p>
6010
6011 <p><blockquote><pre>
6012 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
6013   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
6014 </pre></blockquote></p>
6015
6016 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
6017 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
6018
6019 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
6020 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
6021 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
6022 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
6023 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
6024 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
6025 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
6026 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
6027 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
6028 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
6029 system.</p>
6030
6031 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
6032 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
6033 SMTorP. :)</p>
6034
6035       </div>
6036       <div class="tags">
6037
6038
6039         Tags: <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>.
6040
6041
6042       </div>
6043     </div>
6044     <div class="padding"></div>
6045
6046     <div class="entry">
6047       <div class="title">
6048         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
6049       </div>
6050       <div class="date">
6051         27th October 2014
6052       </div>
6053       <div class="body">
6054         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
6055 sent out
6056 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
6057 announcement</a>:</p>
6058
6059 <pre>
6060 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
6061 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
6062
6063 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
6064 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
6065 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
6066 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
6067 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
6068 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
6069 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
6070
6071 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
6072 installation instructions are available, including detailed
6073 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
6074 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
6075 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
6076 of at least 5 characters!
6077
6078  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
6079
6080 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
6081 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
6082 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
6083 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
6084 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
6085
6086 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
6087 mostly in Germany and Norway.
6088
6089 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
6090 ===============================
6091
6092 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
6093 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6094 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
6095 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6096 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6097 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6098 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
6099 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
6100 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
6101 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
6102 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
6103 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
6104 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
6105 environment.
6106
6107  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
6108  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
6109
6110 Full release notes and manual
6111 =============================
6112
6113 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
6114 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
6115 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
6116 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
6117 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
6118
6119  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
6120  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
6121
6122 Where to get it
6123 ---------------
6124
6125 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
6126
6127  * <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>
6128  * <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>
6129  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
6130
6131 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
6132
6133 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
6134 ===============================================================================
6135
6136
6137 Installation changes
6138 --------------------
6139
6140  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
6141
6142 Software updates
6143 ----------------
6144
6145 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
6146
6147  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
6148  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
6149    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
6150    choose one of the others see manual.)
6151  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
6152  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
6153  * GOsa 2.7.4
6154  * LTSP 5.5.4
6155  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
6156  * new boot framework: systemd
6157  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
6158  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
6159  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
6160  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
6161  * golearn 0.9
6162  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
6163  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
6164  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
6165    installation.
6166  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
6167    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
6168
6169  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
6170  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
6171
6172 Fixed bugs
6173 ----------
6174
6175  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
6176    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
6177    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
6178  * and many others.
6179
6180 Documentation and translation updates
6181 -------------------------------------
6182
6183  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
6184    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
6185    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
6186
6187 Other changes
6188 -------------
6189
6190  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
6191    server takes more time.
6192  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
6193    doesn't work.
6194
6195 Regressions / known problems
6196 ----------------------------
6197
6198  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
6199    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
6200    and Debian bug #762103).
6201  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
6202    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
6203  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
6204    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
6205    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
6206
6207 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
6208
6209  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
6210
6211 How to report bugs
6212 ------------------
6213
6214 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
6215
6216 About Debian
6217 ============
6218
6219 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
6220 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
6221 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
6222 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
6223 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
6224 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
6225 operating system.
6226
6227 Contact Information
6228 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
6229 mail to press@debian.org.
6230
6231  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
6232 </pre>
6233
6234       </div>
6235       <div class="tags">
6236
6237
6238         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6239
6240
6241       </div>
6242     </div>
6243     <div class="padding"></div>
6244
6245     <div class="entry">
6246       <div class="title">
6247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
6248       </div>
6249       <div class="date">
6250         23rd October 2014
6251       </div>
6252       <div class="body">
6253         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
6254 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
6255 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
6256 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
6257 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
6258 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
6259 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
6260 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
6261 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
6262 live.</p>
6263
6264 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
6265 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
6266 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
6267 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
6268 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
6269 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
6270 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
6271 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
6272
6273       </div>
6274       <div class="tags">
6275
6276
6277         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>.
6278
6279
6280       </div>
6281     </div>
6282     <div class="padding"></div>
6283
6284     <div class="entry">
6285       <div class="title">
6286         <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>
6287       </div>
6288       <div class="date">
6289         22nd October 2014
6290       </div>
6291       <div class="body">
6292         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
6293 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
6294 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
6295 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
6296 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
6297 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
6298 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
6299 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
6300 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
6301 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
6302 lists I recently took over:</p>
6303
6304 <p><blockquote><pre>
6305 % time listadmin xiph
6306 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
6307 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
6308
6309 real    0m1.709s
6310 user    0m0.232s
6311 sys     0m0.012s
6312 %
6313 </pre></blockquote></p>
6314
6315 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
6316 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
6317 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
6318 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
6319 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
6320 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
6321 program.</p>
6322
6323 <p>If you install
6324 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
6325 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
6326 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
6327
6328 <p><blockquote><pre>
6329 username username@example.org
6330 spamlevel 23
6331 default discard
6332 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
6333
6334 password secret
6335 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
6336 mailman-list@lists.example.com
6337
6338 password hidden
6339 other-list@otherserver.example.org
6340 </pre></blockquote></p>
6341
6342 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
6343 learn the details.</p>
6344
6345 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
6346 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
6347 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
6348 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
6349
6350 <p><blockquote><pre>
6351 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
6352 </pre></blockquote></p>
6353
6354 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
6355 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
6356 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
6357 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
6358 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
6359 email.</p>
6360
6361 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
6362 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
6363 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
6364 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
6365 software.</p>
6366
6367 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
6368 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
6369 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
6370
6371 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
6372 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
6373 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
6374 sure why.</p>
6375
6376       </div>
6377       <div class="tags">
6378
6379
6380         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
6381
6382
6383       </div>
6384     </div>
6385     <div class="padding"></div>
6386
6387     <div class="entry">
6388       <div class="title">
6389         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
6390       </div>
6391       <div class="date">
6392         17th October 2014
6393       </div>
6394       <div class="body">
6395         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
6396 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
6397 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
6398 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
6399 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
6400 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
6401 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
6402
6403 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
6404 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
6405 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
6406 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
6407 of this story.)</p>
6408
6409 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
6410 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
6411 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
6412 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
6413 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
6414 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
6415 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
6416 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
6417 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
6418 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
6419
6420 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
6421 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
6422 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
6423 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
6424
6425 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
6426 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
6427
6428 <p><blockquote><pre>
6429 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
6430 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
6431 </pre></blockquote></p>
6432
6433 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
6434 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
6435 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
6436 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
6437 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
6438 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
6439 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
6440 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
6441
6442 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
6443 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
6444
6445 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
6446 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
6447 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
6448 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
6449 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
6450
6451 <p><blockquote><pre>
6452 Task: isenkram-packages
6453 Section: hardware
6454 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
6455  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
6456  proposed.
6457 Test-new-install: show show
6458 Relevance: 8
6459 Packages: for-current-hardware
6460
6461 Task: isenkram-firmware
6462 Section: hardware
6463 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
6464  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
6465  packages are proposed.
6466 Test-new-install: mark show
6467 Relevance: 8
6468 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
6469 </pre></blockquote></p>
6470
6471 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
6472 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
6473 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
6474 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
6475 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
6476
6477 <p><blockquote><pre>
6478 #!/bin/sh
6479 #
6480 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
6481 export PATH
6482 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
6483 </pre></blockquote></p>
6484
6485 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
6486 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
6487
6488 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
6489 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
6490 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
6491 install.</p>
6492
6493 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
6494 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
6495 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
6496
6497       </div>
6498       <div class="tags">
6499
6500
6501         Tags: <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>.
6502
6503
6504       </div>
6505     </div>
6506     <div class="padding"></div>
6507
6508     <div class="entry">
6509       <div class="title">
6510         <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>
6511       </div>
6512       <div class="date">
6513          4th October 2014
6514       </div>
6515       <div class="body">
6516         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
6517 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
6518 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
6519 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
6520
6521 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
6522
6523 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
6524 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
6525 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
6526
6527       </div>
6528       <div class="tags">
6529
6530
6531         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6532
6533
6534       </div>
6535     </div>
6536     <div class="padding"></div>
6537
6538     <div class="entry">
6539       <div class="title">
6540         <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>
6541       </div>
6542       <div class="date">
6543          4th October 2014
6544       </div>
6545       <div class="body">
6546         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
6547 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
6548 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
6549 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
6550 Dibb.</p>
6551
6552 <p>I just wrapped up
6553 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
6554 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
6555 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
6556 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
6557 0.17.</p>
6558
6559 <ul>
6560
6561  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
6562  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
6563    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
6564  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
6565  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
6566  <li>Fix include orders</li>
6567  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
6568  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
6569  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
6570    the palette size is the same.</li>
6571  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
6572  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
6573  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
6574  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
6575    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
6576
6577 </ul>
6578
6579 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
6580 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
6581 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
6582
6583       </div>
6584       <div class="tags">
6585
6586
6587         Tags: <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>.
6588
6589
6590       </div>
6591     </div>
6592     <div class="padding"></div>
6593
6594     <div class="entry">
6595       <div class="title">
6596         <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>
6597       </div>
6598       <div class="date">
6599         26th September 2014
6600       </div>
6601       <div class="body">
6602         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6603 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
6604 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
6605 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
6606 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
6607 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
6608 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
6609 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
6610 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
6611 future.  The
6612 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
6613 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
6614 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
6615 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
6616 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
6617
6618 <p>First, download the test ISO via
6619 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
6620 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
6621 or rsync (use
6622 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
6623 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
6624 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
6625 install with some tweaking.</p>
6626
6627 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
6628 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
6629
6630 <p><blockquote><pre>
6631 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
6632 </pre></blockquote></p>
6633
6634 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
6635 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
6636 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
6637 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
6638
6639 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
6640 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
6641 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
6642 your need.</p>
6643
6644 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
6645 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
6646 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
6647 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
6648 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
6649 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
6650 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
6651 days.</p>
6652
6653 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
6654 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
6655 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
6656 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
6657 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
6658 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
6659 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
6660 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
6661 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
6662
6663 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
6664 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
6665 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
6666
6667       </div>
6668       <div class="tags">
6669
6670
6671         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>.
6672
6673
6674       </div>
6675     </div>
6676     <div class="padding"></div>
6677
6678     <div class="entry">
6679       <div class="title">
6680         <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>
6681       </div>
6682       <div class="date">
6683         25th September 2014
6684       </div>
6685       <div class="body">
6686         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
6687 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
6688 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
6689 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
6690 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
6691 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
6692 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
6693 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
6694 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
6695 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
6696 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
6697 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
6698 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
6699
6700 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
6701 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
6702 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
6703 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
6704 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
6705 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
6706 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
6707 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
6708 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
6709 list</a>. :)</p>
6710
6711       </div>
6712       <div class="tags">
6713
6714
6715         Tags: <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>.
6716
6717
6718       </div>
6719     </div>
6720     <div class="padding"></div>
6721
6722     <div class="entry">
6723       <div class="title">
6724         <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>
6725       </div>
6726       <div class="date">
6727         16th September 2014
6728       </div>
6729       <div class="body">
6730         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
6731 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
6732 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
6733 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
6734 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
6735 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
6736 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
6737 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
6738 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
6739 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
6740 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
6741 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
6742 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
6743 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
6744
6745 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
6746 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
6747 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
6748 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
6749 depend on the small and clever package
6750 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
6751 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
6752 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
6753 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
6754 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
6755 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
6756 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
6757 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
6758 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
6759 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
6760 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
6761
6762 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
6763 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
6764 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
6765 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
6766 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
6767 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
6768 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
6769 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
6770 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
6771 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
6772 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
6773 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
6774 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
6775 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
6776 dialog.</p>
6777
6778 <p><table>
6779
6780 <tr>
6781 <th>Machine/setup</th>
6782 <th>Original tasksel</th>
6783 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
6784 <th>Reduction</th>
6785 </tr>
6786
6787 <tr>
6788 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
6789 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
6790 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
6791 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
6792 </tr>
6793
6794 <tr>
6795 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
6796 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
6797 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
6798 <td>23 min 40%</td>
6799 </tr>
6800
6801 <tr>
6802 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
6803 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
6804 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
6805 <td>11 min 50%</td>
6806 </tr>
6807
6808 <tr>
6809 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
6810 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
6811 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
6812 <td>2 min 33%</td>
6813 </tr>
6814
6815 <tr>
6816 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
6817 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
6818 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
6819 <td>4 min 21%</td>
6820 </tr>
6821
6822 </table></p>
6823
6824 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
6825 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
6826 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
6827 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
6828 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
6829 installed.</p>
6830
6831 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
6832 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
6833 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
6834 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
6835 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
6836 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
6837 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
6838 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
6839 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
6840 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
6841 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
6842 for the entire installation.</p>
6843
6844 <p>I've implemented this in the
6845 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
6846 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
6847 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
6848 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
6849 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
6850
6851 <p><blockquote><pre>
6852 #!/bin/sh
6853 set -e
6854 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
6855 info() {
6856     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
6857 }
6858 error() {
6859     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
6860 }
6861 override_install() {
6862     apt-install eatmydata || true
6863     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
6864         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
6865             file=/usr/bin/$bin
6866             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
6867             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
6868                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
6869                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
6870                     > /target$file.edu
6871                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
6872                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
6873                     --rename --quiet --add $file
6874                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
6875             else
6876                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
6877             fi
6878         done
6879     else
6880         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
6881     fi
6882 }
6883
6884 override_install
6885 </pre></blockquote></p>
6886
6887 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
6888 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
6889
6890 <p><blockquote><pre>
6891 #! /bin/sh -e
6892 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
6893 error() {
6894     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
6895 }
6896 remove_install_override() {
6897     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
6898         file=/usr/bin/$bin
6899         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
6900             rm /target$file
6901             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
6902                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
6903             rm /target$file.edu
6904         else
6905             error "Missing divert for $file."
6906         fi
6907     done
6908     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
6909 }
6910
6911 remove_install_override
6912 </pre></blockquote></p>
6913
6914 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
6915 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
6916 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
6917
6918 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
6919 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
6920 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
6921 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
6922 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
6923 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
6924 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
6925 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
6926 everyone.</p>
6927
6928 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
6929 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
6930 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
6931 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
6932
6933 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
6934 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
6935 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
6936 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
6937 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
6938
6939 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
6940 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
6941 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
6942 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
6943 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
6944
6945       </div>
6946       <div class="tags">
6947
6948
6949         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>.
6950
6951
6952       </div>
6953     </div>
6954     <div class="padding"></div>
6955
6956     <div class="entry">
6957       <div class="title">
6958         <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>
6959       </div>
6960       <div class="date">
6961         10th September 2014
6962       </div>
6963       <div class="body">
6964         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
6965 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
6966 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
6967 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
6968 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
6969 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
6970 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
6971 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
6972 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
6973 those problems are gone now.</p>
6974
6975 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
6976 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
6977 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
6978 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
6979 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
6980
6981 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
6982 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
6983 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
6984
6985 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
6986 line:</p>
6987
6988 <p><blockquote><pre>
6989 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
6990 </pre></blockquote></p>
6991
6992 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
6993 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
6994 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
6995 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
6996
6997 <p><blockquote><pre>
6998 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
6999 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
7000 %
7001 </pre></blockquote></p>
7002
7003 <p>Now if only
7004 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
7005 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
7006 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
7007 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
7008 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
7009 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
7010 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
7011 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
7012 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
7013
7014       </div>
7015       <div class="tags">
7016
7017
7018         Tags: <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>.
7019
7020
7021       </div>
7022     </div>
7023     <div class="padding"></div>
7024
7025     <div class="entry">
7026       <div class="title">
7027         <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>
7028       </div>
7029       <div class="date">
7030         25th August 2014
7031       </div>
7032       <div class="body">
7033         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
7034 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
7035 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
7036 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
7037 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
7038 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
7039 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
7040 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
7041 am not sure.
7042 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
7043 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
7044 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
7045 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
7046 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
7047 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
7048 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
7049 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
7050 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
7051 licenses are.</p>
7052
7053 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
7054 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
7055 end user</a>
7056 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
7057 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
7058
7059 <p><blockquote>
7060 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
7061 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
7062
7063 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
7064 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
7065 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
7066 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
7067 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
7068 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
7069 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
7070 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
7071 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
7072 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
7073 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
7074 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
7075 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
7076 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
7077 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
7078 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
7079 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
7080 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
7081
7082 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
7083 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
7084
7085 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
7086 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
7087 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
7088 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
7089 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
7090 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
7091 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
7092 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
7093 </blockquote></p>
7094
7095 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
7096 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
7097
7098 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
7099 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
7100
7101 <p><blockquote>
7102
7103 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
7104 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
7105 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
7106 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
7107 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
7108 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
7109 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
7110 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
7111 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
7112 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
7113 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
7114 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
7115
7116 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
7117 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
7118 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
7119 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
7120 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
7121 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
7122 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
7123 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
7124 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
7125 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
7126 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
7127 additional details.</p>
7128
7129 </blockquote></p>
7130
7131 <p>Some free software like
7132 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
7133 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
7134 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
7135 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
7136
7137       </div>
7138       <div class="tags">
7139
7140
7141         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
7142
7143
7144       </div>
7145     </div>
7146     <div class="padding"></div>
7147
7148     <div class="entry">
7149       <div class="title">
7150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
7151       </div>
7152       <div class="date">
7153         31st July 2014
7154       </div>
7155       <div class="body">
7156         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
7157 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7158 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
7159 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
7160 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
7161 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
7162
7163 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7164
7165 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
7166 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
7167 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
7168 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
7169 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
7170 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
7171 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
7172 works with Windows . :-(</p>
7173
7174 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
7175 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
7176 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
7177 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
7178 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
7179 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
7180
7181 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7182 project?</strong></p>
7183
7184 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
7185 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
7186 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
7187 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
7188 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
7189 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
7190 with this job.</p>
7191
7192 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7193 Edu?</strong></p>
7194
7195 <p>The independence.</p>
7196
7197 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
7198 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
7199 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
7200
7201 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
7202 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
7203 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
7204 working reliable. </p>
7205
7206 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
7207 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
7208 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
7209 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
7210 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
7211 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
7212 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
7213 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
7214
7215 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7216 Edu?</strong></p>
7217
7218 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
7219 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
7220 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
7221
7222 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7223
7224 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
7225 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
7226
7227 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7228 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7229
7230 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
7231 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
7232 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
7233 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
7234 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
7235 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
7236 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
7237
7238       </div>
7239       <div class="tags">
7240
7241
7242         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7243
7244
7245       </div>
7246     </div>
7247     <div class="padding"></div>
7248
7249     <div class="entry">
7250       <div class="title">
7251         <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>
7252       </div>
7253       <div class="date">
7254         23rd July 2014
7255       </div>
7256       <div class="body">
7257         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
7258 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7259 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7260 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
7261 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
7262 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
7263 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
7264 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
7265 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
7266 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
7267 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
7268 the translation show this very well:</p>
7269
7270 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
7271
7272 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
7273 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
7274 project pages and the
7275 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
7276 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7277 and HTML version available in the
7278 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
7279 directory</a>.</p>
7280
7281 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
7282 you find any.</p>
7283
7284       </div>
7285       <div class="tags">
7286
7287
7288         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>.
7289
7290
7291       </div>
7292     </div>
7293     <div class="padding"></div>
7294
7295     <div class="entry">
7296       <div class="title">
7297         <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>
7298       </div>
7299       <div class="date">
7300         17th June 2014
7301       </div>
7302       <div class="body">
7303         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7304 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
7305 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
7306 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
7307 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
7308
7309 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
7310 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
7311 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
7312 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
7313 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
7314 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
7315 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
7316 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
7317 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
7318 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
7319 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
7320 goals.</p>
7321
7322 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
7323 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
7324 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
7325 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
7326 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
7327 chapters together into one large web page (aka
7328 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
7329 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
7330 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
7331 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
7332 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
7333 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
7334 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
7335 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
7336 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
7337 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
7338 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
7339 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
7340 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
7341 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
7342 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
7343 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
7344 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
7345 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
7346
7347 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
7348 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
7349 track the English original.  For this we use the
7350 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
7351 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
7352 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
7353 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
7354 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
7355 files), which the translations update with the native language
7356 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
7357 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
7358 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
7359 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
7360 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
7361 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
7362 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
7363 of the documentation.</p>
7364
7365 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
7366 recommend using
7367 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
7368 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
7369 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
7370 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
7371 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
7372 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
7373 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
7374 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
7375
7376 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
7377 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
7378 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
7379 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
7380 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
7381 translated images by storing translated versions in
7382 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
7383 package maintainers know more.</p>
7384
7385 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
7386 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
7387 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
7388 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
7389 PDF version</a> or the
7390 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
7391 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
7392 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
7393
7394 <p>To learn more, check out
7395 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
7396 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
7397 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
7398 manual on the wiki</a> and
7399 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
7400 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
7401
7402       </div>
7403       <div class="tags">
7404
7405
7406         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>.
7407
7408
7409       </div>
7410     </div>
7411     <div class="padding"></div>
7412
7413     <div class="entry">
7414       <div class="title">
7415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
7416       </div>
7417       <div class="date">
7418         29th May 2014
7419       </div>
7420       <div class="body">
7421         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
7422 in my car, connected to
7423 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
7424 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
7425 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
7426 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
7427 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
7428 such car computer.</p>
7429
7430 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
7431
7432 <ul>
7433
7434  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
7435
7436  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
7437    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
7438    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
7439    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
7440    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
7441
7442  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
7443    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
7444    route.</li>
7445
7446  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
7447
7448  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
7449    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
7450    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
7451    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
7452    connection do not work.</li>
7453
7454  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
7455    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
7456
7457  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
7458    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
7459
7460  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
7461    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
7462
7463 </ul>
7464
7465 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
7466 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
7467
7468       </div>
7469       <div class="tags">
7470
7471
7472         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7473
7474
7475       </div>
7476     </div>
7477     <div class="padding"></div>
7478
7479     <div class="entry">
7480       <div class="title">
7481         <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>
7482       </div>
7483       <div class="date">
7484         29th April 2014
7485       </div>
7486       <div class="body">
7487         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
7488 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
7489 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
7490 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
7491 newer AVM2 format - see
7492 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
7493 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
7494 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
7495 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
7496 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
7497 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
7498 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
7499 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
7500 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
7501 sites do not work yet.</p>
7502
7503 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
7504 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
7505 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
7506 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
7507 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
7508 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
7509 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
7510 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
7511 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
7512 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
7513 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
7514
7515 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
7516 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
7517 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
7518 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
7519 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
7520 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
7521 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
7522
7523 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
7524 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
7525 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
7526 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
7527 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
7528
7529       </div>
7530       <div class="tags">
7531
7532
7533         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>.
7534
7535
7536       </div>
7537     </div>
7538     <div class="padding"></div>
7539
7540     <div class="entry">
7541       <div class="title">
7542         <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>
7543       </div>
7544       <div class="date">
7545         23rd April 2014
7546       </div>
7547       <div class="body">
7548         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
7549 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
7550 So I implemented one, using
7551 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
7552 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
7553 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
7554 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
7555 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
7556 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
7557
7558 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
7559 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
7560 packages to install.  The first part is in
7561 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
7562 this:</p>
7563
7564 <p><blockquote><pre>
7565 Task: isenkram
7566 Section: hardware
7567 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
7568  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
7569  proposed.
7570 Test-new-install: mark show
7571 Relevance: 8
7572 Packages: for-current-hardware
7573 </pre></blockquote></p>
7574
7575 <p>The second part is in
7576 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
7577 this:</p>
7578
7579 <p><blockquote><pre>
7580 #!/bin/sh
7581 #
7582 (
7583     isenkram-lookup
7584     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
7585 ) | sort -u
7586 </pre></blockquote></p>
7587
7588 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
7589 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
7590 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
7591 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
7592 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
7593 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
7594
7595 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
7596 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
7597 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
7598 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
7599 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
7600 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
7601 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
7602 the python-apt code (bug
7603 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
7604 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
7605 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
7606 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
7607 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
7608 unstable today.</p>
7609
7610 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
7611 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
7612 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
7613 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
7614 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
7615 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
7616 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
7617 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
7618 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
7619
7620 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
7621 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
7622 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
7623 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
7624 package.  See also
7625 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
7626 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
7627 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
7628 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
7629
7630       </div>
7631       <div class="tags">
7632
7633
7634         Tags: <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>.
7635
7636
7637       </div>
7638     </div>
7639     <div class="padding"></div>
7640
7641     <div class="entry">
7642       <div class="title">
7643         <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>
7644       </div>
7645       <div class="date">
7646         15th April 2014
7647       </div>
7648       <div class="body">
7649         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
7650 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
7651 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
7652 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
7653 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
7654 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
7655
7656 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
7657 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
7658 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
7659 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
7660 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
7661 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
7662 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
7663
7664 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
7665 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
7666 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
7667 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
7668 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
7669 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
7670 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
7671 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
7672 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
7673 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
7674 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
7675 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
7676
7677 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
7678 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
7679 become root:</p>
7680
7681 <p><pre>
7682 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
7683   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
7684   u-boot-tools
7685 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
7686   freedom-maker
7687 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
7688 </pre></p>
7689
7690 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
7691 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
7692 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
7693 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
7694 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
7695 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
7696 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
7697 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
7698
7699 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
7700 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
7701 the preseed values:</p>
7702
7703 <p><pre>
7704 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
7705 </pre></p>
7706
7707 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
7708 it still work.</p>
7709
7710 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
7711 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
7712 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
7713 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
7714 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
7715 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
7716 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
7717
7718 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
7719 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
7720 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
7721 irc.debian.org)</a> and
7722 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
7723 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
7724
7725       </div>
7726       <div class="tags">
7727
7728
7729         Tags: <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>.
7730
7731
7732       </div>
7733     </div>
7734     <div class="padding"></div>
7735
7736     <div class="entry">
7737       <div class="title">
7738         <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>
7739       </div>
7740       <div class="date">
7741          9th April 2014
7742       </div>
7743       <div class="body">
7744         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
7745 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
7746 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
7747 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
7748 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
7749 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
7750 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
7751 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
7752 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
7753 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
7754 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
7755 have looked at a system called
7756 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
7757 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
7758
7759 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
7760 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
7761 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
7762 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
7763 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
7764 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
7765 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
7766 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
7767 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
7768 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
7769 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
7770 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
7771 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
7772
7773 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
7774 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
7775 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
7776 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
7777 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
7778 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
7779 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
7780 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
7781 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
7782 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
7783 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
7784 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
7785 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
7786 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
7787 account.</p>
7788
7789 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
7790 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
7791 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
7792 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
7793 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
7794 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
7795 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
7796
7797 <p><blockquote><pre>
7798 [s3c]
7799 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
7800 backend-login: API-login
7801 backend-password: API-password
7802 fs-passphrase: local-password
7803 </pre></blockquote></p>
7804
7805 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
7806 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
7807 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
7808 details and password to create it:</p>
7809
7810 <p><blockquote><pre>
7811 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
7812 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
7813   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
7814 Enter backend login:
7815 Enter backend password:
7816 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
7817 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
7818 Enter encryption password:
7819 Confirm encryption password:
7820 Generating random encryption key...
7821 Creating metadata tables...
7822 Dumping metadata...
7823 ..objects..
7824 ..blocks..
7825 ..inodes..
7826 ..inode_blocks..
7827 ..symlink_targets..
7828 ..names..
7829 ..contents..
7830 ..ext_attributes..
7831 Compressing and uploading metadata...
7832 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
7833 # </pre></blockquote></p>
7834
7835 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
7836
7837 <p><blockquote><pre>
7838 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
7839   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
7840 Using 4 upload threads.
7841 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
7842 Reading metadata...
7843 ..objects..
7844 ..blocks..
7845 ..inodes..
7846 ..inode_blocks..
7847 ..symlink_targets..
7848 ..names..
7849 ..contents..
7850 ..ext_attributes..
7851 Mounting filesystem...
7852 # df -h /s3ql
7853 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
7854 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
7855 #
7856 </pre></blockquote></p>
7857
7858 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
7859 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
7860 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
7861 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
7862 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
7863 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
7864
7865 <p><blockquote><pre>
7866 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
7867 #
7868 </pre></blockquote></p>
7869
7870 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
7871 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
7872 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
7873 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
7874 file system:</p>
7875
7876 <p><blockquote><pre>
7877 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
7878 Using cached metadata.
7879 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
7880 Checking DB integrity...
7881 Creating temporary extra indices...
7882 Checking lost+found...
7883 Checking cached objects...
7884 Checking names (refcounts)...
7885 Checking contents (names)...
7886 Checking contents (inodes)...
7887 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
7888 Checking objects (reference counts)...
7889 Checking objects (backend)...
7890 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
7891 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
7892 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
7893 Checking objects (sizes)...
7894 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
7895 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
7896 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
7897 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
7898 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
7899 Checking inodes (sizes)...
7900 Checking extended attributes (names)...
7901 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
7902 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
7903 Checking directory reachability...
7904 Checking unix conventions...
7905 Checking referential integrity...
7906 Dropping temporary indices...
7907 Backing up old metadata...
7908 Dumping metadata...
7909 ..objects..
7910 ..blocks..
7911 ..inodes..
7912 ..inode_blocks..
7913 ..symlink_targets..
7914 ..names..
7915 ..contents..
7916 ..ext_attributes..
7917 Compressing and uploading metadata...
7918 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
7919 #
7920 </pre></blockquote></p>
7921
7922 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
7923 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
7924 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
7925 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
7926 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
7927 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
7928 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
7929 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
7930 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
7931 working set.</p>
7932
7933 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
7934 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
7935 busy:</p>
7936
7937 <p><blockquote><pre>
7938 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
7939   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
7940 Using 8 upload threads.
7941 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
7942 #
7943 </pre></blockquote></p>
7944
7945 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
7946 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
7947 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
7948 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
7949 s3qlctrl:
7950
7951 <p><blockquote><pre>
7952 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
7953 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
7954 #
7955 </pre></blockquote></p>
7956
7957 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
7958 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
7959 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
7960 a report:</p>
7961
7962 <p><blockquote><pre>
7963 # s3qlstat /s3ql
7964 Directory entries:    9141
7965 Inodes:               9143
7966 Data blocks:          8851
7967 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
7968 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
7969 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
7970 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
7971 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
7972 #
7973 </pre></blockquote></p>
7974
7975 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
7976 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
7977 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
7978 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
7979 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
7980 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
7981 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
7982 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
7983 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
7984 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
7985 best.</p>
7986
7987 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
7988 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
7989 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
7990 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
7991 poster is titled
7992 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
7993 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
7994 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
7995 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
7996 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
7997
7998 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
7999 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
8000 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
8001 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
8002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
8003 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
8004 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
8005 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
8006
8007 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
8008 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
8009 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
8010 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
8011 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
8012 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
8013 only read from it.</p>
8014
8015 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8016 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8017 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8018
8019       </div>
8020       <div class="tags">
8021
8022
8023         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
8024
8025
8026       </div>
8027     </div>
8028     <div class="padding"></div>
8029
8030     <div class="entry">
8031       <div class="title">
8032         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
8033       </div>
8034       <div class="date">
8035          1st April 2014
8036       </div>
8037       <div class="body">
8038         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
8039 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
8040 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
8041 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
8042 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
8043 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
8044 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
8045 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
8046 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
8047 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
8048 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
8049 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
8050 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
8051
8052 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
8053 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
8054 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
8055 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
8056 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
8057 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
8058 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
8059 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
8060 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
8061 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
8062 Linux.</p>
8063
8064 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
8065 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
8066 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
8067 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
8068 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
8069 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
8070 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
8071 Windows before metro).</p>
8072
8073 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
8074 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
8075 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
8076 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
8077 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
8078 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
8079 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
8080 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
8081 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
8082 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
8083 old Windows binaries, check it out by
8084 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
8085 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
8086 image.</p>
8087
8088       </div>
8089       <div class="tags">
8090
8091
8092         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
8093
8094
8095       </div>
8096     </div>
8097     <div class="padding"></div>
8098
8099     <div class="entry">
8100       <div class="title">
8101         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
8102       </div>
8103       <div class="date">
8104         30th March 2014
8105       </div>
8106       <div class="body">
8107         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
8108 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
8109 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
8110 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
8111 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
8112
8113 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8114
8115 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
8116 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
8117 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
8118 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
8119 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
8120
8121 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
8122 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
8123 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
8124
8125 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
8126 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
8127 hunger.</p>
8128
8129 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8130 project?</strong></p>
8131
8132 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
8133 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
8134 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
8135 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
8136 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
8137 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
8138 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
8139 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
8140 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
8141 running.  I just loved it.</p>
8142
8143 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8144 Edu?</strong></p>
8145
8146 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
8147 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
8148 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
8149 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
8150 be made of steel.</p>
8151
8152 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8153 Edu?</strong></p>
8154
8155 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
8156
8157 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
8158 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
8159 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
8160 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
8161 or dropped.</p>
8162
8163 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
8164 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
8165 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
8166 discourage many people too.</p>
8167
8168 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8169
8170 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
8171 Virtualbox.</p>
8172
8173
8174 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8175 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8176
8177 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
8178 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
8179 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
8180 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
8181 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
8182 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
8183 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
8184 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
8185 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
8186
8187       </div>
8188       <div class="tags">
8189
8190
8191         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8192
8193
8194       </div>
8195     </div>
8196     <div class="padding"></div>
8197
8198     <div class="entry">
8199       <div class="title">
8200         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
8201       </div>
8202       <div class="date">
8203         25th March 2014
8204       </div>
8205       <div class="body">
8206         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
8207 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
8208 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
8209 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
8210 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
8211 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
8212 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
8213 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
8214 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
8215
8216 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
8217 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
8218 looked a given way.  Such
8219 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
8220 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
8221 called a
8222 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
8223 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
8224 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
8225 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
8226 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
8227 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
8228 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
8229 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
8230 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
8231 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
8232 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
8233 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
8234 There are several commercial services around providing such
8235 timestamping.  A quick search for
8236 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
8237 service</a>" pointed me to at least
8238 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
8239 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
8240 Vadis</a>,
8241 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
8242 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
8243 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
8244 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
8245
8246 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
8247 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
8248 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
8249 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
8250 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
8251 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
8252 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
8253 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
8254 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
8255 Greifswald.</p>
8256
8257 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
8258 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
8259 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
8260 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
8261 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
8262
8263 <p><blockquote><pre>
8264 #!/bin/sh
8265 set -e
8266 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
8267 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
8268 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
8269 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
8270 cafile=chain.txt
8271 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
8272     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
8273 fi
8274 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
8275     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
8276 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
8277 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
8278 base64 < "$resfile"
8279 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
8280 </pre></blockquote></p>
8281
8282 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
8283 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
8284 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
8285 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
8286 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
8287 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
8288 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
8289 changed.</p>
8290
8291 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
8292 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
8293 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
8294 to set up?</p>
8295
8296       </div>
8297       <div class="tags">
8298
8299
8300         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>.
8301
8302
8303       </div>
8304     </div>
8305     <div class="padding"></div>
8306
8307     <div class="entry">
8308       <div class="title">
8309         <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>
8310       </div>
8311       <div class="date">
8312         21st March 2014
8313       </div>
8314       <div class="body">
8315         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
8316 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
8317 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
8318 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
8319 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
8320 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
8321 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
8322
8323 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
8324 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
8325 tried using
8326 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
8327 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
8328 and program
8329 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
8330 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
8331 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
8332 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
8333 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
8334 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
8335 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
8336 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
8337 this method.</p>
8338
8339 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
8340 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
8341 problem is
8342 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
8343 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
8344 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
8345 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
8346 DVD structures, as the python library
8347 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
8348 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
8349 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
8350 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
8351 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
8352 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
8353
8354 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
8355 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
8356
8357       </div>
8358       <div class="tags">
8359
8360
8361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
8362
8363
8364       </div>
8365     </div>
8366     <div class="padding"></div>
8367
8368     <div class="entry">
8369       <div class="title">
8370         <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>
8371       </div>
8372       <div class="date">
8373         14th March 2014
8374       </div>
8375       <div class="body">
8376         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
8377 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
8378 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
8379 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
8380 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
8381 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
8382 release (0.2).</p>
8383
8384 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
8385 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
8386 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
8387 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
8388 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
8389 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
8390 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
8391 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
8392 and build using
8393 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
8394 with a user with sudo access to become root:
8395
8396 <pre>
8397 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
8398   freedom-maker
8399 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
8400   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
8401   u-boot-tools
8402 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
8403 </pre>
8404
8405 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
8406 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
8407 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
8408 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
8409 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
8410 kpartx call.</p>
8411
8412 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
8413 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
8414 the preseed values:</p>
8415
8416 <pre>
8417 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
8418 </pre>
8419
8420 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
8421 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
8422 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
8423 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
8424 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
8425 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
8426
8427 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
8428 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
8429 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
8430 irc.debian.org)</a> and
8431 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
8432 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
8433
8434       </div>
8435       <div class="tags">
8436
8437
8438         Tags: <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>.
8439
8440
8441       </div>
8442     </div>
8443     <div class="padding"></div>
8444
8445     <div class="entry">
8446       <div class="title">
8447         <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>
8448       </div>
8449       <div class="date">
8450         12th March 2014
8451       </div>
8452       <div class="body">
8453         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
8454 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
8455 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
8456 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
8457 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
8458 document this better when one of the customers of
8459 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
8460 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
8461 get this working are the following:</p>
8462
8463 <p><ol>
8464
8465 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
8466 example host here.</li>
8467
8468 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
8469 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
8470
8471 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
8472 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
8473
8474 </ol></p>
8475
8476 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
8477 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
8478 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
8479 started).</p>
8480
8481 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
8482 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
8483
8484 <p><blockquote><pre>
8485 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
8486 Export list for nas-server:
8487 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
8488 root@tjener:~#
8489 </pre></blockquote></p>
8490
8491 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
8492 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
8493 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
8494 NFS access.</p>
8495
8496 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
8497 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
8498 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
8499
8500 <p><blockquote><pre>
8501 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8502 </pre></blockquote></p>
8503
8504 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
8505 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
8506 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
8507 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
8508
8509 <p><blockquote><pre>
8510 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8511 objectClass: automount
8512 cn: nas-server
8513 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8514
8515 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8516 objectClass: top
8517 objectClass: automountMap
8518 ou: auto.nas-server
8519
8520 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
8521 objectClass: automount
8522 cn: /
8523 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
8524 </pre></blockquote></p>
8525
8526 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
8527 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
8528 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
8529
8530 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
8531 the storage server directly by just visiting the
8532 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
8533 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
8534
8535       </div>
8536       <div class="tags">
8537
8538
8539         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8540
8541
8542       </div>
8543     </div>
8544     <div class="padding"></div>
8545
8546     <div class="entry">
8547       <div class="title">
8548         <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>
8549       </div>
8550       <div class="date">
8551         22nd February 2014
8552       </div>
8553       <div class="body">
8554         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
8555 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
8556 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
8557 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
8558 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
8559 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
8560 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
8561 proper home since then.</p>
8562
8563 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
8564 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
8565 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
8566 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
8567 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
8568
8569 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
8570 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
8571 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
8572 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
8573 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
8574 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
8575 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
8576 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
8577 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
8578
8579       </div>
8580       <div class="tags">
8581
8582
8583         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8584
8585
8586       </div>
8587     </div>
8588     <div class="padding"></div>
8589
8590     <div class="entry">
8591       <div class="title">
8592         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
8593       </div>
8594       <div class="date">
8595          3rd February 2014
8596       </div>
8597       <div class="body">
8598         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
8599 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
8600 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
8601 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
8602 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
8603 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
8604 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
8605 <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>,
8606 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
8607
8608 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
8609 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
8610 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
8611 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
8612 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
8613 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
8614
8615 <p><blockquote><pre>
8616 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
8617 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
8618 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
8619 dhclient /dev/eth0
8620 </pre></blockquote></p>
8621
8622 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
8623 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
8624 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
8625
8626 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
8627 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
8628 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
8629 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
8630 side.</p>
8631
8632 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
8633 stuff:</p>
8634
8635 <p><blockquote><pre>
8636 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
8637 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
8638 EOF
8639 apt-get update
8640 apt-get dist-upgrade
8641 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
8642     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
8643 update-alternatives --config runsystem
8644 </pre></blockquote></p>
8645
8646 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
8647 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
8648 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
8649 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
8650 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
8651 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
8652 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
8653 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
8654 ssh instead.
8655
8656 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
8657 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
8658 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
8659 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
8660 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
8661 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
8662
8663 <p><blockquote><pre>
8664 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
8665 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
8666 EOF
8667 </pre></blockquote></p>
8668
8669 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
8670 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
8671 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
8672 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
8673
8674 <p><blockquote><pre>
8675 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
8676 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
8677 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
8678 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
8679 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
8680 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
8681 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
8682 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
8683 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
8684 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
8685 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
8686 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
8687 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
8688 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
8689 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
8690 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
8691 #
8692 </pre></blockquote></p>
8693
8694 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
8695 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
8696 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
8697 command line stuff.<p>
8698
8699       </div>
8700       <div class="tags">
8701
8702
8703         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>.
8704
8705
8706       </div>
8707     </div>
8708     <div class="padding"></div>
8709
8710     <div class="entry">
8711       <div class="title">
8712         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
8713       </div>
8714       <div class="date">
8715         29th January 2014
8716       </div>
8717       <div class="body">
8718         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
8719 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
8720 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
8721 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
8722 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
8723 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
8724 investigated in
8725 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
8726 from December 2013, in the article
8727 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
8728 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
8729 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
8730 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
8731 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
8732 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
8733 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
8734 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
8735
8736 <p><blockquote>
8737 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
8738 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
8739 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
8740 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
8741 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
8742 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
8743 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
8744 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
8745 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
8746 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
8747 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
8748 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
8749
8750 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
8751 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
8752 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
8753 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
8754 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
8755 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
8756 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
8757 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
8758 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
8759 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
8760 </blockquote><p>
8761
8762 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
8763 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
8764 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
8765 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
8766 summarized like this:</p>
8767
8768 <p><blockquote>
8769 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
8770 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
8771 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
8772 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
8773 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
8774 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
8775 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
8776 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
8777 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
8778 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
8779 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
8780 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
8781 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
8782 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
8783 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
8784 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
8785 </blockquote></p>
8786
8787 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
8788 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
8789 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
8790 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
8791
8792 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8793 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8794 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8795
8796       </div>
8797       <div class="tags">
8798
8799
8800         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
8801
8802
8803       </div>
8804     </div>
8805     <div class="padding"></div>
8806
8807     <div class="entry">
8808       <div class="title">
8809         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
8810       </div>
8811       <div class="date">
8812         14th January 2014
8813       </div>
8814       <div class="body">
8815         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
8816 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
8817 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
8818 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
8819 the source.  The company behind it provide
8820 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
8821 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
8822 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
8823 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
8824 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
8825 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
8826 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
8827 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
8828 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
8829 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
8830 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
8831 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
8832 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
8833 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
8834 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
8835 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
8836 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
8837 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
8838 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
8839
8840 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
8841
8842 <ul>
8843
8844   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
8845   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
8846   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
8847
8848 </ul>
8849
8850 <p>You can
8851 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
8852 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
8853 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
8854 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
8855 include a test suite check.</p>
8856
8857       </div>
8858       <div class="tags">
8859
8860
8861         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>.
8862
8863
8864       </div>
8865     </div>
8866     <div class="padding"></div>
8867
8868     <div class="entry">
8869       <div class="title">
8870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
8871       </div>
8872       <div class="date">
8873         25th December 2013
8874       </div>
8875       <div class="body">
8876         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8877 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
8878 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
8879 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
8880 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
8881 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
8882 George</a>.</p>
8883
8884 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
8885
8886 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8887
8888 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
8889 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
8890 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
8891 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
8892 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
8893 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
8894
8895 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
8896 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
8897 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
8898 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
8899 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
8900 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
8901 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
8902 to help building another school's informational education concept from
8903 scratch.</p>
8904
8905 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
8906 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
8907 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
8908
8909 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
8910 and cycling.</p>
8911
8912 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8913 project?</strong></p>
8914
8915 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
8916 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
8917 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
8918 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
8919 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
8920 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
8921
8922 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
8923 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
8924 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
8925 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
8926 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
8927 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
8928 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
8929 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
8930 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
8931
8932 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
8933 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
8934 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
8935 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
8936
8937 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8938 Edu?</strong></p>
8939
8940 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
8941 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
8942 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
8943 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
8944 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
8945 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
8946 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
8947 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
8948 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
8949 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
8950 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
8951 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
8952 that it rocks!</p>
8953
8954 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
8955 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
8956 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
8957 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
8958 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
8959 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
8960 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
8961
8962 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8963 Edu?</strong></p>
8964
8965 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
8966 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
8967 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
8968 can list a few points about that:</p>
8969
8970 <ul>
8971
8972  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
8973  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
8974  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
8975
8976 </ul>
8977
8978 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
8979
8980 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8981
8982 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
8983 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
8984 year.</p>
8985
8986 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
8987 run text tools. I use
8988 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
8989 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
8990 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
8991 based full-featured student management software with the two),
8992 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
8993 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
8994 coloured world called the WWW, I use
8995 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
8996 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
8997 e-mail.</p>
8998
8999 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
9000 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
9001 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
9002 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
9003 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
9004 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
9005 Facebook now ;).</p>
9006
9007 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9008 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9009
9010 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
9011 side is what I have experienced.</p>
9012
9013 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
9014 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
9015 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
9016 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
9017 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
9018 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
9019 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
9020 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
9021 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
9022 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
9023 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
9024 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
9025 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
9026 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
9027 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
9028 plain criminal.</p>
9029
9030 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
9031 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
9032 founded an association named
9033 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
9034 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
9035 area of free and open source software, for example the
9036 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
9037 Teckids and are the youth programme of
9038 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
9039 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
9040 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
9041 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
9042 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
9043 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
9044
9045 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
9046 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
9047 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
9048 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
9049 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
9050 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
9051 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
9052 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
9053 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
9054 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
9055 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
9056 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
9057
9058 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
9059 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
9060 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
9061 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
9062
9063 <!--
9064
9065 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
9066
9067 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
9068 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
9069
9070  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
9071    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
9072    of the decision makers above;
9073  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
9074    knowledge about free software
9075
9076 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
9077
9078 -->
9079
9080       </div>
9081       <div class="tags">
9082
9083
9084         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9085
9086
9087       </div>
9088     </div>
9089     <div class="padding"></div>
9090
9091     <div class="entry">
9092       <div class="title">
9093         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
9094       </div>
9095       <div class="date">
9096          6th December 2013
9097       </div>
9098       <div class="body">
9099         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
9100 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
9101 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
9102 had a new school administrator show up on
9103 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
9104 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
9105 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
9106 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
9107 Germany a few years ago.</p>
9108
9109 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
9110
9111 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
9112 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
9113 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
9114 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
9115
9116 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
9117 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
9118 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
9119 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
9120 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
9121 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
9122 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
9123 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
9124 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
9125
9126 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
9127 project?</strong></p>
9128
9129 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
9130 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
9131 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
9132 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
9133
9134 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9135 Edu?</strong></p>
9136
9137 <ul>
9138   <li>Quick installation,</li>
9139   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
9140   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
9141   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
9142     single company,</li>
9143   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
9144     experience and problem solutions.</li>
9145 </ul>
9146
9147 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
9148 Edu?</strong></p>
9149
9150 <ul>
9151   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
9152   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
9153   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
9154   working again reliably.
9155
9156   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
9157   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
9158   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
9159   as their base.
9160
9161   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
9162   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
9163   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
9164   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
9165   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
9166   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
9167
9168   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
9169   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
9170   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
9171   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
9172   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
9173   schemes.</li>
9174
9175   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
9176   compared to Debian.</li>
9177
9178 </ul>
9179
9180 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
9181 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
9182 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
9183 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
9184
9185 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
9186
9187 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
9188 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
9189 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
9190 programming languages for teaching.</p>
9191
9192 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
9193 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
9194
9195 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
9196
9197 <ul>
9198
9199   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
9200     teaching and learning.</li>
9201
9202   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
9203     home, and at their working place without running into license or
9204     conversion problems.</li>
9205
9206   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
9207     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
9208     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
9209     science, not products.</li>
9210
9211   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
9212     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
9213
9214 </ul>
9215
9216       </div>
9217       <div class="tags">
9218
9219
9220         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9221
9222
9223       </div>
9224     </div>
9225     <div class="padding"></div>
9226
9227     <div class="entry">
9228       <div class="title">
9229         <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>
9230       </div>
9231       <div class="date">
9232         30th November 2013
9233       </div>
9234       <div class="body">
9235         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
9236 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
9237 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
9238 experiment with interesting network technology, the
9239 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
9240 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
9241 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
9242 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
9243 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
9244 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
9245 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
9246 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
9247 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
9248 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
9249 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
9250 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
9251 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
9252 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
9253 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
9254 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
9255
9256       </div>
9257       <div class="tags">
9258
9259
9260         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>.
9261
9262
9263       </div>
9264     </div>
9265     <div class="padding"></div>
9266
9267     <div class="entry">
9268       <div class="title">
9269         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
9270       </div>
9271       <div class="date">
9272         24th November 2013
9273       </div>
9274       <div class="body">
9275         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
9276 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
9277 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
9278 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
9279 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
9280 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
9281 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
9282 is working on.  I checked the
9283 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
9284 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
9285 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
9286 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
9287 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
9288 These are the release notes:</p>
9289
9290 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
9291
9292 <ul>
9293
9294   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
9295    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
9296    up.</li>
9297
9298   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
9299
9300   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
9301    Matthias Klose.</li>
9302
9303   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
9304    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
9305
9306   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
9307    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
9308    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
9309
9310 </ul>
9311
9312 <p>You can
9313 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
9314 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
9315 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
9316 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
9317 include a testsuite check.</p>
9318
9319       </div>
9320       <div class="tags">
9321
9322
9323         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>.
9324
9325
9326       </div>
9327     </div>
9328     <div class="padding"></div>
9329
9330     <div class="entry">
9331       <div class="title">
9332         <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>
9333       </div>
9334       <div class="date">
9335         21st November 2013
9336       </div>
9337       <div class="body">
9338         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
9339 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
9340 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
9341 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
9342 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
9343 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
9344 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
9345 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
9346 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
9347 TED talk
9348 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
9349 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
9350 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
9351
9352 <blockquote>
9353
9354 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
9355 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
9356 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
9357 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
9358 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
9359 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
9360 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
9361 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
9362 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
9363 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
9364 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
9365
9366 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
9367 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
9368 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
9369
9370 </blockquote>
9371
9372 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
9373 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
9374 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
9375 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
9376 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
9377 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
9378 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
9379 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
9380 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
9381
9382       </div>
9383       <div class="tags">
9384
9385
9386         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>.
9387
9388
9389       </div>
9390     </div>
9391     <div class="padding"></div>
9392
9393     <div class="entry">
9394       <div class="title">
9395         <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>
9396       </div>
9397       <div class="date">
9398         13th November 2013
9399       </div>
9400       <div class="body">
9401         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
9402 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
9403 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
9404 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
9405 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
9406 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
9407 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
9408 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
9409 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
9410 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
9411 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
9412 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
9413 right away. :)</p>
9414
9415       </div>
9416       <div class="tags">
9417
9418
9419         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>.
9420
9421
9422       </div>
9423     </div>
9424     <div class="padding"></div>
9425
9426     <div class="entry">
9427       <div class="title">
9428         <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>
9429       </div>
9430       <div class="date">
9431         10th November 2013
9432       </div>
9433       <div class="body">
9434         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
9435 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
9436 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
9437 MR3040 as a mesh node using
9438 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
9439
9440 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
9441 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
9442 and downloaded
9443 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
9444 recommended firmware image</a>
9445 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
9446 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
9447 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
9448 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
9449 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
9450
9451 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
9452 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
9453 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
9454 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
9455 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
9456 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
9457 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
9458 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
9459 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
9460 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
9461 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
9462 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
9463 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
9464
9465 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
9466 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
9467 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
9468 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
9469 them:</p>
9470
9471 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
9472
9473 <pre>
9474
9475 config interface 'loopback'
9476         option ifname 'lo'
9477         option proto 'static'
9478         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
9479         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
9480
9481 config globals 'globals'
9482         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
9483
9484 config interface 'lan'
9485         option ifname 'eth0'
9486         option type 'bridge'
9487         option proto 'dhcp'
9488         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
9489         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
9490         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
9491         option ip6assign '60'
9492
9493 config interface 'mesh'
9494         option ifname 'adhoc0'
9495         option mtu '1528'
9496         option proto 'batadv'
9497         option mesh 'bat0'
9498 </pre>
9499
9500 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
9501 <pre>
9502
9503 config wifi-device 'radio0'
9504         option type 'mac80211'
9505         option channel '11'
9506         option hwmode '11ng'
9507         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
9508         option htmode 'HT20'
9509         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
9510         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
9511         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
9512         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
9513         option disabled '0'
9514
9515 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
9516         option device 'radio0'
9517         option ifname 'adhoc0'
9518         option network 'mesh'
9519         option encryption 'none'
9520         option mode 'adhoc'
9521         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
9522         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
9523 </pre>
9524 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
9525 <pre>
9526
9527 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
9528         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
9529         option 'aggregated_ogms'
9530         option 'ap_isolation'
9531         option 'bonding'
9532         option 'fragmentation'
9533         option 'gw_bandwidth'
9534         option 'gw_mode'
9535         option 'gw_sel_class'
9536         option 'log_level'
9537         option 'orig_interval'
9538         option 'vis_mode'
9539         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
9540         option 'distributed_arp_table'
9541         option 'network_coding'
9542         option 'hop_penalty'
9543
9544 # yet another batX instance
9545 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
9546 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
9547 </pre>
9548
9549 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
9550 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
9551 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
9552
9553       </div>
9554       <div class="tags">
9555
9556
9557         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>.
9558
9559
9560       </div>
9561     </div>
9562     <div class="padding"></div>
9563
9564     <div class="entry">
9565       <div class="title">
9566         <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>
9567       </div>
9568       <div class="date">
9569          2nd November 2013
9570       </div>
9571       <div class="body">
9572         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
9573 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
9574 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
9575 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
9576 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
9577
9578 <p><pre>
9579 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
9580 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
9581 # Provides:          rsyslog
9582 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
9583 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
9584 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
9585 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
9586 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
9587 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
9588 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
9589 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
9590 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
9591 ### END INIT INFO
9592 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
9593 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
9594 </pre></p>
9595
9596 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
9597 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
9598 info/comments.</p>
9599
9600 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
9601 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
9602
9603 <p><pre>
9604 #!/bin/sh
9605
9606 # Define LSB log_* functions.
9607 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
9608 # and status_of_proc is working.
9609 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
9610
9611 #
9612 # Function that starts the daemon/service
9613
9614 #
9615 do_start()
9616 {
9617         # Return
9618         #   0 if daemon has been started
9619         #   1 if daemon was already running
9620         #   2 if daemon could not be started
9621         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
9622                 || return 1
9623         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
9624                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
9625                 || return 2
9626         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
9627         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
9628         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
9629 }
9630
9631 #
9632 # Function that stops the daemon/service
9633 #
9634 do_stop()
9635 {
9636         # Return
9637         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
9638         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
9639         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
9640         #   other if a failure occurred
9641         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
9642         RETVAL="$?"
9643         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
9644         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
9645         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
9646         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
9647         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
9648         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
9649         # sleep for some time.
9650         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
9651         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
9652         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
9653         rm -f $PIDFILE
9654         return "$RETVAL"
9655 }
9656
9657 #
9658 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
9659 #
9660 do_reload() {
9661         #
9662         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
9663         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
9664         # then implement that here.
9665         #
9666         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
9667         return 0
9668 }
9669
9670 SCRIPTNAME=$1
9671 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
9672 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
9673 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
9674     script="$1"
9675     shift
9676     . $script
9677 else
9678     exit 0
9679 fi
9680
9681 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
9682 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
9683
9684 # Exit if the package is not installed
9685 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
9686
9687 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
9688 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
9689
9690 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
9691 . /lib/init/vars.sh
9692
9693 case "$1" in
9694   start)
9695         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
9696         do_start
9697         case "$?" in
9698                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
9699                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
9700         esac
9701         ;;
9702   stop)
9703         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
9704         do_stop
9705         case "$?" in
9706                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
9707                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
9708         esac
9709         ;;
9710   status)
9711         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
9712         ;;
9713   #reload|force-reload)
9714         #
9715         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
9716         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
9717         #
9718         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
9719         #do_reload
9720         #log_end_msg $?
9721         #;;
9722   restart|force-reload)
9723         #
9724         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
9725         # 'force-reload' alias
9726         #
9727         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
9728         do_stop
9729         case "$?" in
9730           0|1)
9731                 do_start
9732                 case "$?" in
9733                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
9734                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
9735                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
9736                 esac
9737                 ;;
9738           *)
9739                 # Failed to stop
9740                 log_end_msg 1
9741                 ;;
9742         esac
9743         ;;
9744   *)
9745         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
9746         exit 3
9747         ;;
9748 esac
9749
9750 :
9751 </pre></p>
9752
9753 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
9754 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
9755 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
9756 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
9757
9758 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
9759 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
9760 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
9761 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
9762 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
9763
9764       </div>
9765       <div class="tags">
9766
9767
9768         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>.
9769
9770
9771       </div>
9772     </div>
9773     <div class="padding"></div>
9774
9775     <div class="entry">
9776       <div class="title">
9777         <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>
9778       </div>
9779       <div class="date">
9780          1st November 2013
9781       </div>
9782       <div class="body">
9783         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
9784 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
9785 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
9786 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
9787 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
9788 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
9789 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
9790 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
9791 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
9792 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
9793 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
9794 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
9795
9796 <p>The source is now available from
9797 <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>
9798
9799       </div>
9800       <div class="tags">
9801
9802
9803         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9804
9805
9806       </div>
9807     </div>
9808     <div class="padding"></div>
9809
9810     <div class="entry">
9811       <div class="title">
9812         <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>
9813       </div>
9814       <div class="date">
9815         27th October 2013
9816       </div>
9817       <div class="body">
9818         <p>The
9819 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
9820 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
9821 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
9822 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
9823 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
9824 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
9825 of a plan to simplify the build system for
9826 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
9827 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
9828 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
9829 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
9830 Raspberry Pi.</p>
9831
9832 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
9833 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
9834 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
9835 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
9836 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
9837 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
9838 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
9839 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
9840 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
9841 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
9842 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
9843 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
9844 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
9845 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
9846 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
9847 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
9848 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
9849 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
9850 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
9851 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
9852 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
9853 available from
9854 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
9855 upstream project page</a>.</p>
9856
9857 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
9858 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
9859 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
9860 list:</p>
9861
9862 <p><pre>
9863 #!/bin/sh
9864 set -e # Exit on first error
9865 rootdir="$1"
9866 cd "$rootdir"
9867 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
9868 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
9869 EOF
9870 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
9871 # install a kernel somewhere too.
9872 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
9873     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
9874 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
9875 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
9876 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
9877 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
9878 </pre></p>
9879
9880 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
9881 to build the image:</p>
9882
9883 <pre>
9884 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
9885     --variant minbase \
9886     --arch armel \
9887     --distribution jessie \
9888     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
9889     --image test.img \
9890     --size 600M \
9891     --bootsize 64M \
9892     --boottype vfat \
9893     --log-level debug \
9894     --verbose \
9895     --no-kernel \
9896     --no-extlinux \
9897     --root-password raspberry \
9898     --hostname raspberrypi \
9899     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
9900     --customize `pwd`/customize \
9901     --package netbase \
9902     --package git-core \
9903     --package binutils \
9904     --package ca-certificates \
9905     --package wget \
9906     --package kmod
9907 </pre></p>
9908
9909 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
9910 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
9911 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
9912 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
9913 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
9914 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
9915 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
9916
9917 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
9918 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
9919 build dependency list.</p>
9920
9921 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
9922 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
9923 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
9924 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
9925
9926       </div>
9927       <div class="tags">
9928
9929
9930         Tags: <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>.
9931
9932
9933       </div>
9934     </div>
9935     <div class="padding"></div>
9936
9937     <div class="entry">
9938       <div class="title">
9939         <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>
9940       </div>
9941       <div class="date">
9942         21st October 2013
9943       </div>
9944       <div class="body">
9945         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
9946 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
9947 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
9948 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
9949 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
9950 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
9951 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
9952 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
9953
9954 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
9955 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
9956 instead, I started playing with a
9957 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
9958 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
9959 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
9960 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
9961 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
9962 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
9963 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
9964 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
9965 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
9966 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
9967 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
9968 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
9969 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
9970 every client on the local network.</p>
9971
9972 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
9973 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
9974 and a script
9975 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
9976 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
9977 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
9978 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
9979 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
9980 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
9981 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
9982 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
9983 support.</p>
9984
9985 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
9986 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
9987
9988 <p><pre>
9989 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
9990     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
9991 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
9992 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
9993 %
9994 </pre></p>
9995
9996 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
9997 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
9998 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
9999 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
10000 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
10001 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
10002
10003 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
10004 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
10005 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
10006
10007 <p><table>
10008
10009 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
10010 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
10011 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
10012 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
10013 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
10014 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
10015
10016 </table></p>
10017
10018 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
10019 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
10020 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
10021 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
10022 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
10023 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
10024 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
10025
10026       </div>
10027       <div class="tags">
10028
10029
10030         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>.
10031
10032
10033       </div>
10034     </div>
10035     <div class="padding"></div>
10036
10037     <div class="entry">
10038       <div class="title">
10039         <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>
10040       </div>
10041       <div class="date">
10042         19th October 2013
10043       </div>
10044       <div class="body">
10045         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
10046 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
10047 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
10048 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
10049 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
10050 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
10051 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
10052 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
10053
10054       </div>
10055       <div class="tags">
10056
10057
10058         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>.
10059
10060
10061       </div>
10062     </div>
10063     <div class="padding"></div>
10064
10065     <div class="entry">
10066       <div class="title">
10067         <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>
10068       </div>
10069       <div class="date">
10070         15th October 2013
10071       </div>
10072       <div class="body">
10073         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
10074 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
10075 these. :)</p>
10076
10077 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
10078 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
10079 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
10080 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
10081 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
10082 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
10083 hope you will to. :)</p>
10084
10085 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
10086 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
10087 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
10088 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
10089 donated.  Are you next?</p>
10090
10091 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
10092 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
10093 statement under the heading
10094 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
10095 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
10096 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
10097 too.</p>
10098
10099       </div>
10100       <div class="tags">
10101
10102
10103         Tags: <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>.
10104
10105
10106       </div>
10107     </div>
10108     <div class="padding"></div>
10109
10110     <div class="entry">
10111       <div class="title">
10112         <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>
10113       </div>
10114       <div class="date">
10115         11th October 2013
10116       </div>
10117       <div class="body">
10118         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
10119 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
10120 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
10121 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
10122 successful examples like
10123 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
10124 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
10125 (see
10126 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
10127 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
10128 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
10129 can be seen from their
10130 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
10131 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
10132 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
10133 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
10134 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
10135
10136 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
10137 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
10138 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
10139 my recent involvement in
10140 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
10141 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
10142 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
10143 when possible, given that most communication between people are
10144 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
10145 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
10146 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
10147 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
10148 important over the years.</p>
10149
10150 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
10151 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
10152 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
10153 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
10154 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
10155 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
10156 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
10157 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
10158 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
10159 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
10160 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
10161 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
10162 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
10163 speakers about this talk (from
10164 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
10165
10166 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
10167
10168 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
10169 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
10170 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
10171 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
10172 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
10173 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
10174 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
10175 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
10176 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
10177 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
10178 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
10179 that project (from
10180 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
10181
10182 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
10183
10184 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
10185 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
10186 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
10187 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
10188 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
10189 based community mesh networks.</p>
10190
10191 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
10192 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
10193 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
10194 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
10195 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
10196 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
10197 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
10198 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
10199 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
10200
10201 <p><table>
10202 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
10203 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
10204 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
10205 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
10206 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
10207 </table></p>
10208
10209 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
10210 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
10211 VillageTelco about
10212 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
10213 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
10214 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
10215 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
10216 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
10217 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
10218
10219 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
10220 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
10221 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
10222 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
10223
10224 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
10225 us on IRC, either channel
10226 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
10227 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
10228 irc.freenode.net.</p>
10229
10230 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
10231 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
10232 and Innovation called
10233 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
10234 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
10235 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
10236 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
10237 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
10238 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
10239 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
10240 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
10241
10242 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
10243 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
10244 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
10245 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
10246 mesh system.</p>
10247
10248       </div>
10249       <div class="tags">
10250
10251
10252         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>.
10253
10254
10255       </div>
10256     </div>
10257     <div class="padding"></div>
10258
10259     <div class="entry">
10260       <div class="title">
10261         <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>
10262       </div>
10263       <div class="date">
10264          8th October 2013
10265       </div>
10266       <div class="body">
10267         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
10268 Salvador had published a
10269 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
10270 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
10271 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
10272 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
10273 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
10274 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
10275 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
10276 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
10277 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
10278 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
10279 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
10280 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
10281 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
10282 computers without hard drives by installing one central
10283 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
10284
10285 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
10286
10287 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
10288
10289 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
10290 me know. :)</p>
10291
10292       </div>
10293       <div class="tags">
10294
10295
10296         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10297
10298
10299       </div>
10300     </div>
10301     <div class="padding"></div>
10302
10303     <div class="entry">
10304       <div class="title">
10305         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
10306       </div>
10307       <div class="date">
10308         29th September 2013
10309       </div>
10310       <div class="body">
10311         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
10312 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
10313 complete announcement text can be found at
10314 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
10315 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
10316
10317 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
10318 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
10319 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
10320 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
10321
10322       </div>
10323       <div class="tags">
10324
10325
10326         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10327
10328
10329       </div>
10330     </div>
10331     <div class="padding"></div>
10332
10333     <div class="entry">
10334       <div class="title">
10335         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
10336       </div>
10337       <div class="date">
10338         27th September 2013
10339       </div>
10340       <div class="body">
10341         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
10342 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
10343 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
10344 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
10345
10346 <ul>
10347
10348 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
10349 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
10350
10351 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
10352 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
10353
10354 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
10355 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
10356 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
10357 (Youtube)</li>
10358
10359 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
10360 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
10361
10362 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
10363 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
10364
10365 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
10366 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
10367 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
10368
10369 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
10370 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
10371 (Youtube)</li>
10372
10373 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
10374 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
10375
10376 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
10377 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
10378
10379 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
10380 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
10381 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
10382
10383 </ul>
10384
10385 <p>A larger list is available from
10386 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
10387 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
10388
10389 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
10390 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
10391 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
10392 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
10393 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
10394 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
10395 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
10396 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
10397 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
10398 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
10399 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
10400
10401       </div>
10402       <div class="tags">
10403
10404
10405         Tags: <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>.
10406
10407
10408       </div>
10409     </div>
10410     <div class="padding"></div>
10411
10412     <div class="entry">
10413       <div class="title">
10414         <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>
10415       </div>
10416       <div class="date">
10417         16th September 2013
10418       </div>
10419       <div class="body">
10420         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
10421 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
10422
10423 <blockquote>
10424 <p>Hi,</p>
10425
10426 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
10427 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
10428 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
10429
10430 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
10431 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
10432 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
10433 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
10434
10435 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
10436 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
10437
10438 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
10439 compared to beta1:</p>
10440
10441 <ul>
10442
10443 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
10444 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
10445 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
10446 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
10447 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
10448 main server.</li>
10449 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
10450 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
10451 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
10452 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
10453 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
10454
10455 </ul>
10456
10457 <p>Where to get it:</p>
10458
10459 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
10460
10461 <ul>
10462 <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>
10463 <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>
10464 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
10465 </ul>
10466
10467 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
10468
10469 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
10470 <ul>
10471 <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>
10472 <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>
10473 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
10474 </ul>
10475
10476 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
10477
10478 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
10479 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
10480 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
10481 as the other isos.</p>
10482
10483 <p>How to report bugs</p>
10484
10485 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
10486 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
10487
10488
10489 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
10490
10491 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
10492 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
10493 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
10494 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
10495 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
10496 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
10497 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
10498 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
10499 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
10500 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
10501 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
10502 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
10503 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
10504
10505 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
10506 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
10507 Squeeze release.</p>
10508
10509 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
10510
10511 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
10512 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
10513 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
10514 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
10515 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
10516 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
10517 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
10518 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
10519 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
10520 directory.</p>
10521
10522
10523 <p>cheers,
10524 <br>        Holger</p>
10525 </blockquote>
10526
10527       </div>
10528       <div class="tags">
10529
10530
10531         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10532
10533
10534       </div>
10535     </div>
10536     <div class="padding"></div>
10537
10538     <div class="entry">
10539       <div class="title">
10540         <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>
10541       </div>
10542       <div class="date">
10543         10th September 2013
10544       </div>
10545       <div class="body">
10546         <p>I was introduced to the
10547 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
10548 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
10549 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
10550 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
10551 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
10552 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
10553 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
10554 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
10555
10556 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
10557 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
10558 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
10559 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
10560 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
10561
10562 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
10563 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
10564 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
10565 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
10566 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
10567 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
10568 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
10569 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
10570 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
10571 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
10572 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
10573 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
10574 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
10575 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
10576 missing in Debian).</p>
10577
10578 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
10579 scripts
10580 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
10581 and a administrative web interface
10582 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
10583 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
10584 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
10585 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
10586 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
10587 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
10588 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
10589 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
10590 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
10591 this is really working yet, see
10592 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
10593 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
10594 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
10595 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
10596 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
10597 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
10598 with lots of half baked features.</p>
10599
10600 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
10601 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
10602 at.</p>
10603
10604 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
10605
10606 <ol>
10607
10608 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
10609 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
10610 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
10611 to the Debian installer:<p>
10612 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
10613
10614 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
10615 install on.</li>
10616
10617 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
10618 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
10619
10620 </ol>
10621
10622 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
10623
10624 <ol>
10625
10626 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
10627 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
10628 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
10629 <pre>
10630 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
10631 </pre></li>
10632 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
10633 <pre>
10634 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
10635    apt-key add -
10636 apt-get update
10637 apt-get install freedombox-setup
10638 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
10639 </pre></li>
10640 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
10641
10642 </ol>
10643
10644 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
10645 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
10646 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
10647 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
10648 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
10649
10650 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
10651 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
10652 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
10653 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
10654
10655 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
10656 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
10657 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
10658 irc.debian.org and the
10659 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
10660 mailing list</a>.</p>
10661
10662 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
10663 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
10664 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
10665 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
10666 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
10667 default password is 'secret'.</p>
10668
10669       </div>
10670       <div class="tags">
10671
10672
10673         Tags: <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>.
10674
10675
10676       </div>
10677     </div>
10678     <div class="padding"></div>
10679
10680     <div class="entry">
10681       <div class="title">
10682         <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>
10683       </div>
10684       <div class="date">
10685         22nd August 2013
10686       </div>
10687       <div class="body">
10688         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
10689 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
10690 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
10691
10692 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
10693
10694 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10695 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
10696
10697 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
10698
10699 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
10700 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
10701 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
10702 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
10703 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
10704 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
10705 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
10706 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
10707 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
10708 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
10709 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
10710 desktop contains
10711 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
10712 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
10713 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
10714 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
10715
10716 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
10717 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
10718 release.</p>
10719
10720 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
10721 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
10722 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
10723 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
10724 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
10725 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
10726 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
10727 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
10728 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
10729 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
10730 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
10731
10732 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
10733
10734 <ul>
10735
10736 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
10737     work also without a attached tty.</li>
10738 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
10739     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
10740     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
10741     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
10742     required).</li>
10743
10744 </ul>
10745
10746 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
10747
10748 <ul>
10749
10750 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
10751 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
10752 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
10753 stick ISO image.</li>
10754 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
10755 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
10756 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
10757     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
10758     cope with this.</li>
10759 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
10760 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
10761     empty password hashes.</li>
10762 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
10763     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
10764     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
10765
10766 </ul>
10767
10768 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
10769
10770 <ul>
10771
10772 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
10773     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
10774 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
10775     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
10776
10777 </ul>
10778
10779 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
10780
10781 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
10782
10783 <ul>
10784
10785 <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>
10786
10787 <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>
10788
10789 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
10790
10791 </ul>
10792
10793 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
10794 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
10795
10796 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
10797
10798 <ul>
10799
10800 <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>
10801 <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>
10802 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
10803
10804 </ul>
10805
10806 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
10807 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
10808
10809
10810 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
10811
10812 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
10813
10814       </div>
10815       <div class="tags">
10816
10817
10818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10819
10820
10821       </div>
10822     </div>
10823     <div class="padding"></div>
10824
10825     <div class="entry">
10826       <div class="title">
10827         <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>
10828       </div>
10829       <div class="date">
10830         18th August 2013
10831       </div>
10832       <div class="body">
10833         <p>Earlier, I reported about
10834 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
10835 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
10836 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
10837 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
10838 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
10839 currently on the disk.</p>
10840
10841 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
10842 <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>
10843 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
10844 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
10845 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
10846 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
10847 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
10848 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
10849 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
10850 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
10851 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
10852 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
10853 the broken disks.</p>
10854
10855       </div>
10856       <div class="tags">
10857
10858
10859         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10860
10861
10862       </div>
10863     </div>
10864     <div class="padding"></div>
10865
10866     <div class="entry">
10867       <div class="title">
10868         <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>
10869       </div>
10870       <div class="date">
10871          2nd August 2013
10872       </div>
10873       <div class="body">
10874         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
10875 have worked on a Norwegian
10876 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
10877 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
10878 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
10879 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
10880 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
10881 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
10882 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
10883 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
10884 progress of the translation:</p>
10885
10886 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
10887
10888 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
10889 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
10890 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
10891 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
10892 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
10893 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
10894 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
10895 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
10896 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
10897 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
10898 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
10899
10900 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
10901 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
10902 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
10903 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
10904 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
10905 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
10906 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
10907 project files currently available from
10908 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
10909
10910 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
10911 the updated
10912 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
10913 and
10914 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
10915 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
10916 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
10917 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
10918
10919       </div>
10920       <div class="tags">
10921
10922
10923         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>.
10924
10925
10926       </div>
10927     </div>
10928     <div class="padding"></div>
10929
10930     <div class="entry">
10931       <div class="title">
10932         <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>
10933       </div>
10934       <div class="date">
10935         27th July 2013
10936       </div>
10937       <div class="body">
10938         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
10939 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
10940
10941 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
10942 2013-07-27</strong></p>
10943
10944 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
10945 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
10946
10947 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
10948
10949 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
10950 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
10951 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
10952 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
10953 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
10954 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
10955 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
10956 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
10957 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
10958 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
10959 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
10960 desktop contains
10961 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
10962 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
10963 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
10964 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
10965
10966 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
10967 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
10968 Squeeze release.</p>
10969
10970 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
10971 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
10972 release.</p>
10973
10974 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
10975
10976 <ul>
10977
10978 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
10979    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
10980 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
10981    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
10982    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
10983    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
10984    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
10985 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
10986 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
10987 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
10988    crash bugs.</li>
10989
10990 </ul>
10991
10992 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
10993
10994 <ul>
10995
10996 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
10997    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
10998 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
10999    netinst CD.</li>
11000 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
11001    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
11002 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
11003    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
11004    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
11005 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
11006    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
11007    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
11008 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
11009    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
11010    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
11011 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
11012    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
11013 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
11014
11015 </ul>
11016
11017 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
11018
11019 <ul>
11020
11021 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
11022 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
11023     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
11024 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
11025
11026 </ul>
11027
11028 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
11029
11030 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
11031
11032 <ul>
11033
11034 <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>
11035
11036 <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>
11037
11038 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
11039
11040 </ul>
11041
11042 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
11043 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
11044
11045 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
11046
11047 <ul>
11048
11049 <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>
11050 <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>
11051 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
11052
11053 </ul>
11054
11055 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
11056 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
11057
11058
11059 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
11060
11061 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
11062
11063       </div>
11064       <div class="tags">
11065
11066
11067         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11068
11069
11070       </div>
11071     </div>
11072     <div class="padding"></div>
11073
11074     <div class="entry">
11075       <div class="title">
11076         <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>
11077       </div>
11078       <div class="date">
11079         17th July 2013
11080       </div>
11081       <div class="body">
11082         <p>Today I switched to
11083 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
11084 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
11085 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
11086 <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
11087 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
11088 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
11089 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
11090 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
11091 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
11092 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
11093 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
11094 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
11095 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
11096 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
11097 station from now on.</p>
11098
11099 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
11100 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
11101 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
11102 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
11103 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
11104 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
11105 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
11106 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
11107 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
11108 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
11109 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
11110 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
11111
11112 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
11113 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
11114 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
11115 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
11116 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
11117 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
11118 parameters are tuned:</p>
11119
11120 <ul>
11121
11122 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
11123     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
11124
11125 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
11126     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
11127     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
11128
11129 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
11130     systems.</li>
11131
11132 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
11133     /etc/fstab.</li>
11134
11135 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
11136
11137 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
11138     cron.daily).</li>
11139
11140 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
11141     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
11142
11143 </ul>
11144
11145 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
11146 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
11147 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
11148 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
11149 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
11150 from getting the data on the disk (see
11151 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
11152 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
11153 right thing to do.</p>
11154
11155 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
11156 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
11157 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
11158
11159 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
11160 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
11161 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
11162 instead of during my work.</p>
11163
11164 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
11165 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
11166
11167 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
11168 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
11169 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
11170
11171 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
11172 there.</p>
11173
11174 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
11175 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
11176 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
11177 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
11178 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
11179 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
11180 back.</p>
11181
11182       </div>
11183       <div class="tags">
11184
11185
11186         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11187
11188
11189       </div>
11190     </div>
11191     <div class="padding"></div>
11192
11193     <div class="entry">
11194       <div class="title">
11195         <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>
11196       </div>
11197       <div class="date">
11198         10th July 2013
11199       </div>
11200       <div class="body">
11201         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
11202 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
11203 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
11204 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
11205 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
11206 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
11207 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
11208 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
11209
11210 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
11211 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
11212 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
11213 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
11214 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
11215 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
11216 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
11217 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
11218 lock up when I download a new
11219 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
11220 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
11221 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
11222
11223 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
11224 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
11225 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
11226 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
11227 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
11228 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
11229
11230 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
11231 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
11232 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
11233 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
11234 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
11235 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
11236
11237 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
11238 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
11239 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
11240 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
11241 exist).</p>
11242
11243       </div>
11244       <div class="tags">
11245
11246
11247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11248
11249
11250       </div>
11251     </div>
11252     <div class="padding"></div>
11253
11254     <div class="entry">
11255       <div class="title">
11256         <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>
11257       </div>
11258       <div class="date">
11259          9th July 2013
11260       </div>
11261       <div class="body">
11262         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
11263 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
11264 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
11265 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
11266 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11267 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
11268 Bitraf</a>.</p>
11269
11270 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
11271 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
11272 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
11273 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
11274 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
11275
11276       </div>
11277       <div class="tags">
11278
11279
11280         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>.
11281
11282
11283       </div>
11284     </div>
11285     <div class="padding"></div>
11286
11287     <div class="entry">
11288       <div class="title">
11289         <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>
11290       </div>
11291       <div class="date">
11292          5th July 2013
11293       </div>
11294       <div class="body">
11295         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
11296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
11297 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
11298 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
11299 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
11300 ended up picking a
11301 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
11302 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
11303 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
11304 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
11305 on that below.</p>
11306
11307 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
11308 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
11309 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
11310 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
11311 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
11312 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
11313 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
11314 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
11315 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
11316
11317 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
11318 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
11319 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
11320 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
11321 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
11322 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
11323 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
11324
11325 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
11326 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
11327
11328 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
11329 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
11330 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
11331 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
11332 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
11333 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
11334 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
11335 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
11336 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
11337 kernel developers as
11338 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
11339 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
11340 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
11341 Lenovo forums, both for
11342 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
11343 2012-11-10</a> and for
11344 <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
11345 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
11346 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
11347 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
11348 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
11349 There is even a
11350 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
11351 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
11352 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
11353
11354 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
11355 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
11356 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
11357 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
11358 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
11359 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
11360 fixed. :)</p>
11361
11362       </div>
11363       <div class="tags">
11364
11365
11366         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11367
11368
11369       </div>
11370     </div>
11371     <div class="padding"></div>
11372
11373     <div class="entry">
11374       <div class="title">
11375         <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>
11376       </div>
11377       <div class="date">
11378          4th July 2013
11379       </div>
11380       <div class="body">
11381         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
11382 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
11383 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
11384 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
11385 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
11386 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
11387 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
11388 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
11389 with an expencive door stop.</p>
11390
11391 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
11392 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
11393 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
11394 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
11395 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
11396 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
11397 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
11398
11399 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
11400 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
11401 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
11402 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
11403 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
11404 new laptop now. :)</p>
11405
11406 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
11407
11408       </div>
11409       <div class="tags">
11410
11411
11412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11413
11414
11415       </div>
11416     </div>
11417     <div class="padding"></div>
11418
11419     <div class="entry">
11420       <div class="title">
11421         <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>
11422       </div>
11423       <div class="date">
11424          3rd July 2013
11425       </div>
11426       <div class="body">
11427         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
11428 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
11429
11430 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
11431 2013-07-03</strong></p>
11432
11433 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11434 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
11435
11436 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
11437
11438 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
11439 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
11440 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
11441 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
11442 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
11443 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
11444 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
11445 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
11446 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
11447 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
11448 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
11449 desktop contains
11450 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
11451 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
11452 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
11453 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
11454
11455 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
11456 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
11457 Squeeze release.</p>
11458
11459 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
11460 <ul>
11461   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
11462   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
11463     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
11464     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
11465   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
11466     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
11467     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
11468   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
11469     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
11470     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
11471     too.</li>
11472   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
11473     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
11474 </ul>
11475 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
11476 <ul>
11477   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
11478   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
11479   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
11480     up for some language options.</li>
11481   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
11482   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
11483   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
11484     d-i is doing it.</li>
11485   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
11486     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
11487   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
11488     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
11489     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
11490   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
11491     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
11492   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
11493   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
11494     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
11495   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
11496     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
11497 </ul>
11498 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
11499 <ul>
11500   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
11501     available yet (698840).</li>
11502   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
11503 </ul>
11504 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
11505
11506 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
11507 <ul>
11508   <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>
11509   <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>
11510   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
11511 </ul>
11512
11513 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
11514 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
11515
11516 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
11517 <ul>
11518   <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>
11519   <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>
11520   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
11521 </ul>
11522
11523 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
11524 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
11525
11526 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
11527
11528 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
11529
11530       </div>
11531       <div class="tags">
11532
11533
11534         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11535
11536
11537       </div>
11538     </div>
11539     <div class="padding"></div>
11540
11541     <div class="entry">
11542       <div class="title">
11543         <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>
11544       </div>
11545       <div class="date">
11546         25th June 2013
11547       </div>
11548       <div class="body">
11549         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
11550 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
11551 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
11552 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
11553 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
11554 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
11555 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
11556 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
11557 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
11558 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
11559 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
11560
11561 <p><pre>
11562 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
11563 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
11564 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
11565 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
11566 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
11567 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
11568 firmware-ipw2x00
11569 firmware-ipw2x00
11570 Preconfiguring packages ...
11571 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
11572 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
11573 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
11574 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
11575 #
11576 </pre></p>
11577
11578 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
11579 printed instead:</p>
11580
11581 <p><pre>
11582 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
11583 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
11584 #
11585 </pre></p>
11586
11587 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
11588 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
11589
11590 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
11591 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
11592 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
11593 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
11594 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
11595 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
11596 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
11597 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
11598 machine.</p>
11599
11600 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
11601 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
11602 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
11603 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
11604 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
11605 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
11606
11607       </div>
11608       <div class="tags">
11609
11610
11611         Tags: <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>.
11612
11613
11614       </div>
11615     </div>
11616     <div class="padding"></div>
11617
11618     <div class="entry">
11619       <div class="title">
11620         <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>
11621       </div>
11622       <div class="date">
11623         22nd June 2013
11624       </div>
11625       <div class="body">
11626         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
11627 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
11628 which check that services are running, working, and return the
11629 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
11630 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
11631 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
11632 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
11633 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
11634 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
11635
11636 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
11637 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
11638 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
11639 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
11640 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
11641 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
11642 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
11643 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
11644 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
11645 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
11646 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
11647 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
11648 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
11649 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
11650
11651 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
11652 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
11653 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
11654 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
11655 the problem.</p>
11656
11657 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
11658 please join us on
11659 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
11660 irc.debian.org</a> and the
11661 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
11662 list.</p>
11663
11664       </div>
11665       <div class="tags">
11666
11667
11668         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11669
11670
11671       </div>
11672     </div>
11673     <div class="padding"></div>
11674
11675     <div class="entry">
11676       <div class="title">
11677         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
11678       </div>
11679       <div class="date">
11680         17th June 2013
11681       </div>
11682       <div class="body">
11683         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
11684 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
11685 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
11686 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
11687 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
11688 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
11689 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
11690 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
11691
11692 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11693
11694 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
11695 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
11696 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
11697 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
11698 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
11699 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
11700 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
11701 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
11702 field.</p>
11703
11704 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
11705 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
11706 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
11707 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
11708 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
11709 the only one we have in our country.</p>
11710
11711 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11712 project?</strong></p>
11713
11714 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
11715 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
11716 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
11717 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
11718 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
11719 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
11720 ways to contribute.</p>
11721
11722 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
11723 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
11724 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
11725 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
11726 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
11727 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
11728 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
11729 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
11730 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
11731 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
11732
11733 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
11734 Edu?</strong></p>
11735
11736 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
11737 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
11738 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
11739 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
11740 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
11741 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
11742 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
11743 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
11744
11745 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
11746 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
11747 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
11748 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
11749 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
11750 project.</p>
11751
11752 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11753 Edu?</strong></p>
11754
11755 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
11756 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
11757 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
11758 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
11759 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
11760 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
11761 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
11762 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
11763 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
11764
11765 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
11766 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
11767 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
11768 on.</p>
11769
11770 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11771
11772 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
11773 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
11774 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
11775 Enlightenment project a lot!),
11776 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
11777 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
11778 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
11779 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
11780 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
11781
11782 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11783 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11784
11785 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
11786 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
11787 that:</p>
11788
11789 <ul>
11790
11791 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
11792
11793 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
11794     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
11795     of teenagers more?</li>
11796
11797 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
11798     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
11799     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
11800     them!)</li>
11801
11802 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
11803     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
11804     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
11805
11806 </ul>
11807
11808 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
11809 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
11810 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
11811 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
11812 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
11813
11814       </div>
11815       <div class="tags">
11816
11817
11818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11819
11820
11821       </div>
11822     </div>
11823     <div class="padding"></div>
11824
11825     <div class="entry">
11826       <div class="title">
11827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
11828       </div>
11829       <div class="date">
11830         12th June 2013
11831       </div>
11832       <div class="body">
11833         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
11834 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
11835 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
11836 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
11837 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
11838 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
11839
11840 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11841
11842 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
11843 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
11844 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
11845
11846 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
11847 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
11848 each other.</p>
11849
11850 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11851 project?</strong></p>
11852
11853 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
11854 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
11855 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
11856 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
11857 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
11858 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
11859 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
11860 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
11861 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
11862 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
11863 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
11864 we'll get there one day.</p>
11865
11866 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11867 Edu?</strong></p>
11868
11869 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
11870 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
11871 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
11872 very high quality work.</p>
11873
11874 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
11875 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
11876 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
11877 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
11878 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
11879
11880 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11881 Edu?</strong></p>
11882
11883 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
11884 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
11885 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
11886
11887 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
11888 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
11889 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
11890 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
11891 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
11892 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
11893 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
11894 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
11895 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
11896 currently.</p>
11897
11898 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
11899 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
11900 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
11901 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
11902 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
11903 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
11904 autonomous.</p>
11905
11906 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11907
11908 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
11909 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
11910 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
11911 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
11912 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
11913
11914 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
11915 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
11916 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
11917 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
11918 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
11919 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
11920 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
11921 X.</p>
11922
11923 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
11924 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
11925 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
11926 it :p)
11927
11928 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11929 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11930
11931 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
11932 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
11933 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
11934 that.</p>
11935
11936 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
11937 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
11938 advantage of that.</p>
11939
11940 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
11941 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
11942 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
11943 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
11944 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
11945 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
11946 best solution for them.</p>
11947
11948 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
11949 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
11950 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
11951
11952       </div>
11953       <div class="tags">
11954
11955
11956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11957
11958
11959       </div>
11960     </div>
11961     <div class="padding"></div>
11962
11963     <div class="entry">
11964       <div class="title">
11965         <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>
11966       </div>
11967       <div class="date">
11968         11th June 2013
11969       </div>
11970       <div class="body">
11971         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
11972 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
11973 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
11974 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
11975 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
11976 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
11977 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
11978 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
11979 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
11980 i915 driver used by the
11981 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
11982 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
11983
11984 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
11985 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
11986 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
11987 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
11988 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
11989
11990 <pre>
11991 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
11992 update-initramfs -u -k all
11993 </pre>
11994
11995 <p>Since March 2012 there is
11996 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
11997 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
11998 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
11999 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
12000 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
12001 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
12002 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
12003 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
12004 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
12005 number.</p>
12006
12007 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
12008 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
12009
12010 <p><pre>
12011 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
12012     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
12013     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
12014  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
12015  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
12016     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
12017  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
12018     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
12019  Latency: 0
12020  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
12021  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
12022  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
12023  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
12024  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
12025  Capabilities: <access denied>
12026  Kernel driver in use: i915
12027 </pre></p>
12028
12029 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
12030
12031 <p><pre>
12032 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
12033        ...
12034         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
12035         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
12036        ...
12037 }
12038 </pre></p>
12039
12040 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
12041 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
12042 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
12043 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
12044 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
12045 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
12046 yet shown up in
12047 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
12048 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
12049 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
12050 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
12051 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
12052 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
12053
12054 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
12055 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
12056 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
12057 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
12058 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
12059 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
12060 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
12061 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
12062 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
12063 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
12064 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
12065 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
12066
12067 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
12068 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
12069 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
12070 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
12071 backlight.</p>
12072
12073       </div>
12074       <div class="tags">
12075
12076
12077         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12078
12079
12080       </div>
12081     </div>
12082     <div class="padding"></div>
12083
12084     <div class="entry">
12085       <div class="title">
12086         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
12087       </div>
12088       <div class="date">
12089         10th June 2013
12090       </div>
12091       <div class="body">
12092         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
12093 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
12094
12095 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
12096 2013-06-10</strong></p>
12097
12098 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
12099 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
12100
12101 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12102
12103 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
12104 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
12105 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
12106 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
12107 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
12108 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
12109 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
12110 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
12111 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
12112 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
12113 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
12114 desktop contains
12115 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
12116 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
12117 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
12118 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
12119
12120 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
12121 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
12122 Squeeze release.</p>
12123
12124 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12125
12126 <ul>
12127
12128 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
12129 <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).
12130 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
12131 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
12132 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
12133
12134 </ul>
12135
12136 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
12137
12138 <ul>
12139
12140 <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.
12141 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
12142 <li>New Romanian translation.
12143 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
12144 <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).
12145 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
12146 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
12147 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
12148 <li>More testsuite tests.
12149 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
12150 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
12151
12152 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
12153 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
12154
12155 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
12156 them up with GOsa².</li>
12157
12158 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
12159
12160 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
12161 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
12162 entered password). </li>
12163
12164 </ul>
12165
12166 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
12167
12168 <ul>
12169
12170 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
12171
12172 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
12173 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
12174 missing import feature).</li>
12175
12176 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
12177
12178 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
12179 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
12180 unfixed.</li>
12181
12182 </ul>
12183
12184 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
12185
12186 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12187
12188 <ul>
12189
12190 <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>
12191
12192 <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>
12193
12194 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
12195
12196 </ul>
12197
12198 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
12199 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
12200
12201 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
12202
12203 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
12204
12205       </div>
12206       <div class="tags">
12207
12208
12209         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12210
12211
12212       </div>
12213     </div>
12214     <div class="padding"></div>
12215
12216     <div class="entry">
12217       <div class="title">
12218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
12219       </div>
12220       <div class="date">
12221          5th June 2013
12222       </div>
12223       <div class="body">
12224         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
12225 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
12226 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
12227 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
12228 the project:
12229
12230 <ol>
12231
12232 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
12233   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
12234   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
12235   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
12236   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
12237
12238 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
12239   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
12240   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
12241   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
12242   #698840</a>.</li>
12243
12244 </ol>
12245
12246 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
12247 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
12248 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
12249
12250       </div>
12251       <div class="tags">
12252
12253
12254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12255
12256
12257       </div>
12258     </div>
12259     <div class="padding"></div>
12260
12261     <div class="entry">
12262       <div class="title">
12263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
12264       </div>
12265       <div class="date">
12266          4th June 2013
12267       </div>
12268       <div class="body">
12269         <p>It has been a while since my last English
12270 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12271 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
12272 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
12273 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
12274 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
12275
12276 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12277
12278 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
12279 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
12280 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
12281 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
12282
12283 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
12284 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
12285 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
12286
12287 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
12288 project?</strong></p>
12289
12290 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
12291 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
12292 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
12293 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
12294 manual.
12295
12296 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
12297 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
12298 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
12299 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
12300
12301 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
12302 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
12303 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
12304 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
12305 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
12306 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
12307 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
12308 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
12309 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
12310 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
12311
12312 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
12313 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
12314 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
12315 beautiful project.</p>
12316
12317 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
12318 Edu?</strong></p>
12319
12320 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
12321 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
12322 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
12323
12324 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
12325 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
12326 of educational free software.</p>
12327
12328 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
12329 Edu?</strong></p>
12330
12331 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
12332 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
12333 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
12334 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
12335 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
12336
12337 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
12338 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
12339 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
12340 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
12341 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
12342 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
12343 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
12344 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
12345
12346 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12347
12348 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
12349 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
12350 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
12351 also using the mathematical software
12352 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
12353 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
12354 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
12355
12356 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
12357 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
12358 statistics?</strong></p>
12359
12360 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
12361 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
12362 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
12363 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
12364
12365 <ul>
12366
12367 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
12368 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
12369 constructions in planar geometry
12370
12371 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
12372 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
12373 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
12374
12375 </ul>
12376
12377 <p>I like also
12378 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
12379 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
12380 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
12381
12382 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12383 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12384
12385 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
12386
12387 <ul>
12388
12389 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
12390
12391 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
12392     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
12393     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
12394
12395 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
12396
12397 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
12398     system.</li>
12399
12400 </ul>
12401
12402       </div>
12403       <div class="tags">
12404
12405
12406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12407
12408
12409       </div>
12410     </div>
12411     <div class="padding"></div>
12412
12413     <div class="entry">
12414       <div class="title">
12415         <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>
12416       </div>
12417       <div class="date">
12418          1st June 2013
12419       </div>
12420       <div class="body">
12421         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12422 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
12423 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
12424 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
12425 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
12426 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
12427 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
12428 program.</p>
12429
12430 <!-- 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 -->
12431
12432 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
12433 <p>
12434 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
12435 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
12436 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
12437 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
12438 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12439 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
12440 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
12441 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
12442 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
12443 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
12444 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
12445 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
12446 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
12447 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
12448 </p>
12449
12450 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
12451 <p>
12452 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
12453 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
12454 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
12455 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
12456 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
12457 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
12458 </p>
12459
12460 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
12461 <p>
12462 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
12463 </p>
12464
12465 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
12466 <p>
12467 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
12468 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
12469 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
12470 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
12471 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
12472 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
12473 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
12474 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
12475 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
12476 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
12477 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
12478 </p>
12479
12480 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
12481 <p>
12482 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12483 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
12484 </p>
12485
12486 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
12487 <p>
12488 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
12489 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
12490 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
12491 </p>
12492
12493 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
12494 <p>
12495 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12496 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
12497 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
12498 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
12499 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
12500 </p>
12501
12502 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
12503 <p>
12504 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
12505 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
12506 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12507 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
12508 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
12509 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
12510 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
12511 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
12512 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
12513 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
12514 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
12515 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
12516 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
12517 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
12518 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
12519 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
12520 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
12521 </p>
12522
12523 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
12524 <p>
12525 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12526 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
12527 </p>
12528
12529 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
12530 <p>
12531 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
12532 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
12533 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
12534 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
12535 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
12536 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
12537 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
12538 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
12539 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
12540 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
12541 </p>
12542
12543 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
12544 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
12545 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
12546 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
12547 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
12548 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
12549 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
12550
12551       </div>
12552       <div class="tags">
12553
12554
12555         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12556
12557
12558       </div>
12559     </div>
12560     <div class="padding"></div>
12561
12562     <div class="entry">
12563       <div class="title">
12564         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
12565       </div>
12566       <div class="date">
12567         27th May 2013
12568       </div>
12569       <div class="body">
12570         <p>Two days ago, I asked
12571 <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
12572 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
12573 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
12574 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
12575 and Windows 8.</p>
12576
12577 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
12578 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
12579 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
12580 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
12581 enough to tell.</p>
12582
12583 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
12584 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
12585 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
12586 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
12587 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
12588 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
12589 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
12590 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
12591 to follow.</p>
12592
12593 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
12594 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
12595 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
12596 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
12597 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
12598 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
12599 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
12600 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
12601
12602 <p>I've updated the
12603 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
12604 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
12605 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
12606 machine.</p>
12607
12608 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
12609 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
12610
12611       </div>
12612       <div class="tags">
12613
12614
12615         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12616
12617
12618       </div>
12619     </div>
12620     <div class="padding"></div>
12621
12622     <div class="entry">
12623       <div class="title">
12624         <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>
12625       </div>
12626       <div class="date">
12627         25th May 2013
12628       </div>
12629       <div class="body">
12630         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
12631 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
12632 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
12633 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
12634 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
12635 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
12636
12637 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
12638 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
12639 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
12640 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
12641 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
12642 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
12643 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
12644 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
12645 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
12646 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
12647
12648 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
12649 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
12650 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
12651 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
12652 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
12653 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
12654
12655 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
12656 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
12657 on new Laptops?</p>
12658
12659       </div>
12660       <div class="tags">
12661
12662
12663         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12664
12665
12666       </div>
12667     </div>
12668     <div class="padding"></div>
12669
12670     <div class="entry">
12671       <div class="title">
12672         <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>
12673       </div>
12674       <div class="date">
12675         17th May 2013
12676       </div>
12677       <div class="body">
12678         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
12679 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
12680 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
12681 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
12682 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
12683 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
12684 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
12685 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
12686 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
12687 donate some money</a>.
12688
12689 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
12690 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
12691 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
12692 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
12693 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
12694
12695 <p>The script,
12696 <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/>
12697 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
12698 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
12699 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
12700
12701 <ol>
12702
12703 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
12704 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
12705 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
12706     our configuration.</li>
12707 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
12708     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
12709     according to the profile specified in the config above,
12710     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
12711 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
12712     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
12713 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
12714
12715 </ol>
12716
12717 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
12718 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
12719 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
12720 the needed packages.</p>
12721
12722 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
12723 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
12724 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
12725 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
12726 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
12727 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
12728
12729 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
12730 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
12731 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
12732
12733 <p><pre>
12734 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
12735 DESKTOP="lxde"
12736 </pre></p>
12737
12738 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
12739 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
12740 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
12741 boot.</p>
12742
12743       </div>
12744       <div class="tags">
12745
12746
12747         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>.
12748
12749
12750       </div>
12751     </div>
12752     <div class="padding"></div>
12753
12754     <div class="entry">
12755       <div class="title">
12756         <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>
12757       </div>
12758       <div class="date">
12759         14th May 2013
12760       </div>
12761       <div class="body">
12762         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
12763 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
12764 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
12765
12766 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
12767 2013-05-14</strong></p>
12768
12769 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
12770 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
12771 codename "Wheezy".</p>
12772
12773 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12774
12775 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
12776 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
12777 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
12778 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
12779 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
12780 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
12781 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
12782 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
12783
12784 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
12785 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
12786 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
12787
12788 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12789 <ul>
12790   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
12791     default.</li>
12792   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
12793   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
12794   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
12795     ibus-anthy.</li>
12796 </ul>
12797
12798 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
12799 <ul>
12800
12801   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
12802     reliability improvements.</li>
12803   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
12804     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
12805   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
12806     problems.</li>
12807   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
12808     direct:// URL.</li>
12809   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
12810   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
12811   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
12812   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
12813     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
12814   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
12815     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
12816 </ul>
12817
12818 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
12819 <ul>
12820
12821   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
12822     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
12823     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
12824   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
12825   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
12826     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
12827   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
12828   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
12829   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
12830     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
12831   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
12832     password submission problem
12833     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
12834
12835 </ul>
12836
12837 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
12838
12839 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
12840 <ul>
12841
12842   <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>
12843   <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>
12844   <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>
12845
12846 </ul>
12847
12848 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
12849
12850 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
12851
12852 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
12853
12854 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
12855
12856       </div>
12857       <div class="tags">
12858
12859
12860         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12861
12862
12863       </div>
12864     </div>
12865     <div class="padding"></div>
12866
12867     <div class="entry">
12868       <div class="title">
12869         <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>
12870       </div>
12871       <div class="date">
12872         11th May 2013
12873       </div>
12874       <div class="body">
12875         <P>In January,
12876 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
12877 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
12878 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
12879 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
12880 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
12881 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
12882 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
12883 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
12884 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
12885 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
12886 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
12887 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
12888
12889 <p><table>
12890 <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>
12891 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
12892 <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>
12893 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
12894 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
12895 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
12896 <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>
12897 <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>
12898 <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>
12899 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
12900 </table></p>
12901
12902 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
12903 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
12904 available in experimental.</p>
12905
12906 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
12907 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
12908 for LEGO designers.</p>
12909
12910       </div>
12911       <div class="tags">
12912
12913
12914         Tags: <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>.
12915
12916
12917       </div>
12918     </div>
12919     <div class="padding"></div>
12920
12921     <div class="entry">
12922       <div class="title">
12923         <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>
12924       </div>
12925       <div class="date">
12926          5th May 2013
12927       </div>
12928       <div class="body">
12929         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
12930 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
12931 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
12932 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
12933 soon.</p>
12934
12935 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
12936 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
12937 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
12938 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
12939 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
12940 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
12941 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
12942 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
12943 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
12944 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
12945 Edu.</a>
12946
12947 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
12948 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
12949 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
12950 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
12951 follow.<p>
12952
12953       </div>
12954       <div class="tags">
12955
12956
12957         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>.
12958
12959
12960       </div>
12961     </div>
12962     <div class="padding"></div>
12963
12964     <div class="entry">
12965       <div class="title">
12966         <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>
12967       </div>
12968       <div class="date">
12969         26th April 2013
12970       </div>
12971       <div class="body">
12972         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
12973 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
12974 announcement:</p>
12975
12976 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
12977 2013-04-26</strong></p>
12978
12979 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
12980 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
12981
12982 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
12983
12984 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
12985 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
12986 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
12987 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
12988 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
12989 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
12990 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
12991 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
12992 installed via the network.</p>
12993
12994 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
12995 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
12996 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
12997
12998 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
12999
13000 <ul>
13001 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
13002   <ul>
13003      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
13004      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
13005          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
13006          manual.)</li>
13007      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
13008      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
13009      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
13010      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
13011      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
13012      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
13013      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
13014      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
13015      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
13016      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
13017      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
13018      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
13019          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
13020          manual</a> for more details.</li>
13021      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
13022          installation.</li>
13023      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
13024          <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>
13025   </ul></li>
13026 </ul>
13027
13028 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
13029 <ul>
13030 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
13031     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
13032     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
13033 </ul>
13034
13035 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
13036 <ul>
13037 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
13038     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
13039     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
13040 </ul>
13041
13042 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
13043 <ul>
13044 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
13045     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
13046     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
13047 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
13048     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
13049     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
13050 </ul>
13051
13052 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
13053 <ul>
13054 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
13055     yet.</li>
13056 </ul>
13057
13058 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
13059
13060 <ul>
13061 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
13062     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
13063     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
13064 </ul>
13065
13066 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
13067
13068 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
13069 <ul>
13070 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
13071 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
13072 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
13073 </ul>
13074
13075 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
13076
13077 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
13078
13079 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
13080
13081 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
13082
13083       </div>
13084       <div class="tags">
13085
13086
13087         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13088
13089
13090       </div>
13091     </div>
13092     <div class="padding"></div>
13093
13094     <div class="entry">
13095       <div class="title">
13096         <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>
13097       </div>
13098       <div class="date">
13099         16th April 2013
13100       </div>
13101       <div class="body">
13102         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
13103 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
13104 Details about the gathering can be found
13105 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
13106 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
13107 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
13108 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
13109 weekend.</p>
13110
13111 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
13112 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
13113 Edu release.</p>
13114
13115 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
13116
13117       </div>
13118       <div class="tags">
13119
13120
13121         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13122
13123
13124       </div>
13125     </div>
13126     <div class="padding"></div>
13127
13128     <div class="entry">
13129       <div class="title">
13130         <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>
13131       </div>
13132       <div class="date">
13133          3rd April 2013
13134       </div>
13135       <div class="body">
13136         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
13137 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
13138 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
13139 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
13140
13141 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
13142 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
13143 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
13144 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
13145 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
13146 BTS. :)</p>
13147
13148       </div>
13149       <div class="tags">
13150
13151
13152         Tags: <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>.
13153
13154
13155       </div>
13156     </div>
13157     <div class="padding"></div>
13158
13159     <div class="entry">
13160       <div class="title">
13161         <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>
13162       </div>
13163       <div class="date">
13164         26th March 2013
13165       </div>
13166       <div class="body">
13167         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
13168 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
13169 font you use when printing.</p>
13170
13171 <p>Three years ago,
13172 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
13173 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
13174 changed their default front from
13175 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
13176 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
13177 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
13178 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
13179 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
13180 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
13181 prints.</p>
13182
13183 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
13184 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
13185 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
13186 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
13187 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
13188 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
13189 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
13190 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
13191 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
13192 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
13193 depend on the documents printed.</p>
13194
13195 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
13196 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
13197 and save some money in the process.</p>
13198
13199 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
13200 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
13201 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
13202 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
13203 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
13204 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
13205 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
13206 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
13207 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
13208
13209       </div>
13210       <div class="tags">
13211
13212
13213         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13214
13215
13216       </div>
13217     </div>
13218     <div class="padding"></div>
13219
13220     <div class="entry">
13221       <div class="title">
13222         <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>
13223       </div>
13224       <div class="date">
13225         24th March 2013
13226       </div>
13227       <div class="body">
13228         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
13229 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
13230 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
13231 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
13232 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
13233 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
13234 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
13235 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
13236 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
13237 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
13238 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
13239 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
13240
13241 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
13242 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
13243 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
13244 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
13245 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
13246 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
13247 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
13248 all I had to do was to use the
13249 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
13250 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
13251 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
13252 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
13253 xsltproc/fop (aka
13254 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
13255 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
13256 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
13257 technical detail.</p>
13258
13259 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
13260 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
13261 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
13262 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
13263 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
13264 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
13265
13266 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
13267 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
13268 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
13269 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
13270 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
13271 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
13272 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
13273 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
13274 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
13275
13276 <p><blockquote><pre>
13277 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
13278 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
13279   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
13280     &lt;hr/&gt;
13281   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
13282 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
13283 </pre></blockquote></p>
13284
13285 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
13286
13287 <p><blockquote><pre>
13288 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
13289 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
13290   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
13291     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
13292       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
13293     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
13294   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
13295 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
13296 </pre></blockquote></p>
13297
13298 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
13299 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
13300 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
13301 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
13302 enough.</p>
13303
13304 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
13305 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
13306 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
13307 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
13308 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
13309 look like this:</p>
13310
13311 <p><blockquote><pre>
13312 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
13313 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
13314   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
13315     &lt;br/&gt;
13316   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
13317 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
13318 </pre></blockquote></p>
13319
13320 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
13321
13322 <p><blockquote><pre>
13323 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
13324 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
13325   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
13326   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
13327     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
13328   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
13329 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
13330 </pre></blockquote></p>
13331
13332 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
13333 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
13334 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
13335 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
13336 page.</p>
13337
13338 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
13339 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
13340 github</a>
13341 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
13342 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
13343 days.</p>
13344
13345       </div>
13346       <div class="tags">
13347
13348
13349         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>.
13350
13351
13352       </div>
13353     </div>
13354     <div class="padding"></div>
13355
13356     <div class="entry">
13357       <div class="title">
13358         <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>
13359       </div>
13360       <div class="date">
13361         17th March 2013
13362       </div>
13363       <div class="body">
13364         <p>Via
13365 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
13366 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
13367 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
13368 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
13369 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
13370 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
13371 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
13372
13373 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
13374 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
13375
13376 <blockquote>
13377 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
13378 </blockquote>
13379
13380 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
13381
13382 <blockquote>
13383 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
13384 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
13385 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
13386 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
13387 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
13388 </blockquote>
13389
13390 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
13391 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
13392 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
13393 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
13394
13395 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
13396 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
13397
13398 <blockquote>
13399 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
13400 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
13401 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
13402 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
13403 </blockquote>
13404
13405 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
13406 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
13407 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
13408 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
13409 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
13410
13411 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
13412 embedding:</p>
13413
13414 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
13415
13416       </div>
13417       <div class="tags">
13418
13419
13420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
13421
13422
13423       </div>
13424     </div>
13425     <div class="padding"></div>
13426
13427     <div class="entry">
13428       <div class="title">
13429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
13430       </div>
13431       <div class="date">
13432          8th March 2013
13433       </div>
13434       <div class="body">
13435         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
13436 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
13437 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
13438 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
13439 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
13440 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
13441 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
13442
13443 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
13444
13445 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
13446 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
13447
13448 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
13449 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
13450 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
13451 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
13452 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
13453 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
13454
13455 <p>Images are available for download at
13456 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
13457
13458 <p>md5sums:
13459 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
13460 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
13461 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
13462
13463 <p>sha1sums:
13464 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
13465 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
13466 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
13467
13468 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
13469
13470 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
13471 2013-03-03:</p>
13472
13473 <ul>
13474   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
13475   <ul>
13476         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
13477         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
13478   </ul></li>
13479   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
13480   <ul>
13481         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
13482         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
13483   </ul></li>
13484   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
13485      <ul>
13486         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
13487         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
13488         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
13489                 Closes: #664596</li>
13490         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
13491                 Closes: #664976</li>
13492         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
13493            <ul>
13494                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
13495                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
13496            </ul></li>
13497         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
13498            <ul>
13499                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
13500                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
13501                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
13502                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
13503                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
13504            </ul></li>
13505         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
13506     </ul>
13507   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
13508     <ul>
13509         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
13510     </ul></li>
13511 </ul>
13512
13513 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
13514 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
13515 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
13516 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
13517
13518 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
13519 mailinglist
13520 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
13521 </p></blockquote>
13522
13523 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
13524
13525       </div>
13526       <div class="tags">
13527
13528
13529         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13530
13531
13532       </div>
13533     </div>
13534     <div class="padding"></div>
13535
13536     <div class="entry">
13537       <div class="title">
13538         <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>
13539       </div>
13540       <div class="date">
13541          3rd March 2013
13542       </div>
13543       <div class="body">
13544         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
13545 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
13546 support using
13547 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
13548 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
13549 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
13550 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
13551 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
13552 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
13553 using the GNU LGPL, and
13554 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
13555
13556 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
13557 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
13558 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
13559 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
13560 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
13561 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
13562
13563 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
13564 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
13565 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
13566 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
13567 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
13568 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
13569 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
13570 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
13571 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
13572 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
13573 signal distribution is handled using
13574 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
13575 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
13576 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
13577 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
13578 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
13579 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
13580 them up a bit more first.</p>
13581
13582 <p>The development is coordinated on the
13583 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
13584 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
13585 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
13586 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
13587 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
13588 development.</p>
13589
13590       </div>
13591       <div class="tags">
13592
13593
13594         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>.
13595
13596
13597       </div>
13598     </div>
13599     <div class="padding"></div>
13600
13601     <div class="entry">
13602       <div class="title">
13603         <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>
13604       </div>
13605       <div class="date">
13606         27th February 2013
13607       </div>
13608       <div class="body">
13609         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
13610 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
13611 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
13612 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
13613 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
13614 (where I am the chair of the board) and
13615 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
13616 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
13617 GNU», with this description:
13618
13619 <p><blockquote>
13620 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
13621 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
13622 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
13623 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
13624 </blockquote></p>
13625
13626 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
13627 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
13628 am really curious how many will show up.  See
13629 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
13630 page</a> for the location details.</p>
13631
13632       </div>
13633       <div class="tags">
13634
13635
13636         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>.
13637
13638
13639       </div>
13640     </div>
13641     <div class="padding"></div>
13642
13643     <div class="entry">
13644       <div class="title">
13645         <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>
13646       </div>
13647       <div class="date">
13648         15th February 2013
13649       </div>
13650       <div class="body">
13651         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
13652 now a great source of free maps available from
13653 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
13654 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
13655 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
13656 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
13657 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
13658 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
13659 page for descriptions).</p>
13660
13661 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
13662 map you can just edit the
13663 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
13664 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
13665
13666       </div>
13667       <div class="tags">
13668
13669
13670         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>.
13671
13672
13673       </div>
13674     </div>
13675     <div class="padding"></div>
13676
13677     <div class="entry">
13678       <div class="title">
13679         <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>
13680       </div>
13681       <div class="date">
13682         12th February 2013
13683       </div>
13684       <div class="body">
13685         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
13686 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
13687 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
13688 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
13689 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
13690 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
13691 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
13692 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
13693 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
13694 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
13695 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
13696 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
13697 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
13698 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
13699 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
13700 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
13701
13702 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
13703 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
13704 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
13705 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
13706 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
13707 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
13708 fields:</p>
13709
13710 <p><pre>
13711 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
13712 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
13713 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
13714 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
13715 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
13716 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
13717 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
13718 </pre></p>
13719
13720 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
13721 answer regarding
13722 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
13723 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
13724 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
13725 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
13726
13727 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
13728
13729 <p><pre>
13730 BEGIN:VCARD
13731 VERSION:2.1
13732 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
13733 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
13734 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
13735 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
13736 REV:20130212T095000Z
13737 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
13738 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
13739 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
13740 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
13741 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
13742 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
13743 END:VCARD
13744 </pre></p>
13745
13746 <p>The resulting QR code created using
13747 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
13748 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
13749 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
13750 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
13751 system.</p>
13752
13753 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
13754
13755 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
13756 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
13757 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
13758 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
13759
13760 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
13761 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
13762
13763       </div>
13764       <div class="tags">
13765
13766
13767         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>.
13768
13769
13770       </div>
13771     </div>
13772     <div class="padding"></div>
13773
13774     <div class="entry">
13775       <div class="title">
13776         <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>
13777       </div>
13778       <div class="date">
13779         10th February 2013
13780       </div>
13781       <div class="body">
13782         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
13783
13784 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
13785 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
13786 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
13787 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
13788 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
13789 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
13790 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
13791 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
13792 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
13793 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
13794 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
13795
13796 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
13797 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
13798 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
13799 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
13800 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
13801 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
13802 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
13803 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
13804 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
13805 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
13806 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
13807 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
13808 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
13809 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
13810 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
13811 ones own
13812 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
13813 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
13814 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
13815 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
13816 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
13817 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
13818 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
13819 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
13820 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
13821 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
13822 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
13823
13824 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
13825 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
13826 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
13827 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
13828 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
13829 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
13830
13831 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
13832 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
13833 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
13834
13835       </div>
13836       <div class="tags">
13837
13838
13839         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13840
13841
13842       </div>
13843     </div>
13844     <div class="padding"></div>
13845
13846     <div class="entry">
13847       <div class="title">
13848         <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>
13849       </div>
13850       <div class="date">
13851          2nd February 2013
13852       </div>
13853       <div class="body">
13854         <p>My
13855 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
13856 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
13857 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
13858 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
13859 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
13860 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
13861 version too.</p>
13862
13863 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
13864 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
13865 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
13866 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
13867 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
13868 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
13869 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
13870 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
13871
13872 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
13873 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
13874 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
13875 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
13876 it. :)</p>
13877
13878 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
13879 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
13880 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
13881
13882       </div>
13883       <div class="tags">
13884
13885
13886         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>.
13887
13888
13889       </div>
13890     </div>
13891     <div class="padding"></div>
13892
13893     <div class="entry">
13894       <div class="title">
13895         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
13896       </div>
13897       <div class="date">
13898         22nd January 2013
13899       </div>
13900       <div class="body">
13901         <p>Yesterday, I
13902 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
13903 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
13904 pluggable hardware devices, which I
13905 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
13906 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
13907 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
13908 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
13909 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
13910 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
13911 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
13912 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
13913 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
13914 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
13915
13916 <pre>
13917 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
13918 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
13919 </pre>
13920
13921 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
13922 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
13923 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
13924 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
13925
13926 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
13927 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
13928 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
13929 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
13930 word.</p>
13931
13932 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
13933 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
13934 process.</p>
13935
13936 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
13937 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
13938
13939       </div>
13940       <div class="tags">
13941
13942
13943         Tags: <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>.
13944
13945
13946       </div>
13947     </div>
13948     <div class="padding"></div>
13949
13950     <div class="entry">
13951       <div class="title">
13952         <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>
13953       </div>
13954       <div class="date">
13955         21st January 2013
13956       </div>
13957       <div class="body">
13958         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
13959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
13960 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
13961 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
13962 it, fetch the
13963 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
13964 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
13965 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
13966 autostart script.</p>
13967
13968 <p>The design is simple:</p>
13969
13970 <ul>
13971
13972 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
13973 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
13974
13975 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
13976 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
13977 initially did.</li>
13978
13979 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
13980 the APT database, a database
13981 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
13982 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
13983
13984 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
13985 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
13986 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
13987 package or packages.</li>
13988
13989 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
13990 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
13991
13992 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
13993 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
13994
13995 </ul>
13996
13997 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
13998 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
13999 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
14000 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
14001
14002 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
14003 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
14004 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
14005 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
14006 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
14007
14008 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
14009 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
14010 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
14011 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
14012 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
14013 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
14014 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
14015 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
14016
14017 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
14018 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
14019 '<tt>svn checkout
14020 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
14021 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
14022 devscripts package.</p>
14023
14024 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
14025 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
14026 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
14027 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
14028 instructions</a> for details.</p>
14029
14030       </div>
14031       <div class="tags">
14032
14033
14034         Tags: <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>.
14035
14036
14037       </div>
14038     </div>
14039     <div class="padding"></div>
14040
14041     <div class="entry">
14042       <div class="title">
14043         <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>
14044       </div>
14045       <div class="date">
14046         19th January 2013
14047       </div>
14048       <div class="body">
14049         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
14050 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
14051 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
14052 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
14053 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
14054 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
14055 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
14056 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
14057 not a durable solution.
14058
14059 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
14060 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
14061
14062 <ul>
14063
14064 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
14065   than A4).</li>
14066 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
14067 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
14068 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
14069 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
14070 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
14071 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
14072 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
14073 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
14074 size).</li>
14075 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
14076   X.org packages.</li>
14077 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
14078   the time).
14079
14080 </ul>
14081
14082 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
14083 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
14084 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
14085 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
14086 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
14087 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
14088 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
14089 still be useful.</p>
14090
14091 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
14092 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
14093 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
14094 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
14095 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
14096 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
14097
14098       </div>
14099       <div class="tags">
14100
14101
14102         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14103
14104
14105       </div>
14106     </div>
14107     <div class="padding"></div>
14108
14109     <div class="entry">
14110       <div class="title">
14111         <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>
14112       </div>
14113       <div class="date">
14114         18th January 2013
14115       </div>
14116       <div class="body">
14117         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
14118 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
14119 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
14120 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
14121 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
14122 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
14123 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
14124
14125 <pre>
14126 #!/usr/bin/python
14127 import sys
14128 import apt
14129 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
14130     cache = apt.Cache()
14131     cache.open(None)
14132     thepkgs = []
14133     for pkg in cache:
14134         version = pkg.candidate
14135         if version is None:
14136             version = pkg.installed
14137         if version is None:
14138             continue
14139         record = version.record
14140         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
14141             continue
14142         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
14143         for t in mime_types:
14144             t = t.rstrip().strip()
14145             if t == mimetype:
14146                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
14147     return thepkgs
14148 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
14149 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
14150     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
14151 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
14152 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
14153     print "  %s" %pkg
14154 </pre>
14155
14156 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
14157
14158 <pre>
14159 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
14160 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
14161   gecko-mediaplayer
14162 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
14163 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
14164   browser-plugin-gnash
14165 %
14166 </pre>
14167
14168 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
14169 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
14170 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
14171 anyone working on adding it?</p>
14172
14173 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
14174 request for icweasel support for this feature is
14175 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
14176 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
14177 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
14178 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
14179
14180       </div>
14181       <div class="tags">
14182
14183
14184         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14185
14186
14187       </div>
14188     </div>
14189     <div class="padding"></div>
14190
14191     <div class="entry">
14192       <div class="title">
14193         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?</a>
14194       </div>
14195       <div class="date">
14196         16th January 2013
14197       </div>
14198       <div class="body">
14199         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
14200 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
14201 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
14202 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
14203 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
14204 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
14205 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
14206 downloaded by the browser.</p>
14207
14208 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
14209 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
14210 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
14211 can be found on the
14212 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
14213 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
14214 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
14215 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
14216 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
14217
14218 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
14219
14220 <pre>
14221   count MIME type
14222   ----- -----------------------
14223      32 text/plain
14224      30 audio/mpeg
14225      29 image/png
14226      28 image/jpeg
14227      27 application/ogg
14228      26 audio/x-mp3
14229      25 image/tiff
14230      25 image/gif
14231      22 image/bmp
14232      22 audio/x-wav
14233      20 audio/x-flac
14234      19 audio/x-mpegurl
14235      18 video/x-ms-asf
14236      18 audio/x-musepack
14237      18 audio/x-mpeg
14238      18 application/x-ogg
14239      17 video/mpeg
14240      17 audio/x-scpls
14241      17 audio/ogg
14242      16 video/x-ms-wmv
14243 </pre>
14244
14245 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
14246
14247 <pre>
14248   count MIME type
14249   ----- -----------------------
14250      33 text/plain
14251      32 image/png
14252      32 image/jpeg
14253      29 audio/mpeg
14254      27 image/gif
14255      26 image/tiff
14256      26 application/ogg
14257      25 audio/x-mp3
14258      22 image/bmp
14259      21 audio/x-wav
14260      19 audio/x-mpegurl
14261      19 audio/x-mpeg
14262      18 video/mpeg
14263      18 audio/x-scpls
14264      18 audio/x-flac
14265      18 application/x-ogg
14266      17 video/x-ms-asf
14267      17 text/html
14268      17 audio/x-musepack
14269      16 image/x-xbitmap
14270 </pre>
14271
14272 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
14273
14274 <pre>
14275   count MIME type
14276   ----- -----------------------
14277      31 text/plain
14278      31 image/png
14279      31 image/jpeg
14280      29 audio/mpeg
14281      28 application/ogg
14282      27 image/gif
14283      26 image/tiff
14284      26 audio/x-mp3
14285      23 audio/x-wav
14286      22 image/bmp
14287      21 audio/x-flac
14288      20 audio/x-mpegurl
14289      19 audio/x-mpeg
14290      18 video/x-ms-asf
14291      18 video/mpeg
14292      18 audio/x-scpls
14293      18 application/x-ogg
14294      17 audio/x-musepack
14295      16 video/x-ms-wmv
14296      16 video/x-msvideo
14297 </pre>
14298
14299 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
14300 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
14301 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
14302 issues.</p>
14303
14304 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
14305 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
14306
14307       </div>
14308       <div class="tags">
14309
14310
14311         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14312
14313
14314       </div>
14315     </div>
14316     <div class="padding"></div>
14317
14318     <div class="entry">
14319       <div class="title">
14320         <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>
14321       </div>
14322       <div class="date">
14323         15th January 2013
14324       </div>
14325       <div class="body">
14326         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
14327 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
14328 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
14329 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
14330 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
14331 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
14332 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
14333 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
14334 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
14335 packages.</p>
14336
14337 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
14338 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
14339 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
14340 modalias.</p>
14341
14342 <p><blockquote>
14343 Package: package-name
14344 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
14345 </blockquote></p>
14346
14347 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
14348 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
14349
14350 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
14351 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
14352
14353 <p><blockquote>
14354 Package: cheese
14355 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
14356 </blockquote></p>
14357
14358 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
14359 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
14360
14361 <p><blockquote>
14362 Package: pcmciautils
14363 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
14364 </blockquote></p>
14365
14366 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
14367 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
14368
14369 <p><blockquote>
14370 Package: colorhug-client
14371 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
14372 </blockquote></p>
14373
14374 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
14375 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
14376 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
14377
14378 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
14379 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
14380 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
14381 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
14382 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
14383 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
14384 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
14385 Raring.</p>
14386
14387 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
14388 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
14389 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
14390 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
14391 try the
14392 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
14393 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
14394 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
14395 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
14396
14397 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
14398 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
14399
14400 <p><blockquote>
14401 % ./hw-support-lookup
14402 <br>yubikey-personalization
14403 <br>%
14404 </blockquote></p>
14405
14406 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
14407 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
14408
14409 <p><blockquote>
14410 % ./hw-support-lookup
14411 <br>pcmciautils
14412 <br>%
14413 </blockquote></p>
14414
14415 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
14416 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
14417 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
14418
14419 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
14420 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
14421 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
14422 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
14423 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
14424 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
14425 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
14426 see if it work.</p>
14427
14428 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
14429 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
14430 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
14431 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
14432
14433       </div>
14434       <div class="tags">
14435
14436
14437         Tags: <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>.
14438
14439
14440       </div>
14441     </div>
14442     <div class="padding"></div>
14443
14444     <div class="entry">
14445       <div class="title">
14446         <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>
14447       </div>
14448       <div class="date">
14449         14th January 2013
14450       </div>
14451       <div class="body">
14452         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
14453 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
14454 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
14455 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
14456 in
14457 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
14458 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
14459
14460 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
14461
14462 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
14463 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
14464 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
14465 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
14466 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
14467 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
14468
14469 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
14470 this shell script:</p>
14471
14472 <pre>
14473 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
14474 </pre>
14475
14476 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
14477 using modinfo:</p>
14478
14479 <pre>
14480 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
14481 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
14482 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
14483 %
14484 </pre>
14485
14486 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
14487
14488 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
14489 Bridge memory controller:</p>
14490
14491 <p><blockquote>
14492 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
14493 </blockquote></p>
14494
14495 <p>This represent these values:</p>
14496
14497 <pre>
14498  v   00008086  (vendor)
14499  d   00002770  (device)
14500  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
14501  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
14502  bc  06        (bus class)
14503  sc  00        (bus subclass)
14504  i   00        (interface)
14505 </pre>
14506
14507 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
14508 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
14509 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
14510 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
14511
14512 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
14513 means.</p>
14514
14515 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
14516
14517 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
14518 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
14519
14520 <p><blockquote>
14521 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
14522 </blockquote></p>
14523
14524 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
14525
14526 <pre>
14527  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
14528  p    0001  (device product)
14529  d    0206  (bcddevice)
14530  dc     09  (device class)
14531  dsc    00  (device subclass)
14532  dp     00  (device protocol)
14533  ic     09  (interface class)
14534  isc    00  (interface subclass)
14535  ip     00  (interface protocol)
14536 </pre>
14537
14538 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
14539 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
14540 these alias entries show up:</p>
14541
14542 <p><blockquote>
14543 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
14544 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
14545 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
14546 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
14547 </blockquote></p>
14548
14549 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
14550 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
14551 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
14552
14553 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
14554
14555 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
14556 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
14557
14558 <p><blockquote>
14559 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
14560 </blockquote></p>
14561
14562 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
14563
14564 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
14565
14566 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
14567 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
14568 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
14569
14570 <p><blockquote>
14571 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
14572 </blockquote></p>
14573
14574 <p>The values present are</p>
14575
14576 <pre>
14577  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
14578  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
14579  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
14580  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
14581  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
14582  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
14583  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
14584  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
14585  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
14586  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
14587  ct   10             (chassis type)
14588  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
14589 </pre>
14590
14591 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
14592 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
14593
14594 <pre>
14595   3 Desktop
14596   4 Low Profile Desktop
14597   5 Pizza Box
14598   6 Mini Tower
14599   7 Tower
14600   8 Portable
14601   9 Laptop
14602  10 Notebook
14603  11 Hand Held
14604  12 Docking Station
14605  13 All In One
14606  14 Sub Notebook
14607  15 Space-saving
14608  16 Lunch Box
14609  17 Main Server Chassis
14610  18 Expansion Chassis
14611  19 Sub Chassis
14612  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
14613  21 Peripheral Chassis
14614  22 RAID Chassis
14615  23 Rack Mount Chassis
14616  24 Sealed-case PC
14617  25 Multi-system
14618  26 CompactPCI
14619  27 AdvancedTCA
14620  28 Blade
14621  29 Blade Enclosing
14622 </pre>
14623
14624 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
14625 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
14626 claim it is a desktop.</p>
14627
14628 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
14629
14630 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
14631 test machine:</p>
14632
14633 <p><blockquote>
14634 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
14635 </blockquote></p>
14636
14637 <p>The values present are</p>
14638
14639 <pre>
14640   ty  01  (type)
14641   pr  00  (prototype)
14642   id  00  (id)
14643   ex  00  (extra)
14644 </pre>
14645
14646 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
14647 the valid values are.</p>
14648
14649 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
14650
14651 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
14652 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
14653 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
14654 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
14655 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
14656 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
14657 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
14658
14659 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
14660
14661 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
14662 one can use the following shell script:</p>
14663
14664 <pre>
14665   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
14666     echo "$id" ; \
14667     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
14668   done
14669 </pre>
14670
14671 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
14672 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
14673
14674 <pre>
14675   acpi:ACPI0003:
14676     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
14677   acpi:device:
14678   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
14679   acpi:IBM0068:
14680     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
14681     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
14682     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
14683     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
14684   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
14685     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
14686     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
14687     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
14688   [...]
14689 </pre>
14690
14691 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
14692 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
14693 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
14694 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
14695
14696 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
14697 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
14698 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
14699
14700       </div>
14701       <div class="tags">
14702
14703
14704         Tags: <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>.
14705
14706
14707       </div>
14708     </div>
14709     <div class="padding"></div>
14710
14711     <div class="entry">
14712       <div class="title">
14713         <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>
14714       </div>
14715       <div class="date">
14716         10th January 2013
14717       </div>
14718       <div class="body">
14719         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
14720 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
14721 Launcher and updated the Debian package
14722 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
14723 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
14724 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
14725 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
14726 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
14727 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
14728 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
14729 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
14730 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
14731 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
14732 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
14733 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
14734 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
14735 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
14736 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
14737
14738       </div>
14739       <div class="tags">
14740
14741
14742         Tags: <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>.
14743
14744
14745       </div>
14746     </div>
14747     <div class="padding"></div>
14748
14749     <div class="entry">
14750       <div class="title">
14751         <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>
14752       </div>
14753       <div class="date">
14754          9th January 2013
14755       </div>
14756       <div class="body">
14757         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
14758 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
14759 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
14760 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
14761 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
14762 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
14763 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
14764 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
14765 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
14766 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
14767 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
14768
14769 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
14770 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
14771 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
14772 simple:
14773
14774 <ul>
14775
14776 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
14777   starting when a user log in.</li>
14778
14779 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
14780   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
14781
14782 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
14783   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
14784   packages.</li>
14785
14786 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
14787   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
14788
14789 </ul>
14790
14791 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
14792 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
14793 discover database to find packages and
14794 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
14795 packages.</p>
14796
14797 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
14798 draft package is now checked into
14799 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
14800 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
14801 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
14802 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
14803 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
14804 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
14805 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
14806 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
14807 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
14808 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
14809 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
14810 because of the freeze).</p>
14811
14812 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
14813 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
14814 inserted):</p>
14815
14816 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
14817
14818 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
14819 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
14820 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
14821
14822 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
14823 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
14824 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
14825 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
14826 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
14827 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
14828 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
14829
14830 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
14831 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
14832 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
14833 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
14834 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
14835 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
14836 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
14837 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
14838 not be installed?</p>
14839
14840 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
14841 please send me an email. :)</p>
14842
14843       </div>
14844       <div class="tags">
14845
14846
14847         Tags: <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>.
14848
14849
14850       </div>
14851     </div>
14852     <div class="padding"></div>
14853
14854     <div class="entry">
14855       <div class="title">
14856         <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>
14857       </div>
14858       <div class="date">
14859          2nd January 2013
14860       </div>
14861       <div class="body">
14862         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
14863 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
14864 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
14865 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
14866 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
14867 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
14868 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
14869 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
14870 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
14871 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
14872
14873 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
14874 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
14875 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
14876
14877       </div>
14878       <div class="tags">
14879
14880
14881         Tags: <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>.
14882
14883
14884       </div>
14885     </div>
14886     <div class="padding"></div>
14887
14888     <div class="entry">
14889       <div class="title">
14890         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
14891       </div>
14892       <div class="date">
14893         28th December 2012
14894       </div>
14895       <div class="body">
14896         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
14897 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
14898 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
14899 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
14900 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
14901 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
14902 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
14903 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
14904 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
14905 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
14906 followed by many others. :)</p>
14907
14908 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
14909 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
14910 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
14911 you want to donate to the project.</p>
14912
14913       </div>
14914       <div class="tags">
14915
14916
14917         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14918
14919
14920       </div>
14921     </div>
14922     <div class="padding"></div>
14923
14924     <div class="entry">
14925       <div class="title">
14926         <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>
14927       </div>
14928       <div class="date">
14929         25th December 2012
14930       </div>
14931       <div class="body">
14932         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
14933 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
14934
14935 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
14936 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
14937 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
14938 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
14939 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
14940 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
14941 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
14942 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
14943 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
14944 name.</p>
14945
14946 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
14947 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
14948 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
14949
14950 <blockquote><pre>
14951 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
14952 cd bitcoin
14953 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
14954 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
14955 </pre></blockquote>
14956
14957 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
14958 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
14959 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
14960 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
14961 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
14962 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
14963 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
14964 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
14965 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
14966
14967 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
14968 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
14969 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
14970
14971       </div>
14972       <div class="tags">
14973
14974
14975         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>.
14976
14977
14978       </div>
14979     </div>
14980     <div class="padding"></div>
14981
14982     <div class="entry">
14983       <div class="title">
14984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
14985       </div>
14986       <div class="date">
14987         21st December 2012
14988       </div>
14989       <div class="body">
14990         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
14991 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
14992 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
14993 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
14994 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
14995 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
14996 is now maintained by a
14997 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
14998 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
14999 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
15000 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
15001 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
15002 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
15003 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
15004 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
15005 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
15006 Corallo in a
15007 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
15008 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
15009 Debian package.</p>
15010
15011 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
15012 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
15013 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
15014 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
15015 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
15016 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
15017 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
15018 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
15019 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
15020 new version to unstable.
15021
15022 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
15023 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
15024 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
15025 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
15026 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
15027 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
15028 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
15029 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
15030 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
15031 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
15032 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
15033 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
15034 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
15035 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
15036 have not tested them.</p>
15037
15038 <p>My
15039 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
15040 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
15041 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
15042 years ago, as can be
15043 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
15044 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
15045 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
15046 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
15047 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
15048 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
15049 the same address as last time,
15050 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
15051
15052       </div>
15053       <div class="tags">
15054
15055
15056         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>.
15057
15058
15059       </div>
15060     </div>
15061     <div class="padding"></div>
15062
15063     <div class="entry">
15064       <div class="title">
15065         <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>
15066       </div>
15067       <div class="date">
15068         18th December 2012
15069       </div>
15070       <div class="body">
15071         <p>A few days ago I came across
15072 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
15073 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
15074 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
15075 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
15076 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
15077 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
15078 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
15079 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
15080 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
15081
15082 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
15083 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
15084 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
15085 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
15086
15087 <blockquote><pre>
15088 2004-05-27 Book Store
15089       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
15090       Liabilities:Visa
15091 </pre></blockquote>
15092
15093 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
15094 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
15095 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
15096 Spang</a>,
15097 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
15098 Keen</a>,
15099 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
15100 Cantino</a> and
15101 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
15102 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
15103 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
15104 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
15105 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
15106
15107 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
15108 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
15109 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
15110 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
15111 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
15112
15113 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
15114 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
15115 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
15116 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
15117 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
15118 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
15119 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
15120 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
15121 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
15122
15123       </div>
15124       <div class="tags">
15125
15126
15127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15128
15129
15130       </div>
15131     </div>
15132     <div class="padding"></div>
15133
15134     <div class="entry">
15135       <div class="title">
15136         <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>
15137       </div>
15138       <div class="date">
15139          6th December 2012
15140       </div>
15141       <div class="body">
15142         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
15143 Oslo</a>, we use the
15144 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
15145 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
15146 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
15147 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
15148 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
15149 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
15150 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
15151 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
15152 Python.</p>
15153
15154 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
15155 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
15156 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
15157 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
15158 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
15159 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
15160
15161 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
15162 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
15163 user currently logged in:</p>
15164
15165 <blockquote><pre>
15166 #!/usr/bin/env python
15167 import getpass
15168 import xmlrpclib
15169 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
15170 username = getpass.getuser()
15171 password = getpass.getpass()
15172 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
15173 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
15174 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
15175 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
15176 result = server.logout(sessionid)
15177 print result
15178 </pre></blockquote>
15179
15180 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
15181 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
15182
15183       </div>
15184       <div class="tags">
15185
15186
15187         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>.
15188
15189
15190       </div>
15191     </div>
15192     <div class="padding"></div>
15193
15194     <div class="entry">
15195       <div class="title">
15196         <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>
15197       </div>
15198       <div class="date">
15199         17th November 2012
15200       </div>
15201       <div class="body">
15202         <p>While working on a
15203 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
15204 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
15205 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
15206 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
15207 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
15208 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
15209
15210 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
15211 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
15212 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
15213 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
15214 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
15215 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
15216 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
15217 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
15218 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
15219 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
15220 arguments.</p>
15221
15222 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
15223 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
15224 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
15225 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
15226 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
15227 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
15228 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
15229 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
15230
15231 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
15232 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
15233 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
15234 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
15235 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
15236 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
15237 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
15238 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
15239 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
15240 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
15241 correct right holder.</p>
15242
15243 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
15244 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
15245 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
15246 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
15247 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
15248 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
15249 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
15250 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
15251 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
15252 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
15253 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
15254 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
15255 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
15256 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
15257
15258 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
15259 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
15260 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
15261
15262 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
15263 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
15264
15265       </div>
15266       <div class="tags">
15267
15268
15269         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>.
15270
15271
15272       </div>
15273     </div>
15274     <div class="padding"></div>
15275
15276     <div class="entry">
15277       <div class="title">
15278         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
15279       </div>
15280       <div class="date">
15281         14th November 2012
15282       </div>
15283       <div class="body">
15284         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
15285 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
15286 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
15287 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
15288 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
15289 the people behind the German
15290 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
15291 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
15292 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
15293
15294 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15295
15296 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
15297 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
15298 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
15299
15300 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
15301 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
15302 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
15303 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
15304 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
15305 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
15306
15307 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
15308 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
15309 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
15310 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
15311 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
15312 relationship management and the communication processes in the
15313 project.</p>
15314
15315 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
15316 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
15317 and a yoga teacher.</p>
15318
15319 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
15320 project?</strong></p>
15321
15322 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
15323
15324 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
15325 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
15326 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
15327 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
15328 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
15329 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
15330 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
15331 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
15332 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
15333 parents.</p>
15334
15335 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
15336 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
15337 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
15338 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
15339 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
15340 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
15341 Germany.</p>
15342
15343 <p>For information about our school project you can read
15344 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
15345 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
15346
15347 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
15348 Edu?</strong></p>
15349
15350 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
15351 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
15352
15353 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
15354 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
15355 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
15356 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
15357 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
15358 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
15359 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
15360 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
15361 teachers, parents...</p>
15362
15363 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
15364 Edu?</strong></p>
15365
15366 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
15367 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
15368
15369 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
15370 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
15371 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
15372 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
15373 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
15374
15375 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
15376 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
15377 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
15378 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
15379 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
15380 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
15381 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
15382
15383 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15384
15385 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
15386 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
15387 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
15388 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
15389
15390 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15391 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15392
15393 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
15394 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
15395 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
15396 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
15397 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
15398
15399 <ul>
15400
15401 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
15402 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
15403 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
15404
15405 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
15406 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
15407 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
15408 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
15409 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
15410 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
15411 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
15412
15413 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
15414 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
15415 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
15416 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
15417
15418 </ul>
15419
15420       </div>
15421       <div class="tags">
15422
15423
15424         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15425
15426
15427       </div>
15428     </div>
15429     <div class="padding"></div>
15430
15431     <div class="entry">
15432       <div class="title">
15433         <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>
15434       </div>
15435       <div class="date">
15436          4th November 2012
15437       </div>
15438       <div class="body">
15439         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
15440 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
15441 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
15442 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
15443 see how a member of the bitcoin community
15444 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
15445 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
15446 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
15447 competition.  My thoughts go to the
15448 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
15449 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
15450 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
15451 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
15452 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
15453
15454 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
15455 that the community already seem to have
15456 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
15457 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
15458 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
15459 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
15460 wealth is available.</p>
15461
15462       </div>
15463       <div class="tags">
15464
15465
15466         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>.
15467
15468
15469       </div>
15470     </div>
15471     <div class="padding"></div>
15472
15473     <div class="entry">
15474       <div class="title">
15475         <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>
15476       </div>
15477       <div class="date">
15478         26th October 2012
15479       </div>
15480       <div class="body">
15481         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
15482 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
15483 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
15484 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
15485 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
15486 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
15487 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
15488 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
15489 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
15490 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
15491 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
15492 it every time.</p>
15493
15494 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
15495 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
15496 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
15497 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
15498 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
15499 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
15500 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
15501 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
15502 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
15503 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
15504 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
15505 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
15506
15507 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
15508 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
15509 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
15510 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
15511 article: First the unplanned outage:
15512
15513 <blockquote><pre>
15514 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
15515 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
15516 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
15517 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
15518 Duration:    40 minutes
15519 Scope:       Exchange 2003
15520 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
15521              a cluster failover.
15522
15523 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
15524              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
15525 Technician:  [xxx]
15526 </pre></blockquote>
15527
15528 Next the planned outage:
15529
15530 <blockquote><pre>
15531 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
15532 Severity:    Major (Planned)
15533 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
15534 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
15535 Duration:    10 hours
15536 Scope:       H2 Transport
15537 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
15538              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
15539              4510s.
15540 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
15541              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
15542              connectivity.
15543 Technician:  [xxx]
15544 </pre></blockquote>
15545
15546 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
15547 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
15548 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
15549 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
15550 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
15551 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
15552 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
15553
15554 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
15555 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
15556 university too.  We do register
15557 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
15558 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
15559 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
15560 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
15561 for other sites to consider too?</p>
15562
15563       </div>
15564       <div class="tags">
15565
15566
15567         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
15568
15569
15570       </div>
15571     </div>
15572     <div class="padding"></div>
15573
15574     <div class="entry">
15575       <div class="title">
15576         <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>
15577       </div>
15578       <div class="date">
15579         22nd October 2012
15580       </div>
15581       <div class="body">
15582         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
15583 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
15584 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
15585 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
15586 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
15587 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
15588 background information is available in Norwegian from
15589 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
15590 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
15591 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
15592 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
15593 willing to
15594 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
15595 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
15596 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
15597 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
15598 sounded like
15599 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
15600 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
15601 later.</p>
15602
15603 <p>And thought this action is
15604 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
15605 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
15606 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
15607 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
15608 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
15609 rights.</p>
15610
15611 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
15612 unacceptable terms.  For example
15613 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
15614 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
15615 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
15616 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
15617 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
15618
15619 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
15620 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
15621 restored the account of the user, as reported by
15622 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
15623 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
15624 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
15625 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
15626 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
15627 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
15628 reading two opinions from
15629 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
15630 Phipps</a> and
15631 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
15632 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
15633 details about the original story.</p>
15634
15635       </div>
15636       <div class="tags">
15637
15638
15639         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>.
15640
15641
15642       </div>
15643     </div>
15644     <div class="padding"></div>
15645
15646     <div class="entry">
15647       <div class="title">
15648         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
15649       </div>
15650       <div class="date">
15651         18th October 2012
15652       </div>
15653       <div class="body">
15654         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
15655 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
15656 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
15657 across a marvellous drawing by
15658 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
15659 visualising some of what is going on.
15660
15661 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
15662 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
15663
15664 <blockquote>
15665 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
15666 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
15667 </blockquote>
15668
15669 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
15670 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
15671 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
15672 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
15673 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
15674 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
15675
15676       </div>
15677       <div class="tags">
15678
15679
15680         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
15681
15682
15683       </div>
15684     </div>
15685     <div class="padding"></div>
15686
15687     <div class="entry">
15688       <div class="title">
15689         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
15690       </div>
15691       <div class="date">
15692         12th October 2012
15693       </div>
15694       <div class="body">
15695         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
15696 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
15697 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
15698 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
15699 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
15700 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
15701 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
15702 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
15703 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
15704 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
15705 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
15706 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
15707 matter".</p>
15708
15709 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
15710 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
15711 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
15712 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
15713 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
15714 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
15715 to argue its side.</p>
15716
15717 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
15718 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
15719 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
15720 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
15721
15722 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
15723 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
15724 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
15725
15726       </div>
15727       <div class="tags">
15728
15729
15730         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>.
15731
15732
15733       </div>
15734     </div>
15735     <div class="padding"></div>
15736
15737     <div class="entry">
15738       <div class="title">
15739         <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>
15740       </div>
15741       <div class="date">
15742          3rd October 2012
15743       </div>
15744       <div class="body">
15745         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
15746 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
15747 the computer science book collection available in his local
15748 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
15749 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
15750 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
15751 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
15752 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
15753 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
15754 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
15755 recently published books.</p>
15756
15757 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
15758 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
15759 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
15760 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
15761 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
15762 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
15763 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
15764 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
15765 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
15766 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
15767 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
15768 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
15769 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
15770 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
15771 for the library that evening.</p>
15772
15773 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
15774 going to know that for example
15775 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
15776 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
15777 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
15778 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
15779 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
15780 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
15781 book right away.</p>
15782
15783       </div>
15784       <div class="tags">
15785
15786
15787         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15788
15789
15790       </div>
15791     </div>
15792     <div class="padding"></div>
15793
15794     <div class="entry">
15795       <div class="title">
15796         <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>
15797       </div>
15798       <div class="date">
15799         23rd September 2012
15800       </div>
15801       <div class="body">
15802         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
15803 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
15804 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
15805 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
15806 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
15807 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
15808
15809 When I started, I
15810 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
15811 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
15812 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
15813 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
15814 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
15815 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
15816 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
15817
15818 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
15819
15820 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
15821 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
15822 the project files currently available from
15823 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
15824
15825 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
15826 the updated
15827 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
15828 and
15829 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
15830 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
15831 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
15832 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
15833
15834       </div>
15835       <div class="tags">
15836
15837
15838         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>.
15839
15840
15841       </div>
15842     </div>
15843     <div class="padding"></div>
15844
15845     <div class="entry">
15846       <div class="title">
15847         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
15848       </div>
15849       <div class="date">
15850         17th September 2012
15851       </div>
15852       <div class="body">
15853         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
15854 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
15855 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
15856 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
15857 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
15858 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
15859 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
15860
15861 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
15862
15863 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
15864 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
15865 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
15866 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
15867 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
15868 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
15869 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
15870 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
15871 training is anyway very important</p>
15872
15873 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
15874 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
15875 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
15876 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
15877 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
15878
15879 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
15880 project?</strong></p>
15881
15882 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
15883 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
15884 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
15885 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
15886 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
15887 hole.</p>
15888
15889 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15890 Edu?</strong></p>
15891
15892 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
15893 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
15894 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
15895 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
15896 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
15897 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
15898 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
15899 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
15900 hassle.</p>
15901
15902 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
15903 Edu?</strong></p>
15904
15905 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
15906 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
15907 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
15908 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
15909 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
15910 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
15911 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
15912 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
15913
15914 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15915
15916 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
15917 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
15918 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
15919 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
15920 has the same...</p>
15921
15922 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
15923 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
15924 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
15925 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
15926
15927 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15928 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15929
15930 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
15931 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
15932 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
15933
15934 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
15935 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
15936 don't.</p>
15937
15938 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
15939 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
15940 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
15941 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
15942 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
15943 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
15944 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
15945
15946       </div>
15947       <div class="tags">
15948
15949
15950         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
15951
15952
15953       </div>
15954     </div>
15955     <div class="padding"></div>
15956
15957     <div class="entry">
15958       <div class="title">
15959         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
15960       </div>
15961       <div class="date">
15962         15th September 2012
15963       </div>
15964       <div class="body">
15965         <p>After the
15966 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
15967 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
15968 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
15969 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
15970 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
15971 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
15972 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
15973 was
15974 <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
15975 formal working group should be formed.</p>
15976
15977 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
15978 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
15979 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
15980 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
15981 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
15982 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
15983 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
15984 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
15985
15986 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
15987 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
15988 IETF.</p>
15989
15990       </div>
15991       <div class="tags">
15992
15993
15994         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>.
15995
15996
15997       </div>
15998     </div>
15999     <div class="padding"></div>
16000
16001     <div class="entry">
16002       <div class="title">
16003         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
16004       </div>
16005       <div class="date">
16006         12th September 2012
16007       </div>
16008       <div class="body">
16009         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
16010 publication of of
16011 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
16012 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
16013 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
16014 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
16015 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
16016 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
16017 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
16018 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
16019 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
16020 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
16021
16022 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
16023 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
16024 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
16025 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
16026
16027 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
16028 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
16029
16030       </div>
16031       <div class="tags">
16032
16033
16034         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>.
16035
16036
16037       </div>
16038     </div>
16039     <div class="padding"></div>
16040
16041     <div class="entry">
16042       <div class="title">
16043         <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>
16044       </div>
16045       <div class="date">
16046          7th September 2012
16047       </div>
16048       <div class="body">
16049         <p>As I
16050 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
16051 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
16052 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
16053 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
16054 repository for the project</a>.</p>
16055
16056 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
16057 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
16058 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
16059 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
16060
16061 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
16062 PostScript formats at
16063 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
16064 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
16065
16066       </div>
16067       <div class="tags">
16068
16069
16070         Tags: <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>.
16071
16072
16073       </div>
16074     </div>
16075     <div class="padding"></div>
16076
16077     <div class="entry">
16078       <div class="title">
16079         <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>
16080       </div>
16081       <div class="date">
16082         23rd August 2012
16083       </div>
16084       <div class="body">
16085         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
16086 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
16087 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
16088 revisit the great site
16089 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
16090 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
16091 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
16092
16093       </div>
16094       <div class="tags">
16095
16096
16097         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>.
16098
16099
16100       </div>
16101     </div>
16102     <div class="padding"></div>
16103
16104     <div class="entry">
16105       <div class="title">
16106         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
16107       </div>
16108       <div class="date">
16109         17th August 2012
16110       </div>
16111       <div class="body">
16112         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
16113 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
16114 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
16115 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
16116 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
16117 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
16118 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
16119 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
16120 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
16121 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
16122 summer I
16123 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
16124 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
16125 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
16126
16127 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
16128 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
16129 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
16130 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
16131 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
16132 progress:</p>
16133
16134 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
16135
16136 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
16137 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
16138 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
16139 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
16140 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
16141 english version of the docbook source.</p>
16142
16143 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
16144 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
16145 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
16146 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
16147 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
16148 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
16149 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
16150 project files currently available from <a
16151 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
16152
16153 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
16154 the updated
16155 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
16156 and
16157 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
16158 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
16159 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
16160 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
16161
16162       </div>
16163       <div class="tags">
16164
16165
16166         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>.
16167
16168
16169       </div>
16170     </div>
16171     <div class="padding"></div>
16172
16173     <div class="entry">
16174       <div class="title">
16175         <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>
16176       </div>
16177       <div class="date">
16178         10th August 2012
16179       </div>
16180       <div class="body">
16181         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
16182 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
16183 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
16184 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
16185 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
16186 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
16187 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
16188 case for the language
16189 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
16190 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
16191
16192 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
16193 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
16194 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
16195 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
16196 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
16197
16198 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
16199 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
16200 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
16201 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
16202 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
16203 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
16204 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
16205 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
16206 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
16207 alias for 'nb'.</p>
16208
16209 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
16210 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
16211 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
16212 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
16213 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
16214 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
16215 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
16216 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
16217 at the same time. :(</p>
16218
16219 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
16220 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
16221 processors. :(</p>
16222
16223 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
16224
16225       </div>
16226       <div class="tags">
16227
16228
16229         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>.
16230
16231
16232       </div>
16233     </div>
16234     <div class="padding"></div>
16235
16236     <div class="entry">
16237       <div class="title">
16238         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
16239       </div>
16240       <div class="date">
16241         31st July 2012
16242       </div>
16243       <div class="body">
16244         <p>I tried to send this text to the
16245 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
16246 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
16247 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
16248 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
16249 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
16250 out.</p>
16251
16252 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
16253 learning curve at the moment.</p>
16254
16255 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
16256 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
16257 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
16258 available from
16259 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
16260 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
16261 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
16262 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
16263 Squeeze.</p>
16264
16265 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
16266 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
16267 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
16268 problems.</p>
16269
16270 <ul>
16271
16272 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
16273    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
16274    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
16275    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
16276    index references spanning several pages (See
16277    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
16278    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
16279    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
16280
16281 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
16282    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
16283    #683163</a>).</li>
16284
16285 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
16286    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
16287    footnote and text body, see
16288    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
16289    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
16290    refs listed are not right).</li>
16291
16292 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
16293
16294 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
16295    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
16296
16297 </ul>
16298
16299 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
16300 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
16301 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
16302
16303 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
16304
16305       </div>
16306       <div class="tags">
16307
16308
16309         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>.
16310
16311
16312       </div>
16313     </div>
16314     <div class="padding"></div>
16315
16316     <div class="entry">
16317       <div class="title">
16318         <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>
16319       </div>
16320       <div class="date">
16321         21st July 2012
16322       </div>
16323       <div class="body">
16324         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
16325 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
16326 norwegian version</a> of the book
16327 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
16328 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
16329 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
16330 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
16331 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
16332
16333 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
16334 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
16335 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
16336 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
16337 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
16338 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
16339 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
16340 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
16341 print. :)</p>
16342
16343 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
16344 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
16345 language.</p>
16346
16347       </div>
16348       <div class="tags">
16349
16350
16351         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>.
16352
16353
16354       </div>
16355     </div>
16356     <div class="padding"></div>
16357
16358     <div class="entry">
16359       <div class="title">
16360         <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>
16361       </div>
16362       <div class="date">
16363         16th July 2012
16364       </div>
16365       <div class="body">
16366         <p>I am currently working on a
16367 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
16368 to translate</a> the book
16369 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
16370 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
16371 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
16372 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
16373 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
16374 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
16375 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
16376
16377 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
16378 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
16379 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
16380 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
16381 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
16382 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
16383 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
16384 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
16385 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
16386
16387       </div>
16388       <div class="tags">
16389
16390
16391         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>.
16392
16393
16394       </div>
16395     </div>
16396     <div class="padding"></div>
16397
16398     <div class="entry">
16399       <div class="title">
16400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
16401       </div>
16402       <div class="date">
16403          9th July 2012
16404       </div>
16405       <div class="body">
16406         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
16407 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
16408 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
16409 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
16410 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
16411 to adjust and scale the just released
16412 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
16413 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
16414 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
16415
16416 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
16417
16418 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
16419 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
16420 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
16421 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
16422 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
16423 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
16424 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
16425 perspective when working with IT.</p>
16426
16427 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
16428 project?</strong></p>
16429
16430 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
16431 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
16432 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
16433 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
16434 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
16435 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
16436
16437 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16438 Edu?</strong></p>
16439
16440 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
16441 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
16442 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
16443 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
16444 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
16445 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
16446 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
16447 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
16448 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
16449 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
16450 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
16451 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
16452 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
16453 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
16454 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
16455 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
16456 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
16457 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
16458 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
16459 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
16460 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
16461 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
16462 quicker to update.
16463
16464 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16465 Edu?</strong></p>
16466
16467 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
16468 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
16469 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
16470 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
16471 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
16472 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
16473
16474 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
16475 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
16476 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
16477 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
16478 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
16479 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
16480 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
16481 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
16482 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
16483 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
16484 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
16485 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
16486 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
16487 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
16488 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
16489
16490 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
16491 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
16492 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
16493 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
16494 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
16495 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
16496 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
16497 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
16498
16499 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
16500 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
16501 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
16502 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
16503 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
16504 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
16505 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
16506 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
16507 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
16508 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
16509 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
16510 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
16511 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
16512 sound file.</p>
16513
16514 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
16515 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
16516 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
16517 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
16518 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
16519 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
16520 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
16521 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
16522 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
16523
16524 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
16525
16526 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
16527 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
16528 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
16529 )</p>
16530
16531 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
16532 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
16533
16534 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
16535 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
16536 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
16537 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
16538 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
16539 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
16540 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
16541 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
16542 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
16543 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
16544 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
16545 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
16546 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
16547 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
16548 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
16549
16550 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
16551 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
16552 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
16553 management with Airtime</a>,
16554 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
16555 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
16556 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
16557 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
16558 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
16559
16560       </div>
16561       <div class="tags">
16562
16563
16564         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16565
16566
16567       </div>
16568     </div>
16569     <div class="padding"></div>
16570
16571     <div class="entry">
16572       <div class="title">
16573         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
16574       </div>
16575       <div class="date">
16576          8th July 2012
16577       </div>
16578       <div class="body">
16579         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
16580 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
16581 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
16582 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
16583 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
16584 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
16585 Steinberg in his blog post
16586 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
16587 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
16588 spending of your tax money.</p>
16589
16590 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
16591 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
16592 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
16593 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
16594 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
16595 purchases.</p>
16596
16597       </div>
16598       <div class="tags">
16599
16600
16601         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16602
16603
16604       </div>
16605     </div>
16606     <div class="padding"></div>
16607
16608     <div class="entry">
16609       <div class="title">
16610         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
16611       </div>
16612       <div class="date">
16613          7th July 2012
16614       </div>
16615       <div class="body">
16616         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
16617 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
16618 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
16619 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
16620 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
16621 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
16622 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
16623 receive.  The software is
16624
16625 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
16626 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
16627 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
16628 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
16629 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
16630 Windows</a>.</p>
16631
16632 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
16633 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
16634
16635 <p><ul>
16636
16637   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
16638     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
16639
16640   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
16641     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
16642     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
16643     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
16644     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
16645     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
16646     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
16647     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
16648     </li>
16649
16650   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
16651     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
16652
16653   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
16654     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
16655
16656   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
16657     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
16658
16659   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
16660
16661   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
16662     formats </li>
16663
16664   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
16665     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
16666     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
16667     (as separate sets)</li>
16668
16669   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
16670     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
16671     percentage)</li>
16672
16673   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
16674     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
16675     memory):
16676     <ul>
16677       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
16678       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
16679       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
16680       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
16681       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
16682       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
16683       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
16684       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
16685       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
16686       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
16687           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
16688           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
16689           activity)</li>
16690       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
16691       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
16692     </ul></li>
16693
16694   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
16695     <ul>
16696       <li>Break periods</li>
16697       <li>For teacher(s):
16698         <ul>
16699           <li>Not available periods</li>
16700           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
16701           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
16702           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
16703           <li>Min hours daily</li>
16704           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
16705
16706           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
16707             days per week</li>
16708         </ul></li>
16709       <li>For students (sets):
16710         <ul>
16711           <li>Not available periods</li>
16712           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
16713           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
16714           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
16715           <li>Min hours daily</li>
16716           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
16717
16718           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
16719             days per week</li>
16720         </ul></li>
16721       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
16722         <ul>
16723           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
16724           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
16725           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
16726           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
16727           <li>End(s) students day</li>
16728           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
16729           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
16730             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
16731           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
16732           <li>Not overlapping</li>
16733           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
16734           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
16735         </ul></li>
16736     </ul></li>
16737
16738   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
16739     <ul>
16740       <li>Room not available periods</li>
16741       <li>For teacher(s):
16742         <ul>
16743           <li>Home room(s)</li>
16744           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
16745           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
16746         </ul>
16747       </li>
16748
16749       <li>For students (sets):
16750         <ul>
16751           <li>Home room(s)</li>
16752           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
16753           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
16754         </ul>
16755       </li>
16756       <li>Preferred room(s):
16757         <ul>
16758           <li>For a subject</li>
16759           <li>For an activity tag</li>
16760           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
16761           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
16762         </ul>
16763       </li>
16764
16765       <li>For a set of activities:
16766         <ul>
16767           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
16768         </ul>
16769       </li>
16770     </ul>
16771   </li>
16772 </ul></p>
16773
16774 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
16775 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
16776 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
16777 manually, check it out.
16778
16779 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
16780 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
16781 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
16782 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
16783 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
16784 section</a>.</p>
16785
16786       </div>
16787       <div class="tags">
16788
16789
16790         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
16791
16792
16793       </div>
16794     </div>
16795     <div class="padding"></div>
16796
16797     <div class="entry">
16798       <div class="title">
16799         <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>
16800       </div>
16801       <div class="date">
16802          3rd July 2012
16803       </div>
16804       <div class="body">
16805         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
16806 project (Norwegian version of
16807 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
16808 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
16809 a problem with the municipalities using
16810 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
16811 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
16812 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
16813 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
16814 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
16815 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
16816 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
16817 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
16818 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
16819 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
16820 the From: header.</p>
16821
16822 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
16823 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
16824 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
16825 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
16826 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
16827 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
16828 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
16829 behaviour.</p>
16830
16831 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
16832 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
16833 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
16834 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
16835 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
16836 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16837 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
16838
16839       </div>
16840       <div class="tags">
16841
16842
16843         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>.
16844
16845
16846       </div>
16847     </div>
16848     <div class="padding"></div>
16849
16850     <div class="entry">
16851       <div class="title">
16852         <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>
16853       </div>
16854       <div class="date">
16855         26th June 2012
16856       </div>
16857       <div class="body">
16858         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
16859 another interview with the people behind
16860 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
16861 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
16862 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
16863 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
16864 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
16865 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
16866 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
16867
16868 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
16869
16870 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
16871 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
16872 ICT in schools</p>
16873
16874 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
16875 project?</strong></p>
16876
16877 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
16878 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
16879 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
16880 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
16881
16882 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16883 Edu?</strong></p>
16884
16885 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
16886 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
16887 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
16888 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
16889
16890 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
16891 Edu?</strong></p>
16892
16893 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
16894 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
16895 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
16896 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
16897 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
16898 technologies in school.</p>
16899
16900 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
16901
16902 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
16903 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
16904 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
16905
16906 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
16907 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
16908
16909 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
16910 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
16911 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
16912 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
16913
16914 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
16915 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
16916 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
16917
16918 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
16919 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
16920 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
16921 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
16922 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
16923 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
16924 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
16925 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
16926 working there.</p>
16927
16928       </div>
16929       <div class="tags">
16930
16931
16932         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
16933
16934
16935       </div>
16936     </div>
16937     <div class="padding"></div>
16938
16939     <div class="entry">
16940       <div class="title">
16941         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
16942       </div>
16943       <div class="date">
16944         24th June 2012
16945       </div>
16946       <div class="body">
16947         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
16948 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
16949 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
16950 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
16951 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
16952 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
16953 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
16954 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
16955 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
16956 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
16957 missing in my book.</p>
16958
16959 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
16960 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
16961 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
16962 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
16963 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
16964 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
16965 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
16966
16967       </div>
16968       <div class="tags">
16969
16970
16971         Tags: <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>.
16972
16973
16974       </div>
16975     </div>
16976     <div class="padding"></div>
16977
16978     <div class="entry">
16979       <div class="title">
16980         <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>
16981       </div>
16982       <div class="date">
16983         11th June 2012
16984       </div>
16985       <div class="body">
16986         <p>During my work on
16987 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
16988 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
16989 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
16990 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
16991 explanation.</p>
16992
16993 <p><ul>
16994
16995 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
16996 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
16997 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
16998 system depend on tasksel tasks in
16999 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
17000 installation.</li>
17001
17002 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
17003 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
17004 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
17005 at least try to enable it for these services:
17006 <ul>
17007
17008   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
17009     quotas.</li>
17010   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
17011   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
17012   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
17013   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
17014   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
17015
17016 </ul></li>
17017
17018 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
17019 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
17020 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
17021 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
17022
17023 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
17024 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
17025 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
17026
17027 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
17028 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
17029 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
17030 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
17031 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
17032 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
17033
17034 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
17035 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
17036 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
17037 in Wheezy.
17038
17039 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
17040 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
17041 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
17042
17043 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
17044 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
17045 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
17046 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
17047
17048 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
17049 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
17050 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
17051 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
17052
17053 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
17054 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
17055 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
17056
17057 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
17058 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
17059 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
17060
17061 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
17062 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
17063 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
17064 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
17065 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
17066
17067 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
17068 <ul>
17069
17070 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
17071 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
17072 <li>and probably more?</li>
17073 </ul></li>
17074
17075 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
17076 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
17077 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
17078 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
17079 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
17080 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
17081 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
17082 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
17083
17084
17085 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
17086 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
17087 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
17088 use.</li>
17089
17090 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
17091 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
17092 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
17093 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
17094 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
17095
17096 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
17097 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
17098 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
17099 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
17100 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
17101 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
17102
17103 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
17104 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
17105 There are at least three implementations,
17106 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
17107 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
17108 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
17109 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
17110 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
17111 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
17112 given room.</li>
17113
17114 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
17115 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
17116 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
17117 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
17118 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
17119 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
17120 investigated.</li>
17121
17122 </ul></p>
17123
17124 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
17125 version.</p>
17126
17127       </div>
17128       <div class="tags">
17129
17130
17131         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17132
17133
17134       </div>
17135     </div>
17136     <div class="padding"></div>
17137
17138     <div class="entry">
17139       <div class="title">
17140         <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>
17141       </div>
17142       <div class="date">
17143          9th June 2012
17144       </div>
17145       <div class="body">
17146         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
17147 <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
17148 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
17149 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
17150 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
17151 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
17152 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
17153 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
17154 be willing to pay for.</p>
17155
17156 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
17157 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
17158 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
17159 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
17160 Orwell</a>.</p>
17161
17162       </div>
17163       <div class="tags">
17164
17165
17166         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>.
17167
17168
17169       </div>
17170     </div>
17171     <div class="padding"></div>
17172
17173     <div class="entry">
17174       <div class="title">
17175         <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>
17176       </div>
17177       <div class="date">
17178          6th June 2012
17179       </div>
17180       <div class="body">
17181         <p>A few days ago
17182 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
17183 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
17184 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
17185 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
17186 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
17187 code for HP, Dell and IBM
17188 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
17189 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
17190 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
17191 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
17192 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
17193
17194 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
17195 output:
17196
17197 <blockquote><pre>
17198 % 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>
17199 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": ""})
17200 %
17201 </pre></blockquote>
17202
17203 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
17204 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
17205 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
17206
17207       </div>
17208       <div class="tags">
17209
17210
17211         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>.
17212
17213
17214       </div>
17215     </div>
17216     <div class="padding"></div>
17217
17218     <div class="entry">
17219       <div class="title">
17220         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
17221       </div>
17222       <div class="date">
17223          2nd June 2012
17224       </div>
17225       <div class="body">
17226         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
17227 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
17228 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
17229 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
17230 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
17231 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
17232
17233 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17234
17235 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
17236 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
17237 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
17238 by Angela).</p>
17239
17240 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
17241 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
17242 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
17243 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
17244 becoming an osteopath.</p>
17245
17246 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
17247 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
17248 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
17249 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
17250 skills with communication skills.</p>
17251
17252 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17253 project?</strong></p>
17254
17255 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
17256 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
17257 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
17258 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
17259 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
17260
17261 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
17262 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
17263 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
17264 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
17265 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
17266 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
17267 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
17268 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
17269 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
17270
17271 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
17272 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
17273 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
17274
17275 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
17276
17277 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
17278 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
17279 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
17280 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
17281 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
17282 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
17283 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
17284 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
17285 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
17286 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
17287 point.</p>
17288
17289 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
17290 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
17291 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
17292 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
17293 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
17294 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
17295
17296 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
17297 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
17298 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
17299 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
17300 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
17301 spare time.</p>
17302
17303 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
17304 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
17305 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
17306 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
17307 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
17308
17309 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
17310 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
17311 avoidance do exist.</p>
17312
17313 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
17314 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
17315 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
17316 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
17317 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
17318 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
17319 and probably a gain for all.</p>
17320
17321 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17322 Edu?</strong></p>
17323
17324 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
17325 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
17326 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
17327 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
17328 project communication, honest communication within the group of
17329 developers, etc.</p>
17330
17331 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17332 Edu?</strong></p>
17333
17334 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
17335
17336 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
17337 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
17338 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
17339 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
17340 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
17341 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
17342 contribute).</p>
17343
17344 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
17345 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
17346 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
17347 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
17348 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
17349 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
17350 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
17351 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
17352 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
17353 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
17354
17355 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17356
17357 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
17358
17359 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
17360 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
17361 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
17362
17363 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
17364 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
17365 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
17366 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
17367
17368 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
17369 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
17370 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
17371 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
17372 whiteboard.</p>
17373
17374 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
17375
17376 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17377 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17378
17379 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
17380 enrol people.</p>
17381
17382       </div>
17383       <div class="tags">
17384
17385
17386         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17387
17388
17389       </div>
17390     </div>
17391     <div class="padding"></div>
17392
17393     <div class="entry">
17394       <div class="title">
17395         <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>
17396       </div>
17397       <div class="date">
17398          1st June 2012
17399       </div>
17400       <div class="body">
17401         <p>A few years ago I wrote
17402 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
17403 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
17404 I have learned from colleges here at the
17405 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
17406 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
17407 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
17408 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
17409 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
17410
17411 <p><pre>
17412 use strict;
17413 use warnings;
17414 use SOAP::Lite;
17415 use Data::Dumper;
17416 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
17417 my $App = 'test';
17418 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
17419 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
17420 my $s = SOAP::Lite
17421     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
17422     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
17423     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
17424     ;
17425 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
17426     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
17427     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
17428     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
17429 );
17430 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
17431 </pre></p>
17432
17433 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
17434
17435 <p><pre>
17436 $VAR1 = {
17437           'Asset' => {
17438                      'Entitlements' => {
17439                                        'EntitlementData' => [
17440                                                             {
17441                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
17442                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
17443                                                               'Provider' => '',
17444                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
17445                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
17446                                                             },
17447                                                             {
17448                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
17449                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
17450                                                               'Provider' => '',
17451                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
17452                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
17453                                                             },
17454                                                             {
17455                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
17456                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
17457                                                               'Provider' => '',
17458                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
17459                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
17460                                                             }
17461                                                           ]
17462                                      },
17463                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
17464                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
17465                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
17466                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
17467                                           'Buid' => '2323',
17468                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
17469                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
17470                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
17471                                         }
17472                    }
17473         };
17474 </pre></p>
17475
17476 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
17477 service outside the
17478 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
17479 documentation</a>, and according to
17480 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
17481 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
17482 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
17483
17484 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
17485 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
17486
17487       </div>
17488       <div class="tags">
17489
17490
17491         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>.
17492
17493
17494       </div>
17495     </div>
17496     <div class="padding"></div>
17497
17498     <div class="entry">
17499       <div class="title">
17500         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
17501       </div>
17502       <div class="date">
17503         31st May 2012
17504       </div>
17505       <div class="body">
17506         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
17507 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
17508 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
17509 running Debian Squeeze, where
17510 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
17511 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
17512 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
17513 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
17514 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
17515 another day.</p>
17516
17517 <p>After calibration, I get a
17518 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
17519 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
17520 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
17521 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
17522 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
17523 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
17524 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
17525 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
17526 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
17527 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
17528 and a simple</p>
17529
17530 <p><pre>
17531 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
17532 </pre></p>
17533
17534 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
17535 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
17536 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
17537 enough for now.</p>
17538
17539       </div>
17540       <div class="tags">
17541
17542
17543         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17544
17545
17546       </div>
17547     </div>
17548     <div class="padding"></div>
17549
17550     <div class="entry">
17551       <div class="title">
17552         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
17553       </div>
17554       <div class="date">
17555         27th May 2012
17556       </div>
17557       <div class="body">
17558         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
17559 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
17560 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
17561 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
17562 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
17563 since then, helping to make sure the
17564 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
17565 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
17566
17567 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17568
17569 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
17570 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
17571 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
17572 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
17573 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
17574 our computer network.</p>
17575
17576 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
17577 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
17578 (4 months).</p>
17579
17580 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17581 project?</strong></p>
17582
17583 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
17584 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
17585 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
17586 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
17587 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
17588 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
17589 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
17590 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
17591 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
17592 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
17593 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
17594 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
17595 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
17596 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
17597
17598 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17599 Edu?</strong></p>
17600
17601 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
17602 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
17603 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
17604 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
17605 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
17606 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
17607 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
17608 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
17609
17610 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17611 Edu?</strong></p>
17612
17613 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
17614 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
17615 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
17616 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
17617 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
17618 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
17619 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
17620 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
17621 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
17622 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
17623 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
17624 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
17625
17626 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17627
17628 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
17629 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
17630 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
17631
17632 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17633 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17634
17635 <p><ol>
17636
17637 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
17638 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
17639 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
17640 developing.</li>
17641
17642 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
17643 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
17644 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
17645 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
17646 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
17647
17648 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
17649 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
17650 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
17651
17652 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
17653 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
17654 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
17655 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
17656
17657 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
17658 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
17659 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
17660
17661 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
17662
17663 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
17664 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
17665 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
17666 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
17667
17668 </ol></p>
17669
17670       </div>
17671       <div class="tags">
17672
17673
17674         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17675
17676
17677       </div>
17678     </div>
17679     <div class="padding"></div>
17680
17681     <div class="entry">
17682       <div class="title">
17683         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
17684       </div>
17685       <div class="date">
17686         26th May 2012
17687       </div>
17688       <div class="body">
17689         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
17690 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
17691 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
17692 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
17693 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
17694
17695 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
17696 <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>
17697 comment:</p>
17698
17699 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
17700 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
17701 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
17702 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
17703 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
17704 </blockquote></p>
17705
17706 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
17707 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
17708 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
17709 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
17710 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
17711 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
17712 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
17713 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
17714 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
17715 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
17716 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
17717 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
17718 of wasted effort.</p>
17719
17720 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
17721 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
17722 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
17723
17724 <p>See
17725 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
17726 and
17727 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
17728 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
17729 </blockquote></p>
17730
17731       </div>
17732       <div class="tags">
17733
17734
17735         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>.
17736
17737
17738       </div>
17739     </div>
17740     <div class="padding"></div>
17741
17742     <div class="entry">
17743       <div class="title">
17744         <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>
17745       </div>
17746       <div class="date">
17747         18th May 2012
17748       </div>
17749       <div class="body">
17750         <p>In january, I
17751 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
17752 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
17753 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
17754 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
17755 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
17756 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
17757 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
17758 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
17759 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
17760 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
17761
17762 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
17763 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
17764 drivers. :)</p>
17765
17766       </div>
17767       <div class="tags">
17768
17769
17770         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17771
17772
17773       </div>
17774     </div>
17775     <div class="padding"></div>
17776
17777     <div class="entry">
17778       <div class="title">
17779         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
17780       </div>
17781       <div class="date">
17782         13th May 2012
17783       </div>
17784       <div class="body">
17785         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
17786 publish another interview with the people behind
17787 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
17788 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
17789 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
17790 details get right before release.
17791
17792 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
17793
17794 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
17795 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
17796 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
17797 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
17798 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
17799 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
17800 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
17801 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
17802
17803 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
17804 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
17805 home since 2006.</p>
17806
17807 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
17808 project?</strong></p>
17809
17810 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
17811 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
17812 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
17813 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
17814 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
17815 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
17816
17817 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
17818 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
17819 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
17820 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
17821 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
17822 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
17823 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
17824 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
17825 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
17826 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
17827 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
17828 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
17829 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
17830 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
17831 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
17832 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
17833
17834 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17835 Edu?</strong></p>
17836
17837 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
17838 for me as today.</p>
17839
17840 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
17841
17842 <p><ul>
17843
17844 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
17845 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
17846
17847 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
17848 cost.</li>
17849
17850 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
17851 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
17852 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
17853 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
17854 server</li>
17855
17856 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
17857 school.</li>
17858
17859 </ul></p>
17860
17861 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
17862 came up in this way:</p>
17863
17864 <p><ul>
17865
17866 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
17867 now.</li>
17868
17869 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
17870 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
17871 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
17872
17873 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
17874 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
17875 interfaces used in the past.</li>
17876
17877 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
17878 different needs.</li>
17879
17880 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
17881
17882 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
17883 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
17884 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
17885
17886 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
17887 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
17888
17889 </ul></p>
17890
17891 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
17892 Edu?</strong></p>
17893
17894 <p><ul>
17895
17896 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
17897 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
17898 whole municipality areas.</li>
17899
17900 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
17901 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
17902 politicians.</li>
17903
17904 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
17905
17906 </ul></p>
17907
17908 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
17909
17910 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
17911 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
17912 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
17913 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
17914 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
17915 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
17916
17917 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
17918 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
17919 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
17920 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
17921 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
17922
17923 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
17924 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
17925
17926 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
17927 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
17928 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
17929
17930       </div>
17931       <div class="tags">
17932
17933
17934         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
17935
17936
17937       </div>
17938     </div>
17939     <div class="padding"></div>
17940
17941     <div class="entry">
17942       <div class="title">
17943         <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>
17944       </div>
17945       <div class="date">
17946         30th April 2012
17947       </div>
17948       <div class="body">
17949         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
17950 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
17951
17952 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
17953 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
17954 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
17955 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
17956 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
17957 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
17958 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
17959 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
17960 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
17961 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
17962 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
17963 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
17964 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
17965 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
17966 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
17967 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
17968
17969 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
17970 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
17971 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
17972 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
17973 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
17974 finally found a Danish supplier
17975 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
17976 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
17977 days ago.</p>
17978
17979 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
17980 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
17981 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
17982 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
17983 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
17984 toys.</p>
17985
17986       </div>
17987       <div class="tags">
17988
17989
17990         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
17991
17992
17993       </div>
17994     </div>
17995     <div class="padding"></div>
17996
17997     <div class="entry">
17998       <div class="title">
17999         <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>
18000       </div>
18001       <div class="date">
18002         26th April 2012
18003       </div>
18004       <div class="body">
18005         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
18006 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
18007 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
18008 that the video editor application included with
18009 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
18010 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
18011 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
18012
18013 <p><blockquote>
18014 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
18015 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
18016 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
18017 </blockquote></p>
18018
18019 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
18020
18021 <p><blockquote>
18022 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
18023 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
18024 </blockquote></p>
18025
18026 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
18027 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
18028 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
18029 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
18030 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
18031 video.  AMR is
18032 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
18033 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
18034 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
18035 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
18036 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
18037 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
18038 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
18039
18040 <p>I know why I prefer
18041 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
18042 standards</a> also for video.</p>
18043
18044       </div>
18045       <div class="tags">
18046
18047
18048         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
18049
18050
18051       </div>
18052     </div>
18053     <div class="padding"></div>
18054
18055     <div class="entry">
18056       <div class="title">
18057         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
18058       </div>
18059       <div class="date">
18060         19th April 2012
18061       </div>
18062       <div class="body">
18063         <p>Here in Norway, the
18064 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
18065 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
18066 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
18067 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
18068 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
18069 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
18070 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
18071 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
18072 on the same level.</p>
18073
18074 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
18075 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
18076 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
18077 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
18078 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
18079 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
18080 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
18081 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
18082 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
18083 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
18084 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
18085 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
18086 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
18087 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
18088 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
18089 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
18090 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
18091 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
18092
18093 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
18094 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
18095 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
18096 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
18097 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
18098 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
18099 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
18100 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
18101
18102 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
18103 from Simon Phipps
18104 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
18105 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
18106
18107 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
18108 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
18109 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
18110 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
18111 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
18112 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
18113 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
18114 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
18115 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
18116
18117       </div>
18118       <div class="tags">
18119
18120
18121         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>.
18122
18123
18124       </div>
18125     </div>
18126     <div class="padding"></div>
18127
18128     <div class="entry">
18129       <div class="title">
18130         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
18131       </div>
18132       <div class="date">
18133         15th April 2012
18134       </div>
18135       <div class="body">
18136         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
18137 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
18138 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
18139 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
18140 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
18141 up in the recently released
18142 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
18143 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
18144
18145 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18146
18147 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
18148 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
18149 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
18150 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
18151 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
18152 information technology and science/technology.</p>
18153
18154 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18155 project?</strong></p>
18156
18157 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
18158 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
18159 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
18160 contributing.</p>
18161
18162 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18163 Edu?</strong></p>
18164
18165 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
18166 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
18167 Debian Project!</p>
18168
18169 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18170 Edu?</strong></p>
18171
18172 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
18173 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
18174 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
18175 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
18176 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
18177 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
18178 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
18179
18180 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
18181 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
18182
18183 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18184
18185 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
18186 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
18187 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
18188 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
18189
18190 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18191 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18192
18193 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
18194 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
18195 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
18196 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
18197 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
18198 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
18199 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
18200
18201 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
18202 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
18203 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
18204 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
18205 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
18206 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
18207 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
18208 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
18209
18210       </div>
18211       <div class="tags">
18212
18213
18214         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18215
18216
18217       </div>
18218     </div>
18219     <div class="padding"></div>
18220
18221     <div class="entry">
18222       <div class="title">
18223         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
18224       </div>
18225       <div class="date">
18226          8th April 2012
18227       </div>
18228       <div class="body">
18229         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
18230 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
18231 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
18232 contributor to the
18233 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
18234 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
18235
18236 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18237
18238 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
18239 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
18240
18241 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18242 project?</strong></p>
18243
18244 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
18245 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
18246 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
18247 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
18248 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
18249 "localisation".</p>
18250
18251 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18252 Edu?</strong></p>
18253
18254 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18255 Edu?</strong></p>
18256
18257 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
18258 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
18259 education system.</p>
18260
18261 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
18262 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
18263 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
18264 money on the latest hardware.</p>
18265
18266 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18267
18268 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
18269 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
18270 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
18271
18272 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18273 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18274
18275 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
18276 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
18277 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
18278
18279       </div>
18280       <div class="tags">
18281
18282
18283         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18284
18285
18286       </div>
18287     </div>
18288     <div class="padding"></div>
18289
18290     <div class="entry">
18291       <div class="title">
18292         <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>
18293       </div>
18294       <div class="date">
18295          6th April 2012
18296       </div>
18297       <div class="body">
18298         <p>Recently I have spent time with
18299 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
18300 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
18301 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
18302 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
18303 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
18304 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
18305 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
18306 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
18307
18308 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
18309 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
18310 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
18311 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
18312 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
18313 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
18314 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
18315 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
18316
18317 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
18318 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
18319 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
18320 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
18321 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
18322 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
18323 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
18324 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
18325
18326 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
18327 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
18328 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
18329 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
18330 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
18331 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
18332 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
18333 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
18334 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
18335 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
18336
18337 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
18338 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
18339 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
18340 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
18341
18342 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
18343 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
18344
18345 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
18346 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
18347 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
18348 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
18349
18350       </div>
18351       <div class="tags">
18352
18353
18354         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18355
18356
18357       </div>
18358     </div>
18359     <div class="padding"></div>
18360
18361     <div class="entry">
18362       <div class="title">
18363         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
18364       </div>
18365       <div class="date">
18366          5th April 2012
18367       </div>
18368       <div class="body">
18369         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
18370 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
18371 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
18372 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
18373 for schools.  Check out his article
18374 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
18375 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
18376
18377       </div>
18378       <div class="tags">
18379
18380
18381         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18382
18383
18384       </div>
18385     </div>
18386     <div class="padding"></div>
18387
18388     <div class="entry">
18389       <div class="title">
18390         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
18391       </div>
18392       <div class="date">
18393          1st April 2012
18394       </div>
18395       <div class="body">
18396         <p>Germany is a core area for the
18397 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
18398 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
18399 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
18400
18401 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18402
18403 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
18404 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
18405 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
18406 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
18407 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
18408 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
18409 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
18410 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
18411
18412 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
18413 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
18414 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
18415 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
18416 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
18417 the end of April this year.</p>
18418
18419 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18420 project?</strong></p>
18421
18422 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
18423 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
18424 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
18425 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
18426 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
18427 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
18428 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
18429 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
18430 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
18431 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
18432 Skolelinux.</p>
18433
18434 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
18435 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
18436 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
18437 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
18438 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
18439 the admin teachers.</p>
18440
18441 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18442 Edu?</strong></p>
18443
18444 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
18445 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
18446 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
18447
18448 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
18449 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
18450 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
18451 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
18452 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
18453
18454 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18455 Edu?</strong></p>
18456
18457 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
18458
18459 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18460
18461 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
18462 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
18463 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
18464 LibreOffice.</p>
18465
18466 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18467 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18468
18469 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
18470 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
18471 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
18472
18473       </div>
18474       <div class="tags">
18475
18476
18477         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
18478
18479
18480       </div>
18481     </div>
18482     <div class="padding"></div>
18483
18484     <div class="entry">
18485       <div class="title">
18486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
18487       </div>
18488       <div class="date">
18489         25th March 2012
18490       </div>
18491       <div class="body">
18492         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
18493
18494 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
18495 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
18496 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
18497 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
18498 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
18499 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
18500 and download as a
18501 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
18502 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
18503
18504 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
18505   <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"' />
18506     <p>Download video as
18507       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
18508 </video></p>
18509
18510       </div>
18511       <div class="tags">
18512
18513
18514         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18515
18516
18517       </div>
18518     </div>
18519     <div class="padding"></div>
18520
18521     <div class="entry">
18522       <div class="title">
18523         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
18524       </div>
18525       <div class="date">
18526         19th March 2012
18527       </div>
18528       <div class="body">
18529         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
18530 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
18531 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
18532 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
18533 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
18534
18535 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18536
18537 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
18538 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
18539 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
18540 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
18541 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
18542 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
18543 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
18544 installations.</p>
18545
18546 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18547 project?</strong></p>
18548
18549 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
18550 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
18551 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
18552 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
18553 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
18554 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
18555 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
18556 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
18557 these things we decided to try it.</p>
18558
18559 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18560 Edu?</strong></p>
18561
18562 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
18563 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
18564 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
18565 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
18566 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
18567 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
18568 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
18569 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
18570
18571 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18572 Edu?</strong></p>
18573
18574 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
18575 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
18576 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
18577 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
18578 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
18579
18580 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18581
18582 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
18583 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
18584 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
18585 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
18586 that counts...)</p>
18587
18588 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18589 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18590
18591 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
18592 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
18593 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
18594 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
18595 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
18596 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
18597 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
18598 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
18599 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
18600 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
18601 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
18602
18603 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
18604 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
18605 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
18606
18607       </div>
18608       <div class="tags">
18609
18610
18611         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18612
18613
18614       </div>
18615     </div>
18616     <div class="padding"></div>
18617
18618     <div class="entry">
18619       <div class="title">
18620         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
18621       </div>
18622       <div class="date">
18623         16th March 2012
18624       </div>
18625       <div class="body">
18626         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
18627 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
18628 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
18629 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
18630
18631 <ol>
18632
18633 <li>The documentation is written in a
18634 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
18635 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
18636 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
18637 docbook XML.</li>
18638
18639 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
18640 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
18641 with the translated text.</li>
18642
18643 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
18644 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
18645 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
18646 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
18647 images.</li>
18648
18649 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
18650 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
18651
18652 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
18653 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
18654
18655 </ol>
18656
18657 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
18658 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
18659 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
18660 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
18661 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
18662
18663 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
18664 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
18665 package</a>.</p>
18666
18667       </div>
18668       <div class="tags">
18669
18670
18671         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18672
18673
18674       </div>
18675     </div>
18676     <div class="padding"></div>
18677
18678     <div class="entry">
18679       <div class="title">
18680         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
18681       </div>
18682       <div class="date">
18683         11th March 2012
18684       </div>
18685       <div class="body">
18686         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
18687 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
18688 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
18689 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
18690 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
18691 you have not done so already.</p>
18692
18693 <p>I plan to present the new version at
18694 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
18695 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
18696 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
18697
18698       </div>
18699       <div class="tags">
18700
18701
18702         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18703
18704
18705       </div>
18706     </div>
18707     <div class="padding"></div>
18708
18709     <div class="entry">
18710       <div class="title">
18711         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
18712       </div>
18713       <div class="date">
18714          9th March 2012
18715       </div>
18716       <div class="body">
18717         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
18718 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
18719 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
18720 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
18721 more international audience.</p>
18722
18723 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
18724 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
18725 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
18726 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
18727 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
18728 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
18729 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
18730
18731
18732 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
18733
18734 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
18735 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
18736 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
18737 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
18738 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
18739 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
18740 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
18741 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
18742 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
18743 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
18744 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
18745
18746 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
18747 project?</strong></p>
18748
18749 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
18750 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
18751 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
18752 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
18753 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
18754 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
18755 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
18756 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
18757 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
18758 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
18759 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
18760 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
18761 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
18762
18763 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18764 Edu?</strong></p>
18765
18766 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
18767 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
18768 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
18769 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
18770 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
18771 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
18772 Japan.</p>
18773
18774 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
18775 Edu?</strong></p>
18776
18777 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
18778 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
18779 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
18780 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
18781 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
18782 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
18783 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
18784 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
18785 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
18786 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
18787 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
18788 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
18789 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
18790 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
18791 help.</p>
18792
18793 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
18794
18795 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
18796 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
18797 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
18798 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
18799 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
18800 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
18801 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
18802 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
18803 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
18804 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
18805 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
18806
18807 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
18808 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
18809
18810 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
18811 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
18812 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
18813 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
18814 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
18815 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
18816 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
18817 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
18818 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
18819 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
18820 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
18821 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
18822
18823       </div>
18824       <div class="tags">
18825
18826
18827         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18828
18829
18830       </div>
18831     </div>
18832     <div class="padding"></div>
18833
18834     <div class="entry">
18835       <div class="title">
18836         <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>
18837       </div>
18838       <div class="date">
18839          7th March 2012
18840       </div>
18841       <div class="body">
18842         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
18843
18844 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
18845 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
18846 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
18847 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
18848 download as a
18849 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
18850 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
18851
18852 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
18853   <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"' />
18854     <p>Download video as
18855       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
18856 </video></p>
18857
18858       </div>
18859       <div class="tags">
18860
18861
18862         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18863
18864
18865       </div>
18866     </div>
18867     <div class="padding"></div>
18868
18869     <div class="entry">
18870       <div class="title">
18871         <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>
18872       </div>
18873       <div class="date">
18874          4th March 2012
18875       </div>
18876       <div class="body">
18877         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
18878 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
18879 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
18880 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
18881 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
18882 need a software solution for your school.</p>
18883
18884       </div>
18885       <div class="tags">
18886
18887
18888         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18889
18890
18891       </div>
18892     </div>
18893     <div class="padding"></div>
18894
18895     <div class="entry">
18896       <div class="title">
18897         <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>
18898       </div>
18899       <div class="date">
18900          3rd March 2012
18901       </div>
18902       <div class="body">
18903         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
18904 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
18905 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
18906 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
18907 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
18908 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
18909 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
18910 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
18911 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
18912 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
18913 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
18914 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
18915 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
18916 year...</p>
18917
18918 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
18919 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
18920 name,
18921 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
18922 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
18923 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
18924 mean). I've been following
18925 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
18926 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
18927 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
18928 Check it out. :)</p>
18929
18930       </div>
18931       <div class="tags">
18932
18933
18934         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
18935
18936
18937       </div>
18938     </div>
18939     <div class="padding"></div>
18940
18941     <div class="entry">
18942       <div class="title">
18943         <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>
18944       </div>
18945       <div class="date">
18946         27th February 2012
18947       </div>
18948       <div class="body">
18949         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
18950 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
18951 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
18952 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
18953 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
18954 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
18955 need a software solution for your school.</p>
18956
18957       </div>
18958       <div class="tags">
18959
18960
18961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18962
18963
18964       </div>
18965     </div>
18966     <div class="padding"></div>
18967
18968     <div class="entry">
18969       <div class="title">
18970         <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>
18971       </div>
18972       <div class="date">
18973         19th February 2012
18974       </div>
18975       <div class="body">
18976         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
18977 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
18978 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
18979 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
18980 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
18981 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
18982 solution for your school.</p>
18983
18984       </div>
18985       <div class="tags">
18986
18987
18988         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
18989
18990
18991       </div>
18992     </div>
18993     <div class="padding"></div>
18994
18995     <div class="entry">
18996       <div class="title">
18997         <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>
18998       </div>
18999       <div class="date">
19000         14th February 2012
19001       </div>
19002       <div class="body">
19003         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
19004 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
19005 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
19006 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
19007 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
19008 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
19009 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
19010 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
19011 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
19012
19013 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
19014 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
19015 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
19016 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
19017 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
19018
19019 <blockquote><pre>
19020 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
19021 do
19022     printf "Failed disk $d: "
19023     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
19024 done
19025 </blockquote></pre>
19026
19027 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
19028 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
19029
19030 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
19031
19032 <blockquote><pre>
19033 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
19034 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
19035 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
19036 </blockquote></pre>
19037
19038 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
19039 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
19040 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
19041 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
19042 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
19043 mounted inside my box.</p>
19044
19045 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
19046 Software RAID in the
19047 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
19048 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
19049 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
19050 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
19051 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
19052 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
19053
19054       </div>
19055       <div class="tags">
19056
19057
19058         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>.
19059
19060
19061       </div>
19062     </div>
19063     <div class="padding"></div>
19064
19065     <div class="entry">
19066       <div class="title">
19067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
19068       </div>
19069       <div class="date">
19070         13th February 2012
19071       </div>
19072       <div class="body">
19073         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
19074 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
19075 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
19076 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
19077 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
19078 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
19079 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
19080 change the global proxy setting by editing
19081 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
19082 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
19083
19084 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
19085 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
19086 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
19087
19088 <blockquote><pre>
19089 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
19090 {
19091    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
19092        isPlainHostName(host) ||
19093        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
19094       return "DIRECT";
19095    else
19096       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
19097 }
19098 </pre></blockquote>
19099
19100 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
19101
19102 <blockquote><pre>
19103 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
19104 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
19105 </pre></blockquote>
19106
19107 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
19108 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
19109 would be used for
19110 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
19111 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
19112 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
19113 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
19114 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
19115 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
19116 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
19117 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
19118 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
19119 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
19120
19121 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
19122 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
19123 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
19124 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
19125 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
19126 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
19127
19128 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
19129 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
19130 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
19131 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
19132 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
19133 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
19134 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
19135 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
19136 the network setup changes.</p>
19137
19138 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
19139 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
19140 draft</a> and a
19141 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
19142 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
19143
19144       </div>
19145       <div class="tags">
19146
19147
19148         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19149
19150
19151       </div>
19152     </div>
19153     <div class="padding"></div>
19154
19155     <div class="entry">
19156       <div class="title">
19157         <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>
19158       </div>
19159       <div class="date">
19160          5th February 2012
19161       </div>
19162       <div class="body">
19163         <p>Since the Lenny version of
19164 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
19165 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
19166 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
19167 in the morning.  This is done using the
19168 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
19169
19170 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
19171 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
19172 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
19173 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
19174 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
19175 the
19176 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
19177 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
19178 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
19179 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
19180 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
19181
19182 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
19183 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
19184 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
19185 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
19186 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
19187 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
19188 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
19189
19190 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
19191 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
19192 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
19193 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
19194 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
19195
19196       </div>
19197       <div class="tags">
19198
19199
19200         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19201
19202
19203       </div>
19204     </div>
19205     <div class="padding"></div>
19206
19207     <div class="entry">
19208       <div class="title">
19209         <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>
19210       </div>
19211       <div class="date">
19212          4th February 2012
19213       </div>
19214       <div class="body">
19215         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
19216 publish the third beta version of
19217 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
19218 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
19219 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
19220 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
19221 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
19222 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
19223 on the project announcement list.</p>
19224
19225 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
19226 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
19227
19228 <ul>
19229
19230 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
19231   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
19232   the installation.</li>
19233
19234 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
19235   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
19236
19237 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
19238   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
19239   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
19240
19241 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
19242   for the local system administrator is created during installation
19243   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
19244   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
19245   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
19246   up to date on the system.</li>
19247
19248 </ul>
19249
19250 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
19251 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
19252 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
19253 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
19254
19255 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
19256 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
19257 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
19258 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
19259 will see you there?</p>
19260
19261       </div>
19262       <div class="tags">
19263
19264
19265         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19266
19267
19268       </div>
19269     </div>
19270     <div class="padding"></div>
19271
19272     <div class="entry">
19273       <div class="title">
19274         <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>
19275       </div>
19276       <div class="date">
19277         27th January 2012
19278       </div>
19279       <div class="body">
19280         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
19281 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
19282 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
19283 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
19284 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
19285 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
19286 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
19287
19288 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
19289 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
19290 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
19291 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
19292 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
19293 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
19294 not taken care of by this.</p>
19295
19296 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
19297 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
19298 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
19299 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
19300 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
19301 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
19302 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
19303 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
19304 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
19305 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
19306 firmware packages.</p>
19307
19308 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
19309 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
19310 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
19311 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
19312 initrd with extra firmware, the
19313 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
19314 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
19315 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
19316
19317 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
19318 network cards working.  For this,
19319 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
19320 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
19321 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
19322
19323 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
19324 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
19325 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
19326
19327 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
19328 try.</p>
19329
19330       </div>
19331       <div class="tags">
19332
19333
19334         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19335
19336
19337       </div>
19338     </div>
19339     <div class="padding"></div>
19340
19341     <div class="entry">
19342       <div class="title">
19343         <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>
19344       </div>
19345       <div class="date">
19346         25th January 2012
19347       </div>
19348       <div class="body">
19349         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
19350 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
19351 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
19352 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
19353 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
19354
19355 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
19356 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
19357 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
19358 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
19359 this is done, log on to the central server and run
19360 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
19361 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
19362 will look similar to this:</p>
19363
19364 <p><blockquote><pre>
19365 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
19366 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
19367 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.
19368
19369 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
19370
19371 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
19372 enter password: *******
19373 %
19374 </pre></blockquote></p>
19375
19376 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
19377 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
19378 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
19379 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
19380 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
19381 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
19382 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
19383 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
19384 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
19385 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
19386 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
19387 automatically.</p>
19388
19389 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
19390 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
19391
19392 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
19393 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
19394 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
19395
19396       </div>
19397       <div class="tags">
19398
19399
19400         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
19401
19402
19403       </div>
19404     </div>
19405     <div class="padding"></div>
19406
19407     <div class="entry">
19408       <div class="title">
19409         <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>
19410       </div>
19411       <div class="date">
19412         10th January 2012
19413       </div>
19414       <div class="body">
19415         <p>In the Squeeze version of
19416 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
19417 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
19418 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
19419 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
19420 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
19421 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
19422 first time.</p>
19423
19424 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
19425 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
19426 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
19427 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
19428
19429 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
19430 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
19431 new setting.</p>
19432
19433 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
19434 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
19435 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
19436
19437       </div>
19438       <div class="tags">
19439
19440
19441         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
19442
19443
19444       </div>
19445     </div>
19446     <div class="padding"></div>
19447
19448     <div class="entry">
19449       <div class="title">
19450         <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>
19451       </div>
19452       <div class="date">
19453          7th January 2012
19454       </div>
19455       <div class="body">
19456         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
19457 the second beta version of
19458 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
19459 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
19460 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
19461 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
19462 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
19463 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
19464 on the project announcement list.</p>
19465
19466       </div>
19467       <div class="tags">
19468
19469
19470         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19471
19472
19473       </div>
19474     </div>
19475     <div class="padding"></div>
19476
19477     <div class="entry">
19478       <div class="title">
19479         <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>
19480       </div>
19481       <div class="date">
19482          3rd January 2012
19483       </div>
19484       <div class="body">
19485         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
19486 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
19487 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
19488 interesting.</p>
19489
19490 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
19491 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
19492 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
19493 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
19494 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
19495 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
19496 wrap up its tasks.</p>
19497
19498 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
19499 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
19500 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
19501 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
19502 because I was typing.</P>
19503
19504 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
19505 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
19506 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
19507 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
19508 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
19509 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
19510 generate entropy.</p>
19511
19512 <p>The fix is in
19513 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
19514 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
19515 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
19516 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
19517
19518       </div>
19519       <div class="tags">
19520
19521
19522         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19523
19524
19525       </div>
19526     </div>
19527     <div class="padding"></div>
19528
19529     <div class="entry">
19530       <div class="title">
19531         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
19532       </div>
19533       <div class="date">
19534         21st November 2011
19535       </div>
19536       <div class="body">
19537         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
19538 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
19539 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
19540 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
19541 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
19542 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
19543 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
19544 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
19545 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
19546 the tools to do so.</p>
19547
19548 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
19549 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
19550 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
19551 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
19552
19553 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
19554 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
19555 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
19556 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
19557 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
19558 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
19559 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
19560 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
19561
19562 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
19563 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
19564 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
19565
19566 <p><pre>
19567 #!/usr/bin/perl
19568 use strict;
19569 use warnings;
19570 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
19571 BEGIN {
19572     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
19573     my %rhelmodules = (
19574         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
19575         );
19576     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
19577         eval "use $module;";
19578         if ($@) {
19579             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
19580             system("yum install -y $pkg");
19581             eval "use $module;";
19582         }
19583     }
19584 }
19585 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
19586
19587 upgrade_dell();
19588
19589 exit 0;
19590
19591 sub run_firmware_script {
19592     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
19593     unless ($script) {
19594         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
19595         exit 1
19596     }
19597     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
19598
19599     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
19600         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
19601     } else {
19602         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
19603     }
19604 }
19605
19606 sub run_firmware_scripts {
19607     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
19608     # Run firmware packages
19609     for my $dir (@dirs) {
19610         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
19611         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
19612         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
19613             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
19614             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
19615         }
19616         closedir $dh;
19617     }
19618 }
19619
19620 sub download {
19621     my $url = shift;
19622     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
19623     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
19624 }
19625
19626 sub upgrade_dell {
19627     my @dirs;
19628     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
19629     chomp $product;
19630
19631     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
19632
19633         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
19634         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
19635
19636         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
19637             CLEANUP => 1
19638             );
19639         chdir($tmpdir);
19640         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
19641         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
19642         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
19643         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
19644         my $fwopts = "-q";
19645         if (@paths) {
19646             for my $url (@paths) {
19647                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
19648             }
19649             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
19650         } else {
19651             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
19652             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
19653         }
19654         chdir('/');
19655     } else {
19656         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
19657         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
19658     }
19659 }
19660
19661 sub fetch_dell_fw {
19662     my $path = shift;
19663     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
19664     download($url);
19665 }
19666
19667 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
19668 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
19669 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
19670 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
19671     my $filename = shift;
19672
19673     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
19674     chomp $product;
19675     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
19676
19677     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
19678
19679     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
19680     my @paths;
19681     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
19682         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
19683         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
19684         my $oscode;
19685         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
19686             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
19687         } else {
19688             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
19689         }
19690         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
19691         {
19692             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
19693         }
19694     }
19695     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
19696         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
19697
19698         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
19699         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
19700
19701         my $cpath = $component->{path};
19702         for my $path (@paths) {
19703             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
19704                 push(@paths, $cpath);
19705             }
19706         }
19707     }
19708     return @paths;
19709 }
19710 </pre>
19711
19712 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
19713 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
19714 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
19715 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
19716 outdated.</p>
19717
19718       </div>
19719       <div class="tags">
19720
19721
19722         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
19723
19724
19725       </div>
19726     </div>
19727     <div class="padding"></div>
19728
19729     <div class="entry">
19730       <div class="title">
19731         <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>
19732       </div>
19733       <div class="date">
19734          7th October 2011
19735       </div>
19736       <div class="body">
19737         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
19738 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
19739 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
19740 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
19741 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
19742 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
19743 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
19744 models.</p>
19745
19746 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
19747 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
19748 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
19749 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
19750
19751 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
19752 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
19753 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
19754 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
19755 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
19756 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
19757 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
19758 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
19759 distributed.</p>
19760
19761 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
19762
19763 <ul>
19764
19765 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
19766   other relevant equipment.</li>
19767
19768 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
19769
19770 </ul>
19771
19772 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
19773 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
19774 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
19775 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
19776 books available.</p>
19777
19778 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
19779 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
19780 libraries. :)</p>
19781
19782       </div>
19783       <div class="tags">
19784
19785
19786         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>.
19787
19788
19789       </div>
19790     </div>
19791     <div class="padding"></div>
19792
19793     <div class="entry">
19794       <div class="title">
19795         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
19796       </div>
19797       <div class="date">
19798         17th September 2011
19799       </div>
19800       <div class="body">
19801         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
19802 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
19803 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
19804 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
19805 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
19806 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
19807 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
19808 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
19809
19810 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
19811
19812 <blockquote><pre>
19813 #!/bin/sh
19814 # apt-get install lsdvd
19815 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
19816 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
19817 </pre></blockquote>
19818
19819 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
19820 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
19821 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
19822 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
19823
19824 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
19825 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
19826 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
19827 back as an ISO.
19828
19829 <blockquote><pre>
19830 #!/bin/sh
19831 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
19832 set -e
19833 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
19834 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
19835 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
19836 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
19837 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
19838 </pre></blockquote>
19839
19840 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
19841
19842 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
19843 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
19844 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
19845 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
19846 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
19847
19848 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
19849 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
19850 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
19851 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
19852 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
19853 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
19854
19855       </div>
19856       <div class="tags">
19857
19858
19859         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>.
19860
19861
19862       </div>
19863     </div>
19864     <div class="padding"></div>
19865
19866     <div class="entry">
19867       <div class="title">
19868         <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>
19869       </div>
19870       <div class="date">
19871          4th August 2011
19872       </div>
19873       <div class="body">
19874         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
19875 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
19876 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
19877 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
19878 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
19879 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
19880 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
19881 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
19882 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
19883
19884 <p><blockquote>
19885 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
19886 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
19887 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
19888 </blockquote></p>
19889
19890 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
19891 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
19892 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
19893 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
19894 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
19895 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
19896 hard to explain.</p>
19897
19898 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
19899 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
19900 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
19901 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
19902 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
19903 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
19904 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
19905 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
19906 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
19907 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
19908 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
19909 mode).</p>
19910
19911 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
19912 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
19913 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
19914 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
19915 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
19916 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
19917 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
19918 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
19919 after visiting single user mode.</p>
19920
19921 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
19922 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
19923 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
19924 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
19925 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
19926 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
19927 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
19928 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
19929
19930 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
19931 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
19932 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
19933
19934       </div>
19935       <div class="tags">
19936
19937
19938         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>.
19939
19940
19941       </div>
19942     </div>
19943     <div class="padding"></div>
19944
19945     <div class="entry">
19946       <div class="title">
19947         <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>
19948       </div>
19949       <div class="date">
19950         30th July 2011
19951       </div>
19952       <div class="body">
19953         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
19954 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
19955 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
19956 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
19957 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
19958 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
19959 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
19960 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
19961 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
19962 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
19963 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
19964 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
19965 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
19966
19967 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
19968 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
19969 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
19970 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
19971 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
19972 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
19973 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
19974 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
19975 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
19976
19977 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
19978 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
19979 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
19980 is presented.</p>
19981
19982 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
19983 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
19984 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
19985 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
19986 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
19987 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
19988 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
19989 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
19990 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
19991 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
19992 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
19993 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
19994 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
19995 find time to push this forward.</p>
19996
19997       </div>
19998       <div class="tags">
19999
20000
20001         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>.
20002
20003
20004       </div>
20005     </div>
20006     <div class="padding"></div>
20007
20008     <div class="entry">
20009       <div class="title">
20010         <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>
20011       </div>
20012       <div class="date">
20013         29th July 2011
20014       </div>
20015       <div class="body">
20016         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
20017 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
20018 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
20019 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
20020 issues.</p>
20021
20022 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
20023 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
20024 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
20025
20026 <ol>
20027
20028 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
20029 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
20030 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
20031 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
20032 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
20033 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
20034 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
20035 Debian.</li>
20036
20037 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
20038 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
20039 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
20040 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
20041 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
20042 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
20043 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
20044 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
20045 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
20046 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
20047 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
20048 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
20049 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
20050
20051 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
20052 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
20053 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
20054 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
20055 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
20056 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
20057 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
20058 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
20059 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
20060 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
20061
20062 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
20063 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
20064 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
20065 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
20066 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
20067 latter behaviour.</li>
20068
20069 </ol>
20070
20071 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
20072 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
20073 it do not matter much.</p>
20074
20075 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
20076 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
20077 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
20078
20079       </div>
20080       <div class="tags">
20081
20082
20083         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
20084
20085
20086       </div>
20087     </div>
20088     <div class="padding"></div>
20089
20090     <div class="entry">
20091       <div class="title">
20092         <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>
20093       </div>
20094       <div class="date">
20095         26th July 2011
20096       </div>
20097       <div class="body">
20098         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
20099 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
20100 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
20101 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
20102 security support for a few years.</p>
20103
20104 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
20105 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
20106 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
20107 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
20108 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
20109 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
20110 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
20111 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
20112 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
20113 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
20114 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
20115 easier in the future.</p>
20116
20117 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
20118 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
20119 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
20120 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
20121 do not have time for.</p>
20122
20123       </div>
20124       <div class="tags">
20125
20126
20127         Tags: <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>.
20128
20129
20130       </div>
20131     </div>
20132     <div class="padding"></div>
20133
20134     <div class="entry">
20135       <div class="title">
20136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
20137       </div>
20138       <div class="date">
20139         20th June 2011
20140       </div>
20141       <div class="body">
20142         <p>Reading
20143 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
20144 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
20145 parts of the
20146 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
20147 and
20148 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
20149 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
20150 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
20151 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
20152
20153       </div>
20154       <div class="tags">
20155
20156
20157         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>.
20158
20159
20160       </div>
20161     </div>
20162     <div class="padding"></div>
20163
20164     <div class="entry">
20165       <div class="title">
20166         <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>
20167       </div>
20168       <div class="date">
20169         30th April 2011
20170       </div>
20171       <div class="body">
20172         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
20173 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
20174 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
20175 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
20176 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
20177 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
20178 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
20179 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
20180 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
20181 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
20182
20183 <p>Where is it?  Visit
20184 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
20185 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
20186 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
20187 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
20188
20189       </div>
20190       <div class="tags">
20191
20192
20193         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>.
20194
20195
20196       </div>
20197     </div>
20198     <div class="padding"></div>
20199
20200     <div class="entry">
20201       <div class="title">
20202         <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>
20203       </div>
20204       <div class="date">
20205         29th April 2011
20206       </div>
20207       <div class="body">
20208         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
20209 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
20210 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
20211 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
20212 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
20213 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
20214 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
20215 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
20216 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
20217 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
20218 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
20219 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
20220 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
20221
20222 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
20223 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
20224 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
20225 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
20226 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
20227 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
20228 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
20229 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
20230 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
20231 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
20232 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
20233 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
20234 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
20235
20236 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
20237 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
20238 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
20239 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
20240 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
20241 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
20242 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
20243 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
20244 it.</p>
20245
20246 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
20247 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
20248 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
20249 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
20250 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
20251 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
20252 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
20253
20254 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
20255 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
20256 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
20257 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
20258 and range= options.</p>
20259
20260 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
20261 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
20262 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
20263 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
20264 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
20265 to best handle this.  I've noticed
20266 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
20267 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
20268 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
20269 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
20270
20271 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
20272 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
20273 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
20274 discussions instead of only
20275 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
20276 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
20277 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
20278 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
20279 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
20280 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
20281
20282       </div>
20283       <div class="tags">
20284
20285
20286         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>.
20287
20288
20289       </div>
20290     </div>
20291     <div class="padding"></div>
20292
20293     <div class="entry">
20294       <div class="title">
20295         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
20296       </div>
20297       <div class="date">
20298          6th April 2011
20299       </div>
20300       <div class="body">
20301         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
20302 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
20303 A few days ago the project
20304 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
20305 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
20306 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
20307 into Gnash.</p>
20308
20309       </div>
20310       <div class="tags">
20311
20312
20313         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>.
20314
20315
20316       </div>
20317     </div>
20318     <div class="padding"></div>
20319
20320     <div class="entry">
20321       <div class="title">
20322         <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>
20323       </div>
20324       <div class="date">
20325          3rd April 2011
20326       </div>
20327       <div class="body">
20328         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
20329 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
20330 update in English.</p>
20331
20332 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
20333 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
20334 of the British service
20335 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
20336 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
20337 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
20338 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
20339 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
20340 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
20341 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
20342 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
20343 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
20344 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
20345 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
20346 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
20347 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
20348
20349 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
20350 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
20351 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
20352 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
20353 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
20354 public infrastructure.</p>
20355
20356 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
20357 such service?</p>
20358
20359       </div>
20360       <div class="tags">
20361
20362
20363         Tags: <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>.
20364
20365
20366       </div>
20367     </div>
20368     <div class="padding"></div>
20369
20370     <div class="entry">
20371       <div class="title">
20372         <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>
20373       </div>
20374       <div class="date">
20375         28th January 2011
20376       </div>
20377       <div class="body">
20378         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
20379 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
20380 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
20381 available on the Internet, and check our locally
20382 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
20383 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
20384 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
20385 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
20386 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
20387 out which security holes were present in our free software
20388 collection.</p>
20389
20390 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
20391 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
20392 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
20393 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
20394 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
20395 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
20396 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
20397 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
20398 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
20399 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
20400 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
20401 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
20402 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
20403 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
20404 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
20405 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
20406
20407 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
20408 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
20409 check out, one could look up
20410 <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
20411 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
20412 The most recent one is
20413 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
20414 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
20415 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
20416
20417 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
20418 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
20419 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
20420 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
20421 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
20422 security issues out.</p>
20423
20424 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
20425 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
20426 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
20427 RHEL is providing
20428 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
20429 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
20430 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
20431
20432 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
20433 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
20434 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
20435 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
20436 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
20437 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
20438 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
20439 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
20440 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
20441 established soon.</p>
20442
20443 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
20444 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
20445 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
20446 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
20447 for their packages.</p>
20448
20449       </div>
20450       <div class="tags">
20451
20452
20453         Tags: <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>.
20454
20455
20456       </div>
20457     </div>
20458     <div class="padding"></div>
20459
20460     <div class="entry">
20461       <div class="title">
20462         <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>
20463       </div>
20464       <div class="date">
20465         23rd January 2011
20466       </div>
20467       <div class="body">
20468         <p>In the
20469 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
20470 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
20471 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
20472 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
20473 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
20474 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
20475 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
20476 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
20477 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
20478 one of my machines like this:</p>
20479
20480 <pre>
20481 loaded modules:
20482 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
20483 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
20484 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
20485 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
20486 10de:03ec pata_amd
20487 10de:03f6 sata_nv
20488 1022:1103 k8temp
20489 109e:036e bttv
20490 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
20491 11ab:4364 sky2
20492 </pre>
20493
20494 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
20495 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
20496
20497 <pre>
20498 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
20499     echo loaded pci modules:
20500     (
20501         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
20502         for address in * ; do
20503             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
20504                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
20505                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
20506                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
20507                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
20508                     echo "$id $module"
20509                 fi
20510             fi
20511         done
20512     )
20513     echo
20514 fi
20515 </pre>
20516
20517 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
20518 mappings:</p>
20519
20520 <pre>
20521 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
20522     echo loaded usb modules:
20523     (
20524         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
20525         for address in * ; do
20526             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
20527                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
20528                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
20529                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
20530                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
20531                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
20532                         echo "$id $module"
20533                     fi
20534                 fi
20535             fi
20536         done
20537     )
20538     echo
20539 fi
20540 </pre>
20541
20542 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
20543 well.</p>
20544
20545       </div>
20546       <div class="tags">
20547
20548
20549         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
20550
20551
20552       </div>
20553     </div>
20554     <div class="padding"></div>
20555
20556     <div class="entry">
20557       <div class="title">
20558         <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>
20559       </div>
20560       <div class="date">
20561         16th January 2011
20562       </div>
20563       <div class="body">
20564         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
20565 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
20566 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
20567 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
20568 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
20569 the Wikipedia article on
20570 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
20571 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
20572 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
20573 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
20574 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
20575 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
20576 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
20577 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
20578 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
20579 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
20580 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
20581 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
20582
20583 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
20584 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
20585 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
20586 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
20587 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
20588 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
20589 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
20590 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
20591 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
20592 from last week</a>.</p>
20593
20594 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
20595 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
20596 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
20597 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
20598 was without royalties and license terms, check out
20599 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
20600 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
20601
20602 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
20603 available from
20604 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
20605 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
20606 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
20607
20608 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
20609 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
20610 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
20611 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
20612
20613       </div>
20614       <div class="tags">
20615
20616
20617         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20618
20619
20620       </div>
20621     </div>
20622     <div class="padding"></div>
20623
20624     <div class="entry">
20625       <div class="title">
20626         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
20627       </div>
20628       <div class="date">
20629         12th January 2011
20630       </div>
20631       <div class="body">
20632         <p>Today I discovered
20633 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
20634 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
20635 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
20636 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
20637 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
20638 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
20639 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
20640 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
20641 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
20642 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
20643 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
20644 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
20645 on the Google announcement is available from
20646 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
20647 A good read. :)</p>
20648
20649 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
20650 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
20651 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
20652 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
20653 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
20654 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
20655 browsers support H.264, and others support
20656 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
20657 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
20658 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
20659 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
20660 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
20661 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
20662 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
20663 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
20664
20665 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
20666 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
20667 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
20668 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
20669 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
20670 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
20671 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
20672
20673 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
20674 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
20675 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
20676 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
20677 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
20678 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
20679 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
20680
20681 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
20682 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
20683 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
20684 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
20685 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
20686 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
20687 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
20688
20689 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
20690 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
20691 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
20692 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
20693 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
20694 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
20695 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
20696 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
20697 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
20698 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
20699 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
20700 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
20701 I guess time will tell.</p>
20702
20703 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
20704 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
20705 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
20706
20707       </div>
20708       <div class="tags">
20709
20710
20711         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
20712
20713
20714       </div>
20715     </div>
20716     <div class="padding"></div>
20717
20718     <div class="entry">
20719       <div class="title">
20720         <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>
20721       </div>
20722       <div class="date">
20723         30th December 2010
20724       </div>
20725       <div class="body">
20726         <p>After trying to
20727 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
20728 Ogg Theora</a> to
20729 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
20730 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
20731 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
20732 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
20733 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
20734 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
20735 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
20736
20737 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
20738 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
20739 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
20740 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
20741 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
20742 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
20743 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
20744
20745 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
20746 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
20747
20748       </div>
20749       <div class="tags">
20750
20751
20752         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>.
20753
20754
20755       </div>
20756     </div>
20757     <div class="padding"></div>
20758
20759     <div class="entry">
20760       <div class="title">
20761         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
20762       </div>
20763       <div class="date">
20764         27th December 2010
20765       </div>
20766       <div class="body">
20767         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
20768 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
20769 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
20770 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
20771 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
20772 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
20773 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
20774 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
20775
20776 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
20777 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
20778 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
20779 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
20780 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
20781 page</a>.</p>
20782
20783 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
20784 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
20785 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
20786 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
20787 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
20788 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
20789 specification on equal terms.</p>
20790
20791 <blockquote>
20792
20793 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
20794 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
20795 open standard:</p>
20796
20797 <ul>
20798
20799 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
20800 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
20801 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
20802 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
20803
20804 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
20805 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
20806 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
20807 nominal fee.</li>
20808
20809 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
20810 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
20811 free basis.</li>
20812
20813 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
20814
20815 </ul>
20816 </blockquote>
20817
20818 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
20819 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
20820 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
20821 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
20822 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
20823 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
20824 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
20825
20826 <blockquote>
20827
20828 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
20829
20830 <ol>
20831
20832 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
20833 tilgængelig.</li>
20834
20835 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
20836 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
20837
20838 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
20839 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
20840
20841 </ol>
20842
20843 </blockquote>
20844
20845 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
20846 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
20847
20848 <blockquote>
20849
20850 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
20851
20852 <ol>
20853
20854 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
20855 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
20856
20857 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
20858 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
20859 Standard themselves;</li>
20860
20861 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
20862 any party or in any business model;</li>
20863
20864 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
20865 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
20866 parties;</li>
20867
20868 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
20869 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
20870 parties.</li>
20871
20872 </ol>
20873
20874 </blockquote>
20875
20876 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
20877 its
20878 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
20879 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
20880
20881 <blockquote>
20882 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
20883
20884 <ul>
20885
20886 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
20887   democratic:
20888
20889          <ul>
20890
20891          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
20892             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
20893             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
20894             and managed.</li>
20895
20896          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
20897             method, can be changed through input from all
20898             participants.</li>
20899
20900          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
20901             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
20902
20903          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
20904             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
20905
20906          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
20907             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
20908             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
20909
20910          </ul>
20911
20912 </li>
20913
20914 </ul>
20915
20916 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
20917 <ul>
20918
20919 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
20920   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
20921   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
20922   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
20923   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
20924
20925 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
20926   a technical or economic barriers</li>
20927
20928 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
20929   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
20930   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
20931   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
20932   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
20933   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
20934   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
20935   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
20936   intended to function.</li>
20937
20938 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
20939   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
20940   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
20941
20942 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
20943   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
20944   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
20945   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
20946   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
20947   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
20948   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
20949   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
20950
20951       <ul>
20952
20953       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
20954         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
20955         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
20956
20957       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
20958         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
20959         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
20960         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
20961
20962       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
20963         licensor</li>
20964
20965       </ul>
20966 </li>
20967
20968 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
20969   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
20970   or restricted licensing terms</li>
20971
20972 </ul>
20973
20974 </blockquote>
20975
20976 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
20977 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
20978 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
20979 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
20980 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
20981 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
20982 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
20983 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
20984 Standards.</p>
20985
20986       </div>
20987       <div class="tags">
20988
20989
20990         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>.
20991
20992
20993       </div>
20994     </div>
20995     <div class="padding"></div>
20996
20997     <div class="entry">
20998       <div class="title">
20999         <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>
21000       </div>
21001       <div class="date">
21002         25th December 2010
21003       </div>
21004       <div class="body">
21005         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
21006 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
21007
21008 <blockquote>
21009
21010 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
21011 as follows:</p>
21012
21013 <ol>
21014
21015 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
21016 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
21017 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
21018
21019 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
21020 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
21021 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
21022 parties.</li>
21023
21024 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
21025 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
21026 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
21027
21028 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
21029 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
21030
21031 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
21032
21033 </ol>
21034
21035 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
21036 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
21037 products based on the standard.</p>
21038 </blockquote>
21039
21040 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
21041 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
21042 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
21043 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
21044 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
21045 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
21046 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
21047 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
21048
21049 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
21050
21051 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
21052 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
21053 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
21054 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
21055 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
21056 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
21057 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
21058 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
21059 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
21060 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
21061 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
21062 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
21063 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
21064 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
21065
21066 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
21067
21068 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
21069 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
21070 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
21071 documentation indicating this.</p>
21072
21073 <p>According to
21074 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
21075 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
21076 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
21077 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
21078 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
21079 report is correct.</p>
21080
21081 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
21082
21083 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
21084 container format</a> and both the
21085 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
21086 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
21087 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
21088
21089 <blockquote>
21090
21091 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
21092 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
21093 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
21094 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
21095 specification compliance.
21096
21097 </blockquote>
21098
21099 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
21100 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
21101 this is the term:<p>
21102
21103 <blockquote>
21104
21105 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
21106 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
21107 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
21108 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
21109 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
21110 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
21111 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
21112 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
21113 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
21114 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
21115 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
21116 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
21117
21118 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
21119 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
21120 </blockquote>
21121
21122 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
21123 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
21124 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
21125 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
21126 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
21127
21128 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
21129
21130 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
21131 Theora format.
21132 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
21133 and
21134 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
21135 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
21136 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
21137 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
21138 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
21139 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
21140 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
21141 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
21142
21143 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
21144
21145 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
21146
21147 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
21148
21149 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
21150 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
21151 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
21152 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
21153 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
21154 this.</p>
21155
21156 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
21157 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
21158
21159       </div>
21160       <div class="tags">
21161
21162
21163         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
21164
21165
21166       </div>
21167     </div>
21168     <div class="padding"></div>
21169
21170     <div class="entry">
21171       <div class="title">
21172         <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>
21173       </div>
21174       <div class="date">
21175         25th December 2010
21176       </div>
21177       <div class="body">
21178         <p>A few days ago
21179 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
21180 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
21181 2.0 of
21182 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
21183 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
21184 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
21185 Nothing very surprising there, given
21186 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
21187 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
21188 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
21189 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
21190 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
21191 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
21192 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
21193 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
21194 standard definition from its content.</p>
21195
21196 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
21197 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
21198 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
21199 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
21200 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
21201 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
21202 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
21203 background information about that story is available in
21204 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
21205 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
21206
21207 <blockquote>
21208 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
21209 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
21210 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
21211
21212 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
21213
21214 <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>
21215
21216 <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>
21217
21218 <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>
21219
21220 <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>
21221
21222 <p>
21223 <ul>
21224 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
21225 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
21226 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
21227 </ul>
21228 </p>
21229
21230 <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>
21231
21232 <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>
21233
21234 <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>
21235
21236 <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>
21237
21238 <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>
21239
21240
21241 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
21242 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
21243 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
21244 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
21245 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
21246 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
21247
21248 </p>
21249
21250 <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>
21251
21252 <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>
21253
21254 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
21255
21256 <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>
21257
21258 <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>
21259
21260 <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>
21261
21262 <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>
21263
21264 <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>
21265
21266 <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>
21267
21268 <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>
21269
21270 <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>
21271
21272 <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>
21273
21274 <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>
21275
21276 <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>
21277
21278 <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>
21279
21280 <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>
21281
21282 <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>
21283
21284 <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>
21285
21286 <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>
21287
21288 <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>
21289
21290 <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>
21291
21292 <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>
21293
21294 <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>
21295
21296 <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>
21297
21298 <p>On security:</p>
21299
21300 <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>
21301
21302 <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>
21303
21304 <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>
21305
21306 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
21307
21308 <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>
21309
21310 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
21311
21312 <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>
21313
21314 <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>
21315
21316 <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>
21317
21318 <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>
21319
21320 <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>
21321
21322 <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>
21323
21324 <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>
21325
21326 <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>
21327
21328 <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>
21329
21330 <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>
21331
21332 <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>
21333
21334 <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>
21335
21336 <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>
21337
21338 <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>
21339
21340 <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>
21341
21342 <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>
21343
21344 <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>
21345
21346 <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>
21347
21348 <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>
21349
21350 <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>
21351
21352 <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>
21353
21354 <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>
21355
21356 <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>
21357
21358 <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>
21359
21360 <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>
21361
21362 <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>
21363
21364 <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>
21365
21366 <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>
21367
21368 <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>
21369
21370 <p>Cordially,<br>
21371 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
21372 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
21373 </blockquote>
21374
21375       </div>
21376       <div class="tags">
21377
21378
21379         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>.
21380
21381
21382       </div>
21383     </div>
21384     <div class="padding"></div>
21385
21386     <div class="entry">
21387       <div class="title">
21388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
21389       </div>
21390       <div class="date">
21391         25th December 2010
21392       </div>
21393       <div class="body">
21394         <p>Half a year ago I
21395 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
21396 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
21397 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
21398 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
21399
21400 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
21401 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
21402 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
21403 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
21404 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
21405 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
21406 got such a great test tool available.</p>
21407
21408       </div>
21409       <div class="tags">
21410
21411
21412         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
21413
21414
21415       </div>
21416     </div>
21417     <div class="padding"></div>
21418
21419     <div class="entry">
21420       <div class="title">
21421         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html">How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</a>
21422       </div>
21423       <div class="date">
21424         22nd December 2010
21425       </div>
21426       <div class="body">
21427         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
21428 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
21429 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
21430 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
21431 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
21432 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
21433 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
21434 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
21435 university.</p>
21436
21437 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
21438 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
21439 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
21440 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
21441 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
21442 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
21443 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
21444 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
21445
21446 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
21447 I perform on a new model.</p>
21448
21449 <ul>
21450
21451 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
21452 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
21453 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
21454
21455 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
21456 installation, X.org is working.</li>
21457
21458 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
21459 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
21460 reported by the program.</li>
21461
21462 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
21463 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
21464 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
21465 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
21466 normally test this by playing
21467 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
21468 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
21469
21470 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
21471 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
21472
21473 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
21474 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
21475
21476 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
21477 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
21478
21479 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
21480 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
21481 few.</li>
21482
21483 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
21484 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
21485 notice this.</li>
21486
21487 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
21488 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
21489 resume.</li>
21490
21491 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
21492 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
21493 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
21494 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
21495 not.</li>
21496
21497 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
21498 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
21499 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
21500 existence.</li>
21501
21502 </ul>
21503
21504 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
21505 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
21506 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
21507 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
21508 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
21509 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
21510 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
21511 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
21512
21513       </div>
21514       <div class="tags">
21515
21516
21517         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>.
21518
21519
21520       </div>
21521     </div>
21522     <div class="padding"></div>
21523
21524     <div class="entry">
21525       <div class="title">
21526         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
21527       </div>
21528       <div class="date">
21529         11th December 2010
21530       </div>
21531       <div class="body">
21532         <p>As I continue to explore
21533 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
21534 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
21535 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
21536
21537 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
21538 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
21539 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
21540 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
21541 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
21542 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
21543 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
21544 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
21545 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
21546 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
21547 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
21548 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
21549 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
21550 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
21551 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
21552 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
21553 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
21554 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
21555 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
21556 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
21557
21558 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
21559 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
21560 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
21561 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
21562 If the Skolelinux foundation
21563 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
21564 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
21565 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
21566 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
21567 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
21568 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
21569 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
21570 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
21571
21572 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
21573 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
21574 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
21575 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
21576 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
21577 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
21578 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
21579 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
21580 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
21581 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
21582 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
21583 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
21584 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
21585 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
21586 currencies.</p>
21587
21588 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
21589 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
21590 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
21591 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
21592 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
21593 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
21594 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
21595 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
21596 BitCoins.  Check out
21597 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
21598 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
21599 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
21600 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
21601 yet.</p>
21602
21603 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
21604 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
21605 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
21606 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
21607 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
21608
21609       </div>
21610       <div class="tags">
21611
21612
21613         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>.
21614
21615
21616       </div>
21617     </div>
21618     <div class="padding"></div>
21619
21620     <div class="entry">
21621       <div class="title">
21622         <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>
21623       </div>
21624       <div class="date">
21625         10th December 2010
21626       </div>
21627       <div class="body">
21628         <p>With this weeks lawless
21629 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
21630 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
21631 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
21632 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
21633 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
21634 A blog post from
21635 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
21636 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
21637 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
21638 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
21639 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
21640 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
21641 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
21642
21643 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
21644 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
21645 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
21646 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
21647 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
21648 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
21649 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
21650 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
21651 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
21652 Debian</a> soon.</p>
21653
21654 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
21655 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
21656 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
21657 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
21658 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
21659 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
21660 you can even get
21661 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
21662 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
21663 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
21664 on the current exchange rates.</p>
21665
21666 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
21667 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
21668 donations to the address
21669 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
21670
21671       </div>
21672       <div class="tags">
21673
21674
21675         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>.
21676
21677
21678       </div>
21679     </div>
21680     <div class="padding"></div>
21681
21682     <div class="entry">
21683       <div class="title">
21684         <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>
21685       </div>
21686       <div class="date">
21687          9th December 2010
21688       </div>
21689       <div class="body">
21690         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
21691 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
21692 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
21693 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
21694 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
21695 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
21696 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
21697 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
21698 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
21699 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
21700 operational.</p>
21701
21702 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
21703 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
21704 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
21705 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
21706 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
21707 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
21708 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
21709
21710       </div>
21711       <div class="tags">
21712
21713
21714         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>.
21715
21716
21717       </div>
21718     </div>
21719     <div class="padding"></div>
21720
21721     <div class="entry">
21722       <div class="title">
21723         <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>
21724       </div>
21725       <div class="date">
21726         29th November 2010
21727       </div>
21728       <div class="body">
21729         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
21730 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
21731 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
21732 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
21733 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
21734 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
21735
21736 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
21737 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
21738 will hold its
21739 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
21740 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
21741 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
21742 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
21743 vote this year.</p>
21744
21745       </div>
21746       <div class="tags">
21747
21748
21749         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
21750
21751
21752       </div>
21753     </div>
21754     <div class="padding"></div>
21755
21756     <div class="entry">
21757       <div class="title">
21758         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
21759       </div>
21760       <div class="date">
21761         27th November 2010
21762       </div>
21763       <div class="body">
21764         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
21765 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
21766 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
21767 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
21768 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
21769 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
21770 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
21771 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
21772
21773 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
21774 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
21775 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
21776 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
21777 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
21778 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
21779 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
21780 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
21781 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
21782 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
21783 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
21784
21785 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
21786 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
21787 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
21788 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
21789 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
21790 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
21791 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
21792 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
21793 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
21794 what is going on.</p>
21795
21796       </div>
21797       <div class="tags">
21798
21799
21800         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>.
21801
21802
21803       </div>
21804     </div>
21805     <div class="padding"></div>
21806
21807     <div class="entry">
21808       <div class="title">
21809         <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>
21810       </div>
21811       <div class="date">
21812         22nd November 2010
21813       </div>
21814       <div class="body">
21815         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
21816 upgrade testing of the
21817 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
21818 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
21819 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
21820 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
21821
21822 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
21823
21824 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
21825
21826 <blockquote><p>
21827   apache2.2-bin
21828   aptdaemon
21829   baobab
21830   binfmt-support
21831   browser-plugin-gnash
21832   cheese-common
21833   cli-common
21834   cups-pk-helper
21835   dmz-cursor-theme
21836   empathy
21837   empathy-common
21838   freedesktop-sound-theme
21839   freeglut3
21840   gconf-defaults-service
21841   gdm-themes
21842   gedit-plugins
21843   geoclue
21844   geoclue-hostip
21845   geoclue-localnet
21846   geoclue-manual
21847   geoclue-yahoo
21848   gnash
21849   gnash-common
21850   gnome
21851   gnome-backgrounds
21852   gnome-cards-data
21853   gnome-codec-install
21854   gnome-core
21855   gnome-desktop-environment
21856   gnome-disk-utility
21857   gnome-screenshot
21858   gnome-search-tool
21859   gnome-session-canberra
21860   gnome-system-log
21861   gnome-themes-extras
21862   gnome-themes-more
21863   gnome-user-share
21864   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
21865   gstreamer0.10-tools
21866   gtk2-engines
21867   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
21868   gtk2-engines-smooth
21869   hamster-applet
21870   libapache2-mod-dnssd
21871   libapr1
21872   libaprutil1
21873   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
21874   libaprutil1-ldap
21875   libart2.0-cil
21876   libboost-date-time1.42.0
21877   libboost-python1.42.0
21878   libboost-thread1.42.0
21879   libchamplain-0.4-0
21880   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
21881   libcheese-gtk18
21882   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
21883   libcryptui0
21884   libdiscid0
21885   libelf1
21886   libepc-1.0-2
21887   libepc-common
21888   libepc-ui-1.0-2
21889   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
21890   libfreerdp0
21891   libgconf2.0-cil
21892   libgdata-common
21893   libgdata7
21894   libgdu-gtk0
21895   libgee2
21896   libgeoclue0
21897   libgexiv2-0
21898   libgif4
21899   libglade2.0-cil
21900   libglib2.0-cil
21901   libgmime2.4-cil
21902   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
21903   libgnome2.24-cil
21904   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
21905   libgpod-common
21906   libgpod4
21907   libgtk2.0-cil
21908   libgtkglext1
21909   libgtksourceview2.0-common
21910   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
21911   libmono-addins0.2-cil
21912   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
21913   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
21914   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
21915   libmono-posix2.0-cil
21916   libmono-security2.0-cil
21917   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
21918   libmono-system2.0-cil
21919   libmtp8
21920   libmusicbrainz3-6
21921   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
21922   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
21923   libopal3.6.8
21924   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
21925   libpt2.6.7
21926   libpython2.6
21927   librpm1
21928   librpmio1
21929   libsdl1.2debian
21930   libsrtp0
21931   libssh-4
21932   libtelepathy-farsight0
21933   libtelepathy-glib0
21934   libtidy-0.99-0
21935   media-player-info
21936   mesa-utils
21937   mono-2.0-gac
21938   mono-gac
21939   mono-runtime
21940   nautilus-sendto
21941   nautilus-sendto-empathy
21942   p7zip-full
21943   pkg-config
21944   python-aptdaemon
21945   python-aptdaemon-gtk
21946   python-axiom
21947   python-beautifulsoup
21948   python-bugbuddy
21949   python-clientform
21950   python-coherence
21951   python-configobj
21952   python-crypto
21953   python-cupshelpers
21954   python-elementtree
21955   python-epsilon
21956   python-evolution
21957   python-feedparser
21958   python-gdata
21959   python-gdbm
21960   python-gst0.10
21961   python-gtkglext1
21962   python-gtksourceview2
21963   python-httplib2
21964   python-louie
21965   python-mako
21966   python-markupsafe
21967   python-mechanize
21968   python-nevow
21969   python-notify
21970   python-opengl
21971   python-openssl
21972   python-pam
21973   python-pkg-resources
21974   python-pyasn1
21975   python-pysqlite2
21976   python-rdflib
21977   python-serial
21978   python-tagpy
21979   python-twisted-bin
21980   python-twisted-conch
21981   python-twisted-core
21982   python-twisted-web
21983   python-utidylib
21984   python-webkit
21985   python-xdg
21986   python-zope.interface
21987   remmina
21988   remmina-plugin-data
21989   remmina-plugin-rdp
21990   remmina-plugin-vnc
21991   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
21992   rhythmbox-plugins
21993   rpm-common
21994   rpm2cpio
21995   seahorse-plugins
21996   shotwell
21997   software-center
21998   system-config-printer-udev
21999   telepathy-gabble
22000   telepathy-mission-control-5
22001   telepathy-salut
22002   tomboy
22003   totem
22004   totem-coherence
22005   totem-mozilla
22006   totem-plugins
22007   transmission-common
22008   xdg-user-dirs
22009   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
22010   xserver-xephyr
22011 </p></blockquote>
22012
22013 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
22014
22015 <blockquote><p>
22016   cheese
22017   ekiga
22018   eog
22019   epiphany-extensions
22020   evolution-exchange
22021   fast-user-switch-applet
22022   file-roller
22023   gcalctool
22024   gconf-editor
22025   gdm
22026   gedit
22027   gedit-common
22028   gnome-games
22029   gnome-games-data
22030   gnome-nettool
22031   gnome-system-tools
22032   gnome-themes
22033   gnuchess
22034   gucharmap
22035   guile-1.8-libs
22036   libavahi-ui0
22037   libdmx1
22038   libgalago3
22039   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
22040   libgtksourceview2.0-0
22041   liblircclient0
22042   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
22043   libspeexdsp1
22044   libsvga1
22045   rhythmbox
22046   seahorse
22047   sound-juicer
22048   system-config-printer
22049   totem-common
22050   transmission-gtk
22051   vinagre
22052   vino
22053 </p></blockquote>
22054
22055 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
22056
22057 <blockquote><p>
22058   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
22059 </p></blockquote>
22060
22061 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
22062
22063 <blockquote><p>
22064 [nothing]
22065 </p></blockquote>
22066
22067 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
22068
22069 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
22070
22071 <blockquote><p>
22072   ksmserver
22073 </p></blockquote>
22074
22075 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
22076
22077 <blockquote><p>
22078   kwin
22079   network-manager-kde
22080 </p></blockquote>
22081
22082 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
22083
22084 <blockquote><p>
22085   arts
22086   dolphin
22087   freespacenotifier
22088   google-gadgets-gst
22089   google-gadgets-xul
22090   kappfinder
22091   kcalc
22092   kcharselect
22093   kde-core
22094   kde-plasma-desktop
22095   kde-standard
22096   kde-window-manager
22097   kdeartwork
22098   kdeartwork-emoticons
22099   kdeartwork-style
22100   kdeartwork-theme-icon
22101   kdebase
22102   kdebase-apps
22103   kdebase-workspace
22104   kdebase-workspace-bin
22105   kdebase-workspace-data
22106   kdeeject
22107   kdelibs
22108   kdeplasma-addons
22109   kdeutils
22110   kdewallpapers
22111   kdf
22112   kfloppy
22113   kgpg
22114   khelpcenter4
22115   kinfocenter
22116   konq-plugins-l10n
22117   konqueror-nsplugins
22118   kscreensaver
22119   kscreensaver-xsavers
22120   ktimer
22121   kwrite
22122   libgle3
22123   libkde4-ruby1.8
22124   libkonq5
22125   libkonq5-templates
22126   libnetpbm10
22127   libplasma-ruby
22128   libplasma-ruby1.8
22129   libqt4-ruby1.8
22130   marble-data
22131   marble-plugins
22132   netpbm
22133   nuvola-icon-theme
22134   plasma-dataengines-workspace
22135   plasma-desktop
22136   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
22137   plasma-runners-addons
22138   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
22139   plasma-scriptengine-python
22140   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
22141   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
22142   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
22143   plasma-scriptengines
22144   plasma-wallpapers-addons
22145   plasma-widget-folderview
22146   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
22147   ruby
22148   sweeper
22149   update-notifier-kde
22150   xscreensaver-data-extra
22151   xscreensaver-gl
22152   xscreensaver-gl-extra
22153   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
22154 </p></blockquote>
22155
22156 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
22157
22158 <blockquote><p>
22159   ark
22160   google-gadgets-common
22161   google-gadgets-qt
22162   htdig
22163   kate
22164   kdebase-bin
22165   kdebase-data
22166   kdepasswd
22167   kfind
22168   klipper
22169   konq-plugins
22170   konqueror
22171   ksysguard
22172   ksysguardd
22173   libarchive1
22174   libcln6
22175   libeet1
22176   libeina-svn-06
22177   libggadget-1.0-0b
22178   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
22179   libgps19
22180   libkdecorations4
22181   libkephal4
22182   libkonq4
22183   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
22184   libkscreensaver5
22185   libksgrd4
22186   libksignalplotter4
22187   libkunitconversion4
22188   libkwineffects1a
22189   libmarblewidget4
22190   libntrack-qt4-1
22191   libntrack0
22192   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
22193   libplasmaclock4a
22194   libplasmagenericshell4
22195   libprocesscore4a
22196   libprocessui4a
22197   libqalculate5
22198   libqedje0a
22199   libqtruby4shared2
22200   libqzion0a
22201   libruby1.8
22202   libscim8c2a
22203   libsmokekdecore4-3
22204   libsmokekdeui4-3
22205   libsmokekfile3
22206   libsmokekhtml3
22207   libsmokekio3
22208   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
22209   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
22210   libsmokekparts3
22211   libsmokektexteditor3
22212   libsmokekutils3
22213   libsmokenepomuk3
22214   libsmokephonon3
22215   libsmokeplasma3
22216   libsmokeqtcore4-3
22217   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
22218   libsmokeqtgui4-3
22219   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
22220   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
22221   libsmokeqtscript4-3
22222   libsmokeqtsql4-3
22223   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
22224   libsmokeqttest4-3
22225   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
22226   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
22227   libsmokeqtxml4-3
22228   libsmokesolid3
22229   libsmokesoprano3
22230   libtaskmanager4a
22231   libtidy-0.99-0
22232   libweather-ion4a
22233   libxklavier16
22234   libxxf86misc1
22235   okteta
22236   oxygencursors
22237   plasma-dataengines-addons
22238   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
22239   plasma-widget-lancelot
22240   plasma-widgets-addons
22241   plasma-widgets-workspace
22242   polkit-kde-1
22243   ruby1.8
22244   systemsettings
22245   update-notifier-common
22246 </p></blockquote>
22247
22248 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
22249 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
22250 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
22251 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
22252
22253       </div>
22254       <div class="tags">
22255
22256
22257         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>.
22258
22259
22260       </div>
22261     </div>
22262     <div class="padding"></div>
22263
22264     <div class="entry">
22265       <div class="title">
22266         <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>
22267       </div>
22268       <div class="date">
22269         22nd November 2010
22270       </div>
22271       <div class="body">
22272         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
22273 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
22274 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
22275 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
22276 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
22277 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
22278 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
22279 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
22280 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
22281
22282 <p>I found
22283 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
22284 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
22285 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
22286 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
22287 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
22288 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
22289
22290 <pre>
22291 #!/bin/sh
22292
22293 # Based on
22294 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
22295
22296 set -e
22297 set -x
22298
22299 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
22300     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
22301     exit 1
22302 else
22303     host="$1"
22304 fi
22305
22306 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
22307     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
22308     exit 1
22309 fi
22310
22311 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
22312 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
22313 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
22314 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
22315
22316 img=$host.img
22317 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
22318 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
22319
22320 parted $img mklabel msdos
22321 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
22322 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
22323 parted $img set 1 boot on
22324
22325 modprobe dm-mod
22326 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
22327 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
22328
22329 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
22330 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
22331 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
22332
22333 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
22334 losetup -d /dev/loop0
22335 </pre>
22336
22337 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
22338 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
22339
22340 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
22341 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
22342 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
22343 seem to work just fine.</p>
22344
22345       </div>
22346       <div class="tags">
22347
22348
22349         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>.
22350
22351
22352       </div>
22353     </div>
22354     <div class="padding"></div>
22355
22356     <div class="entry">
22357       <div class="title">
22358         <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>
22359       </div>
22360       <div class="date">
22361         20th November 2010
22362       </div>
22363       <div class="body">
22364         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
22365 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
22366 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
22367 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
22368
22369 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
22370 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
22371 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
22372
22373 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
22374
22375 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
22376
22377 <blockquote><p>
22378   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
22379   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
22380   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
22381   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
22382   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
22383   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
22384   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
22385   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
22386   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
22387   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
22388   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
22389   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
22390   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
22391   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
22392   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
22393   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
22394   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
22395   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
22396   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
22397   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
22398   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
22399   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
22400   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
22401   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
22402   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
22403   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
22404   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
22405   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
22406   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
22407   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
22408   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
22409   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
22410   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
22411   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
22412   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
22413   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
22414   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
22415   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
22416   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
22417   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
22418   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
22419   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
22420   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
22421   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
22422   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
22423   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
22424   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
22425   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
22426   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
22427   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
22428   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
22429   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
22430   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
22431   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
22432   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
22433   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
22434   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
22435   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
22436   zip
22437 </p></blockquote>
22438
22439 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
22440
22441 <blockquote><p>
22442   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
22443   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
22444   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
22445   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
22446   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
22447   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
22448   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
22449   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
22450   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
22451   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
22452   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
22453   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
22454   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
22455   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
22456   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
22457   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
22458   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
22459   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
22460   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
22461   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
22462   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
22463   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
22464   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
22465   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
22466   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
22467   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
22468   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
22469   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
22470   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
22471 </p></blockquote>
22472
22473 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
22474
22475 <blockquote><p>
22476   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
22477 </p></blockquote>
22478
22479 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
22480
22481 <blockquote><p>
22482 [nothing]
22483 </p></blockquote>
22484
22485 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
22486
22487 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
22488
22489 <blockquote><p>
22490   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
22491   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
22492   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
22493   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
22494   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
22495   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
22496   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
22497   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
22498   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
22499   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
22500   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
22501   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
22502   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
22503   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
22504   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
22505   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
22506   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
22507   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
22508   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
22509   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
22510   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
22511   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
22512   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
22513   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
22514   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
22515   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
22516   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
22517   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
22518   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
22519   ttf-sazanami-gothic
22520 </p></blockquote>
22521
22522 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
22523
22524 <blockquote><p>
22525   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
22526   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
22527   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
22528   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
22529   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
22530   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
22531   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
22532   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
22533   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
22534   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
22535   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
22536   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
22537   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
22538   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
22539   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
22540   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
22541   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
22542   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
22543   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
22544   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
22545   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
22546   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
22547   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
22548   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
22549   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
22550   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
22551   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
22552   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
22553   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
22554   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
22555   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
22556   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
22557   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
22558 </p></blockquote>
22559
22560 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
22561
22562 <blockquote><p>
22563   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
22564   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
22565   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
22566   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
22567   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
22568   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
22569   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
22570 </p></blockquote>
22571
22572 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
22573
22574 <blockquote><p>
22575   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
22576 </p></blockquote>
22577
22578       </div>
22579       <div class="tags">
22580
22581
22582         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>.
22583
22584
22585       </div>
22586     </div>
22587     <div class="padding"></div>
22588
22589     <div class="entry">
22590       <div class="title">
22591         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
22592       </div>
22593       <div class="date">
22594         20th November 2010
22595       </div>
22596       <div class="body">
22597         <p>Answering
22598 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
22599 call from the Gnash project</a> for
22600 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
22601 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
22602 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
22603 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
22604 releases out more often.</p>
22605
22606 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
22607 I have considered setting up a <a
22608 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
22609 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
22610 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
22611 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
22612 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
22613 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
22614 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
22615 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
22616 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
22617 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
22618 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
22619 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
22620
22621       </div>
22622       <div class="tags">
22623
22624
22625         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>.
22626
22627
22628       </div>
22629     </div>
22630     <div class="padding"></div>
22631
22632     <div class="entry">
22633       <div class="title">
22634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
22635       </div>
22636       <div class="date">
22637          9th November 2010
22638       </div>
22639       <div class="body">
22640         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
22641
22642 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
22643 3D linked in from
22644 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
22645 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
22646
22647       </div>
22648       <div class="tags">
22649
22650
22651         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>.
22652
22653
22654       </div>
22655     </div>
22656     <div class="padding"></div>
22657
22658     <div class="entry">
22659       <div class="title">
22660         <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>
22661       </div>
22662       <div class="date">
22663          7th November 2010
22664       </div>
22665       <div class="body">
22666         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
22667 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
22668 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
22669 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
22670 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
22671 working using this DVD.</p>
22672
22673 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
22674 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
22675 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
22676 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
22677 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
22678 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
22679 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
22680
22681 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
22682 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
22683 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
22684 Debian archive.</p>
22685
22686 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
22687 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
22688 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
22689 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
22690 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
22691 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
22692 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
22693 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
22694 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
22695 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
22696 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
22697 free X driver should work.</p>
22698
22699 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
22700 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
22701 DVD more useful again.</p>
22702
22703       </div>
22704       <div class="tags">
22705
22706
22707         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
22708
22709
22710       </div>
22711     </div>
22712     <div class="padding"></div>
22713
22714     <div class="entry">
22715       <div class="title">
22716         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
22717       </div>
22718       <div class="date">
22719         24th October 2010
22720       </div>
22721       <div class="body">
22722         <p>Some updates.</p>
22723
22724 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
22725 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
22726 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
22727 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
22728 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
22729 :)</p>
22730
22731 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
22732 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
22733 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
22734 It is called
22735 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
22736 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
22737 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
22738 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
22739 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
22740 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
22741
22742 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
22743 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
22744 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
22745 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
22746 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
22747 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
22748 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
22749 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
22750 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
22751 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
22752
22753       </div>
22754       <div class="tags">
22755
22756
22757         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>.
22758
22759
22760       </div>
22761     </div>
22762     <div class="padding"></div>
22763
22764     <div class="entry">
22765       <div class="title">
22766         <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>
22767       </div>
22768       <div class="date">
22769         19th October 2010
22770       </div>
22771       <div class="body">
22772         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
22773 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
22774 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
22775 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
22776 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
22777 AVM2 flash files.</p>
22778
22779 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
22780 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
22781 following text:</P>
22782
22783 <p><blockquote>
22784
22785   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
22786   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
22787
22788   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
22789
22790   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
22791
22792   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
22793   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
22794   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
22795   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
22796   days. The project web page is available from
22797   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
22798   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
22799   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
22800
22801   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
22802   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
22803   to get this to happen.</p>
22804
22805   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
22806   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
22807
22808 </blockquote></p>
22809
22810 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
22811 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
22812 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
22813 :)</p>
22814
22815       </div>
22816       <div class="tags">
22817
22818
22819         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>.
22820
22821
22822       </div>
22823     </div>
22824     <div class="padding"></div>
22825
22826     <div class="entry">
22827       <div class="title">
22828         <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>
22829       </div>
22830       <div class="date">
22831          9th October 2010
22832       </div>
22833       <div class="body">
22834         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
22835 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
22836 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
22837 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
22838 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
22839 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
22840 robots.</p>
22841
22842 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
22843 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
22844 a few less important features too.</p>
22845
22846 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
22847 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
22848 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
22849 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
22850
22851 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
22852 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
22853 source or binary package:</p>
22854
22855 <p><ul>
22856 <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>
22857 <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>
22858 <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>
22859 </ul></p>
22860
22861 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
22862 please let me know.</p>
22863
22864       </div>
22865       <div class="tags">
22866
22867
22868         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>.
22869
22870
22871       </div>
22872     </div>
22873     <div class="padding"></div>
22874
22875     <div class="entry">
22876       <div class="title">
22877         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
22878       </div>
22879       <div class="date">
22880          3rd October 2010
22881       </div>
22882       <div class="body">
22883         <p><ul>
22884
22885 <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
22886 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
22887
22888 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
22889 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
22890 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
22891
22892 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
22893 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
22894 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
22895 simple setup.
22896
22897 </ul></p>
22898
22899       </div>
22900       <div class="tags">
22901
22902
22903         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>.
22904
22905
22906       </div>
22907     </div>
22908     <div class="padding"></div>
22909
22910     <div class="entry">
22911       <div class="title">
22912         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
22913       </div>
22914       <div class="date">
22915          9th September 2010
22916       </div>
22917       <div class="body">
22918         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
22919 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
22920 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
22921 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
22922 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
22923 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
22924 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
22925 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
22926 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
22927
22928 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
22929 written:</p>
22930
22931 <blockquote>
22932 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
22933 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
22934 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
22935 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
22936 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
22937
22938 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
22939 standard.</p>
22940 </blockquote>
22941
22942 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
22943 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
22944 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
22945 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
22946
22947 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
22948 read
22949 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
22950 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
22951 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
22952 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
22953 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
22954 the issue.  The solution is to support the
22955 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
22956 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
22957 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
22958
22959       </div>
22960       <div class="tags">
22961
22962
22963         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
22964
22965
22966       </div>
22967     </div>
22968     <div class="padding"></div>
22969
22970     <div class="entry">
22971       <div class="title">
22972         <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>
22973       </div>
22974       <div class="date">
22975          4th September 2010
22976       </div>
22977       <div class="body">
22978         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
22979 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
22980 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
22981 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
22982 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
22983 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
22984 installed.</p>
22985
22986 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
22987 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
22988 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
22989 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
22990 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
22991 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
22992 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
22993 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
22994 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
22995
22996 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
22997 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
22998 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
22999 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
23000 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
23001 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
23002 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
23003 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
23004 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
23005 pages they want to visit.</p>
23006
23007 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
23008 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
23009 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
23010 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
23011 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
23012 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
23013 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
23014 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
23015 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
23016 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
23017 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
23018
23019       </div>
23020       <div class="tags">
23021
23022
23023         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>.
23024
23025
23026       </div>
23027     </div>
23028     <div class="padding"></div>
23029
23030     <div class="entry">
23031       <div class="title">
23032         <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>
23033       </div>
23034       <div class="date">
23035          1st September 2010
23036       </div>
23037       <div class="body">
23038         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
23039 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
23040 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
23041 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
23042 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
23043 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
23044 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
23045 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
23046 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
23047 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
23048 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
23049 drive around.</p>
23050
23051 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
23052 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
23053
23054 <p><pre>
23055 use Spykee;
23056 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
23057 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
23058 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
23059 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
23060 $spykee->left();
23061 sleep 2;
23062 $spykee->right();
23063 sleep 2;
23064 $spykee->forward();
23065 sleep 2;
23066 $spykee->back();
23067 sleep 2;
23068 $spykee->stop();
23069 </pre></p>
23070
23071 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
23072 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
23073 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
23074 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
23075 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
23076 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
23077 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
23078 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
23079 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
23080 going. :).</p>
23081
23082 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
23083 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
23084 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
23085 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
23086
23087       </div>
23088       <div class="tags">
23089
23090
23091         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>.
23092
23093
23094       </div>
23095     </div>
23096     <div class="padding"></div>
23097
23098     <div class="entry">
23099       <div class="title">
23100         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
23101       </div>
23102       <div class="date">
23103         30th August 2010
23104       </div>
23105       <div class="body">
23106         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
23107 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
23108 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
23109 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
23110 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
23111 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
23112 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
23113
23114 <pre>
23115 % ln foo bar
23116 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
23117 %
23118 </pre>
23119
23120 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
23121 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
23122 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
23123 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
23124 nevertheless. :)</p>
23125
23126 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
23127 git from
23128 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
23129
23130       </div>
23131       <div class="tags">
23132
23133
23134         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23135
23136
23137       </div>
23138     </div>
23139     <div class="padding"></div>
23140
23141     <div class="entry">
23142       <div class="title">
23143         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
23144       </div>
23145       <div class="date">
23146         26th August 2010
23147       </div>
23148       <div class="body">
23149         <p>My file system sematics program
23150 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
23151 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
23152 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
23153 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
23154 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
23155 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
23156 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
23157 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
23158 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
23159 script:</p>
23160
23161 <pre>
23162 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
23163   mode_t retval = 0;
23164   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
23165   if (-1 != fd) {
23166     unlink(name);
23167     struct stat statbuf;
23168     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
23169       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
23170     }
23171     close(fd);
23172   }
23173   return retval;
23174 }
23175
23176 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
23177 int test_umask(void) {
23178   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
23179
23180   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
23181   mode_t newmode;
23182   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
23183     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
23184            newmode);
23185   }
23186   umask(007);
23187   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
23188     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
23189            newmode);
23190   }
23191
23192   umask (orig_umask);
23193   return 0;
23194 }
23195
23196 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
23197   [...]
23198   test_umask();
23199   return 0;
23200 }
23201 </pre>
23202
23203 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
23204
23205 <pre>
23206 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
23207 info: testing symlink creation
23208 info: testing subdirectory creation
23209 info: testing fcntl locking
23210   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
23211   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
23212   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
23213   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
23214   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
23215   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
23216 info: testing umask effect on file creation
23217 </pre>
23218
23219 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
23220 result:</p>
23221
23222 <pre>
23223 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
23224 info: testing symlink creation
23225 info: testing subdirectory creation
23226 info: testing fcntl locking
23227   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
23228   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
23229   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
23230   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
23231   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
23232   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
23233 info: testing umask effect on file creation
23234   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
23235   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
23236 </pre>
23237
23238 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
23239 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
23240 directory.</p>
23241
23242 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
23243 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
23244
23245 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
23246 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
23247 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
23248
23249       </div>
23250       <div class="tags">
23251
23252
23253         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23254
23255
23256       </div>
23257     </div>
23258     <div class="padding"></div>
23259
23260     <div class="entry">
23261       <div class="title">
23262         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
23263       </div>
23264       <div class="date">
23265         15th August 2010
23266       </div>
23267       <div class="body">
23268         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
23269 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
23270 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
23271 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
23272 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
23273 long time.</p>
23274
23275       </div>
23276       <div class="tags">
23277
23278
23279         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>.
23280
23281
23282       </div>
23283     </div>
23284     <div class="padding"></div>
23285
23286     <div class="entry">
23287       <div class="title">
23288         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
23289       </div>
23290       <div class="date">
23291          9th August 2010
23292       </div>
23293       <div class="body">
23294         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
23295 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
23296 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
23297 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
23298 generated configuration.</p>
23299
23300 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
23301 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
23302 without any manual configuration.</p>
23303
23304 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
23305 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
23306 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
23307 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
23308 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
23309 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
23310 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
23311 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
23312 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
23313 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
23314 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
23315 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
23316 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
23317 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
23318 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
23319 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
23320 use.</p>
23321
23322 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
23323 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
23324 working properly out of the box:</p>
23325
23326 <ul>
23327 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
23328 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
23329 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
23330 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
23331 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
23332 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
23333 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
23334 </ul>
23335
23336 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
23337
23338 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
23339 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
23340 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
23341 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
23342 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
23343
23344 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
23345 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
23346 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
23347 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
23348 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
23349 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
23350 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
23351 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
23352
23353 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
23354 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
23355 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
23356 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
23357 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
23358 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
23359 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
23360 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
23361 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
23362 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
23363 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
23364 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
23365 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
23366 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
23367 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
23368 current DNS domain is used.</p>
23369
23370 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
23371 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
23372 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
23373 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
23374 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
23375 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
23376 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
23377 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
23378 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
23379 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
23380 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
23381 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
23382 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
23383
23384 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
23385 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
23386 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
23387 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
23388 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
23389 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
23390 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
23391 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
23392 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
23393 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
23394 do for now. :)</p>
23395
23396 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
23397 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
23398 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
23399 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
23400 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
23401 yet.</p>
23402
23403 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
23404 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
23405
23406 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
23407 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
23408 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
23409 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
23410
23411       </div>
23412       <div class="tags">
23413
23414
23415         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23416
23417
23418       </div>
23419     </div>
23420     <div class="padding"></div>
23421
23422     <div class="entry">
23423       <div class="title">
23424         <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>
23425       </div>
23426       <div class="date">
23427          8th August 2010
23428       </div>
23429       <div class="body">
23430         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
23431 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
23432 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
23433 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
23434 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
23435 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
23436 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
23437
23438 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
23439 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
23440 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
23441 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
23442 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
23443 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
23444 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
23445
23446 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
23447 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
23448 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
23449 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
23450 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
23451
23452 <pre>
23453 /*
23454  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
23455  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
23456  * directory.
23457  * License: GPL v2 or later
23458  *
23459  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
23460  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
23461 */
23462
23463 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
23464 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
23465 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
23466
23467 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
23468
23469 #include &lt;errno.h>
23470 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
23471 #include &lt;stdio.h>
23472 #include &lt;string.h>
23473 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
23474 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
23475 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
23476 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
23477 #include &lt;unistd.h>
23478
23479 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
23480 /*
23481  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
23482  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
23483  * below.
23484  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
23485  */
23486 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
23487 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
23488   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
23489 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
23490   char *zErrMsg;
23491   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
23492   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
23493   unlink(name);
23494   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
23495   if( rc ){
23496     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
23497     sqlite3_close(db);
23498     return -1;
23499   }
23500
23501   /* create tables */
23502   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
23503   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
23504     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
23505     sqlite3_close(db);
23506     return -1;
23507   }
23508   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
23509   sqlite3_close(db);
23510   return 0;
23511 }
23512 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
23513
23514 /*
23515  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
23516  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
23517  * done in the sqlite3 library.
23518  * See also
23519  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
23520  * POSIX specification
23521  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
23522  */
23523 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
23524   struct flock fl;
23525   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
23526   unlink(name);
23527   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
23528   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
23529
23530   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
23531   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
23532   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
23533   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
23534   fl.l_len    = 1;
23535   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
23536   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23537
23538   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
23539   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
23540   fl.l_len    = 510;
23541   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
23542   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23543
23544   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
23545   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
23546   fl.l_len    = 1;
23547   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
23548   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23549
23550   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
23551   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
23552   fl.l_len    = 1;
23553   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
23554   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23555
23556   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
23557   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
23558   fl.l_len    = 510;
23559   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23560
23561   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
23562   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
23563   fl.l_len    = 2;
23564   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
23565   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
23566
23567   close(fd);
23568   return 0;
23569 }
23570
23571 /*
23572  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
23573  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
23574  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
23575  * slowing down file operations.
23576  */
23577 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
23578 #define LEVELS 5
23579   char *path = strdup("test");
23580   char *dirs[LEVELS];
23581   int level;
23582   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
23583   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
23584     char *newpath = NULL;
23585     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
23586       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
23587              path, strerror(errno));
23588       break;
23589     }
23590     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
23591     free(path);
23592     path = newpath;
23593   }
23594   return 0;
23595 }
23596
23597 /*
23598  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
23599  * KDE.
23600  */
23601 int test_symlinks(void) {
23602   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
23603   unlink("symlink");
23604   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
23605     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
23606   return 0;
23607 }
23608
23609 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
23610   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
23611   test_symlinks();
23612   test_subdirectory_creation();
23613 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
23614   test_sqlite_open();
23615 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
23616   test_gcompris_locking();
23617   return 0;
23618 }
23619 </pre>
23620
23621 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
23622 this:</p>
23623
23624 <pre>
23625 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
23626 info: testing symlink creation
23627 info: testing subdirectory creation
23628 info: sqlite worked
23629 info: testing fcntl locking
23630   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
23631   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
23632   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
23633   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
23634   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
23635   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
23636 </pre>
23637
23638 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
23639 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
23640 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
23641 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
23642 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
23643 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
23644 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
23645 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
23646
23647 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
23648 it. :)</p>
23649
23650 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
23651 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
23652 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
23653
23654       </div>
23655       <div class="tags">
23656
23657
23658         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23659
23660
23661       </div>
23662     </div>
23663     <div class="padding"></div>
23664
23665     <div class="entry">
23666       <div class="title">
23667         <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>
23668       </div>
23669       <div class="date">
23670          7th August 2010
23671       </div>
23672       <div class="body">
23673         <p>A few days ago, I
23674 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
23675 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
23676 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
23677 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
23678 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
23679 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
23680 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
23681 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
23682 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
23683
23684 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
23685 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
23686 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
23687 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
23688 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
23689 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
23690 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
23691 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
23692 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
23693 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
23694 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
23695 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
23696 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
23697 gave it a IP address.</p>
23698
23699 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
23700 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
23701 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
23702 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
23703 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
23704 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
23705 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
23706 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
23707
23708 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
23709 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
23710 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
23711 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
23712 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
23713 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
23714
23715 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
23716 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
23717 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
23718 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
23719 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
23720 with UID and GID values.</p>
23721
23722 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
23723 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
23724
23725       </div>
23726       <div class="tags">
23727
23728
23729         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23730
23731
23732       </div>
23733     </div>
23734     <div class="padding"></div>
23735
23736     <div class="entry">
23737       <div class="title">
23738         <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>
23739       </div>
23740       <div class="date">
23741          3rd August 2010
23742       </div>
23743       <div class="body">
23744         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
23745 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
23746 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
23747 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
23748 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
23749 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
23750 servers.</p>
23751
23752 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
23753 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
23754 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
23755 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
23756 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
23757 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
23758 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
23759 .uio.no.</p>
23760
23761 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
23762 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
23763 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
23764 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
23765 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
23766 university servers.</p>
23767
23768 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
23769 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
23770 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
23771 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
23772 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
23773 uses.</p>
23774
23775       </div>
23776       <div class="tags">
23777
23778
23779         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23780
23781
23782       </div>
23783     </div>
23784     <div class="padding"></div>
23785
23786     <div class="entry">
23787       <div class="title">
23788         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
23789       </div>
23790       <div class="date">
23791         27th July 2010
23792       </div>
23793       <div class="body">
23794         <p>I discovered this while doing
23795 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
23796 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
23797 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
23798 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
23799 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
23800
23801 <p>An example is from todays
23802 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
23803 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
23804 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
23805 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
23806 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
23807 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
23808 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
23809
23810 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
23811
23812 <blockquote><pre>
23813 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
23814  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
23815   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
23816 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
23817  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
23818 </pre></blockquote>
23819
23820 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
23821 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
23822 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
23823 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
23824 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
23825 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
23826 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
23827 of dependency loops.</p>
23828
23829 <p>Thanks to
23830 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
23831 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
23832 dependencies
23833 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
23834 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
23835
23836 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
23837 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
23838 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
23839 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
23840 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
23841 it.</p>
23842
23843       </div>
23844       <div class="tags">
23845
23846
23847         Tags: <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>.
23848
23849
23850       </div>
23851     </div>
23852     <div class="padding"></div>
23853
23854     <div class="entry">
23855       <div class="title">
23856         <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>
23857       </div>
23858       <div class="date">
23859         27th July 2010
23860       </div>
23861       <div class="body">
23862         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
23863 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
23864 completed.</p>
23865
23866 <blockquote>
23867 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
23868 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
23869 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
23870 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
23871 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
23872 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
23873 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
23874 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
23875
23876 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
23877 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
23878 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
23879
23880 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
23881 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
23882 much.</p>
23883
23884 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
23885
23886 <ul>
23887 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
23888 <ul>
23889   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
23890          combination with some new artwork
23891   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
23892   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
23893   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
23894   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
23895   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
23896   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
23897   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
23898   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
23899   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
23900 </ul></li>
23901 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
23902     Enabled for:
23903 <ul>
23904   <li>PAM
23905   <li>LDAP
23906   <li>IMAP
23907   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
23908 </ul>
23909 </li>
23910 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
23911 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
23912     fetched from LDAP.</li>
23913 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
23914 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
23915 </ul>
23916 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
23917
23918 <ul>
23919 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
23920     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
23921     for testing.</li>
23922 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
23923     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
23924     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
23925 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
23926 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
23927 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
23928 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
23929     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
23930 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
23931     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
23932     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
23933 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
23934     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
23935     and help out with translations.</li>
23936 </ul>
23937
23938 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
23939
23940 <ul>
23941 <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>
23942 <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>
23943 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
23944 </ul>
23945 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
23946
23947 <ul>
23948 <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>
23949 <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>
23950 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
23951 </ul>
23952
23953 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
23954 get closer to the final release.</p>
23955
23956 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
23957
23958 <ul>
23959 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
23960 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
23961 </ul>
23962
23963 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
23964 <ul>
23965 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
23966 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
23967 </ul>
23968 <p>How to report bugs:
23969 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
23970
23971 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
23972 </blockquote>
23973
23974       </div>
23975       <div class="tags">
23976
23977
23978         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
23979
23980
23981       </div>
23982     </div>
23983     <div class="padding"></div>
23984
23985     <div class="entry">
23986       <div class="title">
23987         <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>
23988       </div>
23989       <div class="date">
23990         25th July 2010
23991       </div>
23992       <div class="body">
23993         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
23994 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
23995 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
23996 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
23997 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
23998
23999 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
24000 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
24001 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
24002 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
24003 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
24004 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
24005 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
24006
24007 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
24008 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
24009 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
24010 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
24011 up. :)</p>
24012
24013 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
24014 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
24015 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
24016
24017 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
24018 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
24019 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
24020 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
24021 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
24022 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
24023 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
24024 release another day.</p>
24025
24026 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
24027 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24028
24029       </div>
24030       <div class="tags">
24031
24032
24033         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
24034
24035
24036       </div>
24037     </div>
24038     <div class="padding"></div>
24039
24040     <div class="entry">
24041       <div class="title">
24042         <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>
24043       </div>
24044       <div class="date">
24045         18th July 2010
24046       </div>
24047       <div class="body">
24048         <p>Thanks to
24049 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
24050 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
24051 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
24052 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
24053 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
24054 only available from the development server, until more experience is
24055 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
24056
24057 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
24058 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
24059 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
24060 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
24061 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
24062 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
24063 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
24064
24065       </div>
24066       <div class="tags">
24067
24068
24069         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>.
24070
24071
24072       </div>
24073     </div>
24074     <div class="padding"></div>
24075
24076     <div class="entry">
24077       <div class="title">
24078         <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>
24079       </div>
24080       <div class="date">
24081         17th July 2010
24082       </div>
24083       <div class="body">
24084         <p>This is a
24085 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
24086 on my
24087 <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
24088 work</a> on
24089 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
24090 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
24091
24092 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
24093 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
24094 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
24095 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
24096
24097 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
24098 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
24099 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
24100
24101 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
24102
24103 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
24104 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
24105 the web.
24106
24107 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
24108 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
24109 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
24110 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
24111 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
24112 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
24113
24114 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
24115 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
24116 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
24117 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
24118 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
24119 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
24120 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
24121 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
24122 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
24123 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
24124 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
24125 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
24126 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
24127 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
24128 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
24129 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
24130
24131 <blockquote><pre>
24132 ldapsearch -h ldap \
24133   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
24134   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
24135   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
24136   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
24137   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
24138   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
24139
24140 ldapsearch -h ldap \
24141   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
24142   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
24143   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
24144   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
24145   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
24146 </pre></blockquote>
24147
24148 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
24149 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
24150 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
24151 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24152 also exist.</p>
24153
24154 <blockquote><pre>
24155 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24156 objectclass: top
24157 objectclass: dnsdomain
24158 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
24159 dc: tjener
24160 arecord: 10.0.2.2
24161 associateddomain: tjener.intern
24162
24163 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24164 objectclass: top
24165 objectclass: dnsdomain2
24166 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
24167 dc: 2
24168 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
24169 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
24170 </pre></blockquote>
24171
24172 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
24173 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
24174 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
24175 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
24176 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
24177 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
24178 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
24179 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
24180 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
24181 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
24182 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
24183 instead.</p>
24184
24185 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
24186 like this:</p>
24187
24188 <blockquote><pre>
24189 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
24190   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
24191   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
24192   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
24193   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
24194   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
24195
24196 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
24197   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
24198 </pre></blockquote>
24199
24200 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
24201 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
24202 reverse lookups.</p>
24203
24204 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
24205 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
24206 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
24207 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
24208
24209 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
24210 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
24211 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
24212
24213 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
24214 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
24215 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
24216 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
24217 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
24218
24219 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
24220 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
24221 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
24222 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
24223 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
24224
24225 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
24226 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
24227 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
24228 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
24229 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
24230 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
24231
24232 <blockquote><pre>
24233 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
24234     SUP top
24235     AUXILIARY
24236     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
24237           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
24238           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
24239           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
24240           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
24241     ))
24242 </pre></blockquote>
24243
24244 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
24245 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
24246 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
24247 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
24248 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
24249 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
24250
24251 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
24252
24253 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
24254 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
24255 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
24256 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
24257 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
24258
24259 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
24260 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
24261 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
24262 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
24263
24264 <blockquote><pre>
24265 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
24266 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
24267 </pre></blockquote>
24268
24269 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
24270 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
24271 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
24272 search result is this entry:</p>
24273
24274 <blockquote><pre>
24275 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24276 cn: dhcp
24277 objectClass: top
24278 objectClass: dhcpServer
24279 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24280 </pre></blockquote>
24281
24282 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
24283 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
24284 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
24285 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
24286 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
24287 The search result is this entry:</p>
24288
24289 <blockquote><pre>
24290 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24291 cn: DHCP Config
24292 objectClass: top
24293 objectClass: dhcpService
24294 objectClass: dhcpOptions
24295 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24296 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
24297 dhcpStatements: authoritative
24298 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
24299 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
24300 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
24301 </pre></blockquote>
24302
24303 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
24304 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
24305 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
24306 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
24307 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
24308 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
24309 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
24310 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
24311 related computer objects.</p>
24312
24313 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
24314 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
24315 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
24316 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
24317 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
24318 like:</p>
24319
24320 <blockquote><pre>
24321 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24322 cn: hostname
24323 objectClass: top
24324 objectClass: dhcpHost
24325 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
24326 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
24327 </pre></blockquote>
24328
24329 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
24330 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
24331 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
24332 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
24333 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
24334 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
24335 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
24336 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
24337 structural object class.
24338
24339 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
24340
24341 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
24342 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
24343 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
24344 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
24345 in the configuration.</p>
24346
24347 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
24348 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
24349 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
24350 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
24351 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
24352 structure.</p>
24353
24354 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
24355 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
24356
24357 <blockquote><pre>
24358 ou=services
24359   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
24360     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
24361     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
24362       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
24363         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
24364     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
24365       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
24366         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
24367     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
24368       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
24369 </pre></blockquote>
24370
24371 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
24372 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
24373 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
24374 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
24375
24376 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
24377 like this:</p>
24378
24379 <blockquote><pre>
24380 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24381 dc: hostname
24382 objectClass: top
24383 objectClass: dhcpHost
24384 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
24385 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
24386 associateddomain: hostname.intern
24387 arecord: 10.11.12.13
24388 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
24389 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
24390 </pre></blockquote>
24391
24392 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
24393 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
24394 auxiliary object class.</p>
24395
24396       </div>
24397       <div class="tags">
24398
24399
24400         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>.
24401
24402
24403       </div>
24404     </div>
24405     <div class="padding"></div>
24406
24407     <div class="entry">
24408       <div class="title">
24409         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
24410       </div>
24411       <div class="date">
24412         14th July 2010
24413       </div>
24414       <div class="body">
24415         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
24416 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
24417 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
24418 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
24419 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
24420
24421 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
24422 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
24423
24424 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
24425 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
24426 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
24427 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
24428 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
24429 to a slave DNS server.</p>
24430
24431 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
24432 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
24433 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
24434 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
24435 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
24436 seem to work.</p>
24437
24438 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
24439 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
24440 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
24441 this:</p>
24442
24443 <blockquote><pre>
24444   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24445   cn: hostname
24446   objectClass: dhcphost
24447   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
24448   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
24449   associateddomain: hostname.intern
24450   arecord: 10.11.12.13
24451   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
24452   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
24453   ldapconfigsound: Y
24454 </pre></blockquote>
24455
24456 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
24457 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
24458 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
24459 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
24460
24461 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
24462 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
24463 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
24464 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
24465 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
24466 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
24467 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
24468 might be a good place to put it.</p>
24469
24470 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
24471 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24472
24473       </div>
24474       <div class="tags">
24475
24476
24477         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>.
24478
24479
24480       </div>
24481     </div>
24482     <div class="padding"></div>
24483
24484     <div class="entry">
24485       <div class="title">
24486         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
24487       </div>
24488       <div class="date">
24489         11th July 2010
24490       </div>
24491       <div class="body">
24492         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
24493 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
24494 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
24495 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
24496
24497 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
24498 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
24499 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
24500 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
24501 LTSP clients.</p>
24502
24503 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
24504 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
24505 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
24506
24507 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
24508 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
24509 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
24510
24511 <blockquote><pre>
24512 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
24513 #
24514 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
24515 #
24516 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
24517 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
24518 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
24519 #
24520 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
24521 # existence of attribute names.
24522 #
24523 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
24524 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
24525 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
24526 #
24527 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
24528 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
24529 #
24530 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
24531 #     SUP top
24532 #     AUXILIARY
24533 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
24534
24535 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
24536 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
24537     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
24538     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
24539         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
24540         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
24541             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
24542             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
24543             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
24544             # bass value on to clients
24545             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
24546         done
24547     done
24548 fi
24549 </pre></blockquote>
24550
24551 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
24552 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
24553 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
24554 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
24555 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
24556
24557 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
24558 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24559
24560 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
24561 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
24562 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
24563 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
24564 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
24565 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
24566
24567       </div>
24568       <div class="tags">
24569
24570
24571         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>.
24572
24573
24574       </div>
24575     </div>
24576     <div class="padding"></div>
24577
24578     <div class="entry">
24579       <div class="title">
24580         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
24581       </div>
24582       <div class="date">
24583          9th July 2010
24584       </div>
24585       <div class="body">
24586         <p>Since
24587 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
24588 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
24589 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
24590 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
24591 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
24592 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
24593 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
24594 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
24595 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
24596 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
24597 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
24598 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
24599 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
24600
24601       </div>
24602       <div class="tags">
24603
24604
24605         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>.
24606
24607
24608       </div>
24609     </div>
24610     <div class="padding"></div>
24611
24612     <div class="entry">
24613       <div class="title">
24614         <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>
24615       </div>
24616       <div class="date">
24617          3rd July 2010
24618       </div>
24619       <div class="body">
24620         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
24621 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
24622 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
24623 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
24624 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
24625 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
24626 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
24627 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
24628
24629 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
24630 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
24631 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
24632 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
24633 publish the difference.</p>
24634
24635 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
24636
24637 <blockquote><p>
24638   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
24639   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
24640   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
24641   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
24642   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
24643   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
24644   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
24645   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
24646 </p></blockquote>
24647
24648 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
24649
24650 <blockquote><p>
24651   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
24652   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
24653   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
24654   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
24655   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
24656   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
24657   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
24658   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
24659   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
24660   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
24661   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
24662   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
24663   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
24664   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
24665   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
24666   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
24667   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
24668   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
24669   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
24670   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
24671 </p></blockquote>
24672
24673 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
24674
24675 <blockquote><p>
24676   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
24677   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
24678   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
24679   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
24680   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
24681   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
24682   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
24683   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
24684   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
24685   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
24686   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
24687   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
24688   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
24689   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
24690   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
24691   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
24692   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
24693   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
24694   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
24695   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
24696   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
24697 </p></blockquote>
24698
24699 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
24700
24701 <blockquote><p>
24702   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
24703   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
24704   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
24705 </p></blockquote>
24706
24707 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
24708 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
24709 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
24710 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
24711 the difference somewhat.
24712
24713       </div>
24714       <div class="tags">
24715
24716
24717         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>.
24718
24719
24720       </div>
24721     </div>
24722     <div class="padding"></div>
24723
24724     <div class="entry">
24725       <div class="title">
24726         <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>
24727       </div>
24728       <div class="date">
24729          1st July 2010
24730       </div>
24731       <div class="body">
24732         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
24733 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
24734 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
24735 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
24736 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
24737 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
24738 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
24739 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
24740 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
24741
24742 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
24743
24744 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
24745 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
24746 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
24747 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
24748 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
24749 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
24750 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
24751 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
24752 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
24753 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
24754 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
24755 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
24756 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
24757 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
24758 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
24759
24760 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
24761
24762 <blockquote><pre>
24763 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
24764 </pre></blockquote>
24765
24766 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
24767 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
24768 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
24769 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
24770 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
24771 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
24772 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
24773 on how to get this working.</p>
24774
24775 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
24776 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
24777 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
24778 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
24779 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
24780 instructions I found in the
24781 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
24782 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
24783
24784 <blockquote><pre>
24785         debug-level             0
24786         reload-count            unlimited
24787         paranoia                no
24788
24789         enable-cache            passwd          yes
24790         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
24791         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
24792         suggested-size          passwd          211
24793         check-files             passwd          yes
24794         persistent              passwd          yes
24795         shared                  passwd          yes
24796         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
24797         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
24798
24799         enable-cache            group           yes
24800         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
24801         negative-time-to-live   group           20
24802         suggested-size          group           211
24803         check-files             group           yes
24804         persistent              group           yes
24805         shared                  group           yes
24806         max-db-size             group           33554432
24807         auto-propagate          group           yes
24808
24809         enable-cache            hosts           no
24810         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
24811         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
24812         suggested-size          hosts           211
24813         check-files             hosts           yes
24814         persistent              hosts           yes
24815         shared                  hosts           yes
24816         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
24817
24818         enable-cache            services        yes
24819         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
24820         negative-time-to-live   services        20
24821         suggested-size          services        211
24822         check-files             services        yes
24823         persistent              services        yes
24824         shared                  services        yes
24825         max-db-size             services        33554432
24826 </pre></blockquote>
24827
24828 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
24829 automatically like the one provided in
24830 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
24831 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
24832 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
24833 look like this:</p>
24834
24835 <blockquote><pre>
24836 passwd:         files ldap
24837 group:          files ldap
24838 shadow:         files ldap
24839 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
24840 networks:       files
24841 protocols:      files
24842 services:       files
24843 ethers:         files
24844 rpc:            files
24845 netgroup:       files ldap
24846 </pre></blockquote>
24847
24848 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
24849 shadow and netgroup.</p>
24850
24851 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
24852 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
24853 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
24854 attributes cached.
24855
24856 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
24857   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
24858
24859 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
24860 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
24861 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
24862 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
24863 discovered sssd.</p>
24864
24865 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
24866
24867 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
24868 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
24869 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
24870 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
24871 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
24872 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
24873 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
24874 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
24875 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
24876 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
24877 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
24878 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
24879 version 1.2 is now in testing.
24880
24881 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
24882 roaming setup I want</p>
24883
24884 <blockquote><pre>
24885 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
24886 </pre></blockquote>
24887
24888 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
24889 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
24890
24891 <blockquote><pre>
24892 [sssd]
24893 config_file_version = 2
24894 reconnection_retries = 3
24895 sbus_timeout = 30
24896 services = nss, pam
24897 domains = INTERN
24898
24899 [nss]
24900 filter_groups = root
24901 filter_users = root
24902 reconnection_retries = 3
24903
24904 [pam]
24905 reconnection_retries = 3
24906
24907 [domain/INTERN]
24908 enumerate = false
24909 cache_credentials = true
24910
24911 id_provider = ldap
24912 auth_provider = ldap
24913 chpass_provider = ldap
24914
24915 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
24916 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
24917 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
24918 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
24919 </pre></blockquote>
24920
24921 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
24922 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
24923
24924 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
24925 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
24926 modify it manually.</p>
24927
24928 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
24929 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24930
24931       </div>
24932       <div class="tags">
24933
24934
24935         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
24936
24937
24938       </div>
24939     </div>
24940     <div class="padding"></div>
24941
24942     <div class="entry">
24943       <div class="title">
24944         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
24945       </div>
24946       <div class="date">
24947         28th June 2010
24948       </div>
24949       <div class="body">
24950         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
24951 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
24952 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
24953 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
24954 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
24955 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
24956 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
24957 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
24958 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
24959 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
24960
24961 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
24962 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
24963 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
24964 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
24965 released.</p>
24966
24967 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
24968 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
24969 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
24970 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
24971
24972 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
24973 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
24974
24975 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
24976 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
24977 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
24978 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
24979 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
24980
24981       </div>
24982       <div class="tags">
24983
24984
24985         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>.
24986
24987
24988       </div>
24989     </div>
24990     <div class="padding"></div>
24991
24992     <div class="entry">
24993       <div class="title">
24994         <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>
24995       </div>
24996       <div class="date">
24997         24th June 2010
24998       </div>
24999       <div class="body">
25000         <p>A while back, I
25001 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
25002 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
25003 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
25004 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
25005
25006 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
25007 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
25008 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
25009 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
25010
25011 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
25012 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
25013 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
25014 Debian Edu.</p>
25015
25016 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
25017 the
25018 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
25019 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
25020 available today from IETF.</p>
25021
25022 <pre>
25023 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
25024 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
25025 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
25026  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
25027         NAME 'dhcpHost'
25028         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
25029 -       SUP top
25030 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
25031         MUST cn
25032         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
25033         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
25034 </pre>
25035
25036 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
25037 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
25038 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
25039
25040 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
25041 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25042
25043       </div>
25044       <div class="tags">
25045
25046
25047         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>.
25048
25049
25050       </div>
25051     </div>
25052     <div class="padding"></div>
25053
25054     <div class="entry">
25055       <div class="title">
25056         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Calling_tasksel_like_the_installer__while_still_getting_useful_output.html">Calling tasksel like the installer, while still getting useful output</a>
25057       </div>
25058       <div class="date">
25059         16th June 2010
25060       </div>
25061       <div class="body">
25062         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
25063 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
25064 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
25065 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
25066 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
25067 this:
25068
25069 <blockquote><pre>
25070 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
25071 tasksel --new-install
25072 </pre></blockquote>
25073
25074 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
25075 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
25076 any output what so ever.
25077
25078 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
25079 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
25080 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
25081 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
25082 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
25083 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
25084 code like this:
25085
25086 <blockquote><pre>
25087 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
25088 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
25089 $cmd
25090 </pre></blockquote>
25091
25092 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
25093 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
25094 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
25095 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
25096 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
25097 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
25098 installation.</p>
25099
25100 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
25101 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
25102 like this.</p>
25103
25104       </div>
25105       <div class="tags">
25106
25107
25108         Tags: <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>.
25109
25110
25111       </div>
25112     </div>
25113     <div class="padding"></div>
25114
25115     <div class="entry">
25116       <div class="title">
25117         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
25118       </div>
25119       <div class="date">
25120         13th June 2010
25121       </div>
25122       <div class="body">
25123         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
25124 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
25125 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
25126 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
25127 pages.</p>
25128
25129 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
25130 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
25131 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
25132 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
25133 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
25134 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
25135 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
25136 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
25137 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
25138 see how the project is doing.</p>
25139
25140 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
25141 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
25142 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
25143 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
25144 Windows.  This is great.</p>
25145
25146       </div>
25147       <div class="tags">
25148
25149
25150         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>.
25151
25152
25153       </div>
25154     </div>
25155     <div class="padding"></div>
25156
25157     <div class="entry">
25158       <div class="title">
25159         <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>
25160       </div>
25161       <div class="date">
25162         13th June 2010
25163       </div>
25164       <div class="body">
25165         <p>My
25166 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
25167 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
25168 finally made the upgrade logs available from
25169 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
25170 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
25171 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
25172 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
25173
25174 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
25175 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
25176 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
25177 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
25178 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
25179 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
25180 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
25181 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
25182
25183 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
25184 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
25185 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
25186 too surprising.</p>
25187
25188 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
25189 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
25190 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
25191 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
25192 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
25193 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
25194 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
25195 continue.</p>
25196
25197 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
25198 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
25199   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
25200   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
25201   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
25202   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
25203   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
25204   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
25205   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
25206   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
25207   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
25208   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
25209   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
25210   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
25211   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
25212   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
25213   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
25214   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
25215   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
25216   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
25217   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
25218   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
25219   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
25220   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
25221   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
25222   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
25223   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
25224   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
25225   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
25226   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
25227
25228 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
25229
25230 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
25231   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
25232   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
25233   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
25234   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
25235   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
25236   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
25237   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
25238   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
25239   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
25240   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
25241   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
25242   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
25243   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
25244   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
25245   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
25246   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
25247   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
25248   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
25249   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
25250   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
25251   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
25252   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
25253   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
25254   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
25255   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
25256   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
25257   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
25258   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
25259   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
25260   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
25261   zip</p>
25262
25263 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
25264
25265 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
25266   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
25267   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
25268   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
25269   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
25270   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
25271   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
25272   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
25273   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
25274   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
25275   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
25276   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
25277   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
25278   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
25279   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
25280   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
25281   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
25282   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
25283   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
25284   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
25285   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
25286   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
25287   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
25288   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
25289   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
25290   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
25291   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
25292   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
25293
25294 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
25295 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
25296   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
25297   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
25298   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
25299   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
25300   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
25301   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
25302   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
25303   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
25304   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
25305   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
25306   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
25307   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
25308   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
25309   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
25310   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
25311   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
25312   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
25313   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
25314   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
25315   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
25316   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
25317   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
25318   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
25319   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
25320   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
25321   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
25322   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
25323   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
25324   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
25325   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
25326   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
25327   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
25328   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
25329   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
25330   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
25331   xulrunner-1.9</p>
25332
25333
25334       </div>
25335       <div class="tags">
25336
25337
25338         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>.
25339
25340
25341       </div>
25342     </div>
25343     <div class="padding"></div>
25344
25345     <div class="entry">
25346       <div class="title">
25347         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
25348       </div>
25349       <div class="date">
25350         11th June 2010
25351       </div>
25352       <div class="body">
25353         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
25354 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
25355 have been discovered and reported in the process
25356 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
25357 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
25358 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
25359 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
25360 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
25361
25362 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
25363 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
25364 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
25365 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
25366 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
25367 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
25368
25369 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
25370 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
25371 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
25372 is created.  The bug report
25373 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
25374 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
25375 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
25376 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
25377 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
25378 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
25379 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
25380 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
25381 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
25382 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
25383 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
25384 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
25385 Debian Squeeze.</p>
25386
25387 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
25388 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
25389 trick:</p>
25390
25391 <blockquote><pre>
25392 #!/bin/sh
25393 set -ex
25394
25395 if [ "$1" ] ; then
25396     desktop=$1
25397 else
25398     desktop=gnome
25399 fi
25400
25401 from=lenny
25402 to=squeeze
25403
25404 exec &lt; /dev/null
25405 unset LANG
25406 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
25407 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
25408 fuser -mv .
25409 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
25410 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
25411 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
25412 #!/bin/sh
25413 exit 101
25414 EOF
25415 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
25416 exit_cleanup() {
25417     umount $tmpdir/proc
25418 }
25419 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
25420 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
25421 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
25422
25423 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
25424
25425 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
25426 # to return the correct answers.
25427 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
25428     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
25429
25430 # Include the desktop and laptop task
25431 for test in desktop laptop ; do
25432     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
25433 #!/bin/sh
25434 exit 2
25435 EOF
25436     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
25437 done
25438
25439 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
25440 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
25441 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
25442 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
25443
25444 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
25445 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
25446 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
25447 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
25448 fuser -mv
25449 </pre></blockquote>
25450
25451 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
25452 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
25453 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
25454 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
25455 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
25456 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
25457
25458 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
25459 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
25460 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
25461 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
25462 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
25463 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
25464 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
25465
25466 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
25467 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
25468 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
25469 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
25470 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
25471 packages.</p>
25472
25473       </div>
25474       <div class="tags">
25475
25476
25477         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>.
25478
25479
25480       </div>
25481     </div>
25482     <div class="padding"></div>
25483
25484     <div class="entry">
25485       <div class="title">
25486         <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>
25487       </div>
25488       <div class="date">
25489          6th June 2010
25490       </div>
25491       <div class="body">
25492         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
25493 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
25494 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
25495 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
25496 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
25497 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
25498 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
25499
25500 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
25501 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
25502 COLUMNS):</p>
25503
25504 <blockquote><pre>
25505 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
25506 previous=N
25507 PREVLEVEL=
25508 RUNLEVEL=
25509 runlevel=S
25510 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
25511 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
25512 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
25513 </pre></blockquote>
25514
25515 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
25516 script.</p>
25517
25518 <blockquote><pre>
25519 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
25520 previous=N
25521 PREVLEVEL=N
25522 RUNLEVEL=S
25523 runlevel=S
25524 </pre></blockquote>
25525
25526 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
25527 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
25528 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
25529
25530 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
25531 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
25532 choice.</p>
25533
25534       </div>
25535       <div class="tags">
25536
25537
25538         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>.
25539
25540
25541       </div>
25542     </div>
25543     <div class="padding"></div>
25544
25545     <div class="entry">
25546       <div class="title">
25547         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
25548       </div>
25549       <div class="date">
25550          6th June 2010
25551       </div>
25552       <div class="body">
25553         <p>Via the
25554 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
25555 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
25556 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
25557 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
25558 following the standards wars of today.</p>
25559
25560       </div>
25561       <div class="tags">
25562
25563
25564         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>.
25565
25566
25567       </div>
25568     </div>
25569     <div class="padding"></div>
25570
25571     <div class="entry">
25572       <div class="title">
25573         <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>
25574       </div>
25575       <div class="date">
25576          3rd June 2010
25577       </div>
25578       <div class="body">
25579         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
25580 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
25581 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
25582 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
25583 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
25584
25585 <blockquote><pre>
25586 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
25587   vendor                    count
25588   Dell Computer Corporation     1
25589     PowerEdge 1750              1
25590   IBM                           1
25591     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
25592   Intel                         2
25593   [no-dmi-info]                 3
25594 maintainer:~#
25595 </pre></blockquote>
25596
25597 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
25598 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
25599 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
25600 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
25601 option to list the individual machines.</p>
25602
25603 <p>A larger list is
25604 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
25605 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
25606 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
25607 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
25608 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
25609 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
25610 collector.</p>
25611
25612       </div>
25613       <div class="tags">
25614
25615
25616         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>.
25617
25618
25619       </div>
25620     </div>
25621     <div class="padding"></div>
25622
25623     <div class="entry">
25624       <div class="title">
25625         <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>
25626       </div>
25627       <div class="date">
25628          1st June 2010
25629       </div>
25630       <div class="body">
25631         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
25632 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
25633 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
25634 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
25635 wait.</p>
25636
25637 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
25638 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
25639 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
25640 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
25641 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
25642 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
25643
25644 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
25645 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
25646 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
25647 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
25648 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
25649 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
25650 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
25651 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
25652
25653 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
25654
25655       </div>
25656       <div class="tags">
25657
25658
25659         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>.
25660
25661
25662       </div>
25663     </div>
25664     <div class="padding"></div>
25665
25666     <div class="entry">
25667       <div class="title">
25668         <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>
25669       </div>
25670       <div class="date">
25671         27th May 2010
25672       </div>
25673       <div class="body">
25674         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
25675 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
25676 issues are known and should be solved:
25677
25678 <p><ul>
25679
25680 <li>The wicd package seen to
25681 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
25682 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
25683 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
25684 seem to be on the case.</li>
25685
25686 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
25687 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
25688 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
25689 maintainer is on the case.</li>
25690
25691 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
25692 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
25693 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
25694 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
25695 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
25696 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
25697 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
25698 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
25699
25700 </ul></p>
25701
25702 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
25703 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
25704 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
25705 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
25706
25707 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
25708 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
25709 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
25710 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
25711
25712 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
25713
25714       </div>
25715       <div class="tags">
25716
25717
25718         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>.
25719
25720
25721       </div>
25722     </div>
25723     <div class="padding"></div>
25724
25725     <div class="entry">
25726       <div class="title">
25727         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
25728       </div>
25729       <div class="date">
25730         22nd May 2010
25731       </div>
25732       <div class="body">
25733         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
25734 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
25735 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
25736 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
25737
25738 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
25739 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
25740 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
25741 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
25742 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
25743 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
25744 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
25745 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
25746 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
25747 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
25748 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
25749 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
25750 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
25751 going to work.</p>
25752
25753 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
25754 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
25755 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
25756 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
25757 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
25758 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
25759 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
25760 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
25761 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
25762 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
25763 Edu.</p>
25764
25765 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
25766 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
25767 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
25768 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
25769 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
25770 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
25771
25772 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
25773 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
25774
25775       </div>
25776       <div class="tags">
25777
25778
25779         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>.
25780
25781
25782       </div>
25783     </div>
25784     <div class="padding"></div>
25785
25786     <div class="entry">
25787       <div class="title">
25788         <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>
25789       </div>
25790       <div class="date">
25791         19th May 2010
25792       </div>
25793       <div class="body">
25794         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
25795 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
25796 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
25797 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
25798 into unstable.  The
25799 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
25800 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
25801 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
25802 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
25803 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
25804 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
25805 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
25806
25807 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
25808 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
25809 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
25810 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
25811 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
25812 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
25813 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
25814 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
25815
25816 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
25817 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
25818 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
25819 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
25820 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
25821 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
25822 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
25823
25824 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
25825 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
25826 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
25827 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
25828 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
25829 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
25830 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
25831 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
25832 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
25833 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
25834 on the home directory servers.</p>
25835
25836 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
25837 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
25838 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
25839 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
25840 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
25841 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
25842
25843 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
25844 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
25845
25846       </div>
25847       <div class="tags">
25848
25849
25850         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
25851
25852
25853       </div>
25854     </div>
25855     <div class="padding"></div>
25856
25857     <div class="entry">
25858       <div class="title">
25859         <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>
25860       </div>
25861       <div class="date">
25862         14th May 2010
25863       </div>
25864       <div class="body">
25865         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
25866 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
25867 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
25868 expected, if I am to believe the
25869 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
25870 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
25871 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
25872 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
25873 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
25874 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
25875 version.</p>
25876
25877 More information about
25878 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
25879 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
25880 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
25881 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
25882
25883 <blockquote><pre>
25884 CONCURRENCY=none
25885 </pre></blockquote>
25886
25887 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
25888 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
25889 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
25890 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
25891
25892       </div>
25893       <div class="tags">
25894
25895
25896         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>.
25897
25898
25899       </div>
25900     </div>
25901     <div class="padding"></div>
25902
25903     <div class="entry">
25904       <div class="title">
25905         <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>
25906       </div>
25907       <div class="date">
25908         14th May 2010
25909       </div>
25910       <div class="body">
25911         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
25912 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
25913 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
25914 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
25915 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
25916 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
25917 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
25918 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
25919
25920 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
25921 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
25922 this on the collector host:</p>
25923
25924 <blockquote><pre>
25925 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
25926 </pre></blockquote>
25927
25928 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
25929 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
25930
25931 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
25932 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
25933 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
25934 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
25935 written yet.</p>
25936
25937       </div>
25938       <div class="tags">
25939
25940
25941         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>.
25942
25943
25944       </div>
25945     </div>
25946     <div class="padding"></div>
25947
25948     <div class="entry">
25949       <div class="title">
25950         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
25951       </div>
25952       <div class="date">
25953         13th May 2010
25954       </div>
25955       <div class="body">
25956         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
25957 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
25958 has been
25959 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
25960
25961 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
25962 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
25963 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
25964 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
25965 based boot system.  Tollef is
25966 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
25967 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
25968 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
25969 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
25970 at the moment do not.</p>
25971
25972 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
25973 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
25974 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
25975 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
25976 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
25977 way forward.</p>
25978
25979 <p>In the mean time, based on the
25980 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
25981 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
25982 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
25983 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
25984 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
25985 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
25986 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
25987 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
25988
25989       </div>
25990       <div class="tags">
25991
25992
25993         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>.
25994
25995
25996       </div>
25997     </div>
25998     <div class="padding"></div>
25999
26000     <div class="entry">
26001       <div class="title">
26002         <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>
26003       </div>
26004       <div class="date">
26005          6th May 2010
26006       </div>
26007       <div class="body">
26008         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
26009 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
26010 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
26011 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
26012 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
26013 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
26014 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
26015
26016 <blockquote><pre>
26017 CONCURRENCY=makefile
26018 </pre></blockquote>
26019
26020 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
26021 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
26022 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
26023 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
26024 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
26025 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
26026 make this happen.</p>
26027
26028 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
26029 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
26030 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
26031 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
26032 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
26033
26034 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
26035 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
26036 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
26037 fix the remaining issues.</p>
26038
26039 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
26040 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
26041 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
26042 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
26043
26044       </div>
26045       <div class="tags">
26046
26047
26048         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>.
26049
26050
26051       </div>
26052     </div>
26053     <div class="padding"></div>
26054
26055     <div class="entry">
26056       <div class="title">
26057         <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>
26058       </div>
26059       <div class="date">
26060          2nd May 2010
26061       </div>
26062       <div class="body">
26063         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
26064 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
26065 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
26066
26067 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
26068 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
26069 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
26070 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
26071 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
26072
26073 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
26074 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
26075
26076 <blockquote><pre>
26077 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
26078 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
26079 Password expires                                        : never
26080 Password inactive                                       : never
26081 Account expires                                         : never
26082 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
26083 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
26084 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
26085 root@tjener:~#
26086 </pre></blockquote>
26087
26088 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
26089 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
26090 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
26091 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
26092 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
26093 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
26094
26095 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
26096 intended:</p>
26097
26098 <blockquote><pre>
26099 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
26100 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
26101 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
26102 Password expires                                        : never
26103 Password inactive                                       : never
26104 Account expires                                         : never
26105 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
26106 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
26107 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
26108 root@tjener:~#
26109 </pre></blockquote>
26110
26111 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
26112 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
26113 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
26114
26115 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
26116 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
26117
26118 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
26119 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26120
26121 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
26122 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
26123 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
26124 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
26125 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
26126 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
26127 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
26128
26129 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
26130 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
26131 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
26132 change.</p>
26133
26134       </div>
26135       <div class="tags">
26136
26137
26138         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26139
26140
26141       </div>
26142     </div>
26143     <div class="padding"></div>
26144
26145     <div class="entry">
26146       <div class="title">
26147         <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>
26148       </div>
26149       <div class="date">
26150         28th April 2010
26151       </div>
26152       <div class="body">
26153         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
26154 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
26155 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
26156 and go.</p>
26157
26158 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
26159 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
26160 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
26161 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
26162
26163 <ul>
26164
26165  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
26166    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
26167    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
26168    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
26169    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
26170    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
26171    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
26172    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
26173    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
26174    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
26175    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
26176    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
26177
26178  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
26179    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
26180    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
26181    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
26182    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
26183    or the Fedora developed
26184    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
26185    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
26186
26187  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
26188    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
26189    directory, using unison.</li>
26190
26191  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
26192    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
26193    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
26194    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
26195    implemented.</li>
26196
26197  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
26198    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
26199
26200  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
26201    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
26202    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
26203
26204 </ul>
26205
26206 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
26207 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
26208 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
26209 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
26210 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
26211 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
26212 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
26213 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
26214 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
26215
26216 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
26217 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
26218
26219       </div>
26220       <div class="tags">
26221
26222
26223         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26224
26225
26226       </div>
26227     </div>
26228     <div class="padding"></div>
26229
26230     <div class="entry">
26231       <div class="title">
26232         <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>
26233       </div>
26234       <div class="date">
26235         19th April 2010
26236       </div>
26237       <div class="body">
26238         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
26239 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
26240 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
26241 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
26242 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
26243 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
26244 restrictions on the web, for example from
26245 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
26246 epub-version from
26247 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
26248 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
26249 strongly recommend this book.</p>
26250
26251       </div>
26252       <div class="tags">
26253
26254
26255         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>.
26256
26257
26258       </div>
26259     </div>
26260     <div class="padding"></div>
26261
26262     <div class="entry">
26263       <div class="title">
26264         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
26265       </div>
26266       <div class="date">
26267         14th April 2010
26268       </div>
26269       <div class="body">
26270         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
26271 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
26272 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
26273 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
26274 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
26275 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
26276 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
26277 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
26278 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
26279
26280 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
26281 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
26282 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
26283 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
26284 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
26285
26286 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
26287 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
26288
26289 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
26290 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
26291 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
26292 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
26293 to work properly.</p>
26294
26295 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
26296 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
26297 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
26298 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
26299 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
26300 time.</p>
26301
26302 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
26303 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
26304 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
26305 up in a few days.</p>
26306
26307       </div>
26308       <div class="tags">
26309
26310
26311         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26312
26313
26314       </div>
26315     </div>
26316     <div class="padding"></div>
26317
26318     <div class="entry">
26319       <div class="title">
26320         <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>
26321       </div>
26322       <div class="date">
26323          6th March 2010
26324       </div>
26325       <div class="body">
26326         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
26327 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
26328 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
26329 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
26330 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
26331 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
26332
26333 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
26334 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
26335 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
26336 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
26337
26338 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
26339 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
26340 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
26341 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
26342 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
26343 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
26344
26345       </div>
26346       <div class="tags">
26347
26348
26349         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26350
26351
26352       </div>
26353     </div>
26354     <div class="padding"></div>
26355
26356     <div class="entry">
26357       <div class="title">
26358         <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>
26359       </div>
26360       <div class="date">
26361         11th February 2010
26362       </div>
26363       <div class="body">
26364         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
26365 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
26366 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
26367 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
26368 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
26369 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
26370 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
26371
26372 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
26373
26374 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
26375 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
26376 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
26377 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
26378
26379       </div>
26380       <div class="tags">
26381
26382
26383         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26384
26385
26386       </div>
26387     </div>
26388     <div class="padding"></div>
26389
26390     <div class="entry">
26391       <div class="title">
26392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
26393       </div>
26394       <div class="date">
26395         27th January 2010
26396       </div>
26397       <div class="body">
26398         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
26399 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
26400 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
26401 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
26402 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
26403 further.</p>
26404
26405 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
26406 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
26407 configured to be a server for the
26408 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
26409 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
26410 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
26411 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
26412 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
26413 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
26414 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
26415 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
26416 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
26417 and Nagios configuration.</p>
26418
26419 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
26420 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
26421 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
26422 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
26423
26424 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
26425 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
26426 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
26427 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
26428 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
26429 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
26430 the machine.</p>
26431
26432 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
26433 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
26434 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
26435 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
26436
26437 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
26438 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
26439 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
26440 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
26441 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
26442 everything is taken care of.</p>
26443
26444       </div>
26445       <div class="tags">
26446
26447
26448         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
26449
26450
26451       </div>
26452     </div>
26453     <div class="padding"></div>
26454
26455     <div class="entry">
26456       <div class="title">
26457         <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>
26458       </div>
26459       <div class="date">
26460         12th August 2009
26461       </div>
26462       <div class="body">
26463         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
26464 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
26465 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
26466 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
26467
26468 <table>
26469 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
26470 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
26471 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
26472 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
26473 </table>
26474
26475 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
26476 got these numbers:</p>
26477
26478 <table>
26479 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
26480 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
26481 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
26482 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
26483 </table>
26484
26485 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
26486
26487 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
26488 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
26489 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
26490 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
26491 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
26492
26493
26494 <table>
26495 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
26496 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
26497 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
26498 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
26499 </table>
26500
26501 <p>And with 'site:no':
26502
26503 <table>
26504 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
26505 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
26506 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
26507 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
26508 </table>
26509
26510 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
26511 numbers.</p>
26512
26513       </div>
26514       <div class="tags">
26515
26516
26517         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>.
26518
26519
26520       </div>
26521     </div>
26522     <div class="padding"></div>
26523
26524     <div class="entry">
26525       <div class="title">
26526         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
26527       </div>
26528       <div class="date">
26529          8th August 2009
26530       </div>
26531       <div class="body">
26532         <p>According to <a
26533 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
26534 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
26535 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
26536 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
26537 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
26538 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
26539 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
26540 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
26541 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
26542 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
26543
26544 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
26545 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
26546 seminar this autumn.</p>
26547
26548       </div>
26549       <div class="tags">
26550
26551
26552         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>.
26553
26554
26555       </div>
26556     </div>
26557     <div class="padding"></div>
26558
26559     <div class="entry">
26560       <div class="title">
26561         <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>
26562       </div>
26563       <div class="date">
26564         27th July 2009
26565       </div>
26566       <div class="body">
26567         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
26568 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
26569 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
26570 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
26571 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
26572 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
26573 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
26574
26575 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
26576 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
26577 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
26578
26579       </div>
26580       <div class="tags">
26581
26582
26583         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>.
26584
26585
26586       </div>
26587     </div>
26588     <div class="padding"></div>
26589
26590     <div class="entry">
26591       <div class="title">
26592         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
26593       </div>
26594       <div class="date">
26595         22nd July 2009
26596       </div>
26597       <div class="body">
26598         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
26599 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
26600 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
26601 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
26602 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
26603 the package up to date.</p>
26604
26605 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
26606 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
26607 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
26608 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
26609 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
26610 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
26611 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
26612 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
26613 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
26614 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
26615 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
26616 working on the future release.</p>
26617
26618 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
26619 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
26620
26621       </div>
26622       <div class="tags">
26623
26624
26625         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>.
26626
26627
26628       </div>
26629     </div>
26630     <div class="padding"></div>
26631
26632     <div class="entry">
26633       <div class="title">
26634         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
26635       </div>
26636       <div class="date">
26637         24th June 2009
26638       </div>
26639       <div class="body">
26640         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
26641 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
26642 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
26643 funded
26644 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
26645 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
26646 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
26647 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
26648 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
26649 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
26650
26651 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
26652 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
26653 boot:</p>
26654
26655 <ul>
26656
26657 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
26658
26659 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
26660    clock is in UTC.</li>
26661
26662 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
26663    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
26664    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
26665
26666 </ul>
26667
26668 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
26669 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
26670 Villegas</a>.
26671
26672 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
26673 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
26674 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
26675 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
26676 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
26677 using this.</p>
26678
26679 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
26680 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
26681 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
26682 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
26683 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
26684 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
26685 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
26686
26687       </div>
26688       <div class="tags">
26689
26690
26691         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>.
26692
26693
26694       </div>
26695     </div>
26696     <div class="padding"></div>
26697
26698     <div class="entry">
26699       <div class="title">
26700         <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>
26701       </div>
26702       <div class="date">
26703          2nd May 2009
26704       </div>
26705       <div class="body">
26706         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
26707 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
26708 do not yet know them.</p>
26709
26710 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
26711 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
26712 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
26713 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
26714 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
26715 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
26716 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
26717 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
26718 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
26719 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
26720 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
26721
26722 <p>The second one is
26723 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
26724 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
26725 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
26726 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
26727 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
26728 and the company behind it is running
26729 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
26730 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
26731 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
26732 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
26733 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
26734 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
26735 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
26736 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
26737
26738 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
26739 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
26740 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
26741 surrounded by today.</p>
26742
26743       </div>
26744       <div class="tags">
26745
26746
26747         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
26748
26749
26750       </div>
26751     </div>
26752     <div class="padding"></div>
26753
26754     <div class="entry">
26755       <div class="title">
26756         <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>
26757       </div>
26758       <div class="date">
26759         28th April 2009
26760       </div>
26761       <div class="body">
26762         <p>Julien Blache
26763 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
26764 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
26765 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
26766 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
26767 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
26768 properties.</p>
26769
26770       </div>
26771       <div class="tags">
26772
26773
26774         Tags: <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>.
26775
26776
26777       </div>
26778     </div>
26779     <div class="padding"></div>
26780
26781     <div class="entry">
26782       <div class="title">
26783         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
26784       </div>
26785       <div class="date">
26786          5th April 2009
26787       </div>
26788       <div class="body">
26789         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
26790 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
26791 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
26792 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
26793 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
26794 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
26795 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
26796 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
26797
26798 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
26799 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
26800 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
26801   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
26802   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
26803
26804 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
26805 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
26806 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
26807 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
26808
26809 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
26810 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
26811 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
26812 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
26813
26814 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
26815 set -e
26816 URL="$1"
26817 SAVEFILE="$2"
26818 DURATION="$3"
26819 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
26820   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
26821   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
26822 pid=$!
26823 sleep $DURATION
26824 kill $pid
26825 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
26826
26827       </div>
26828       <div class="tags">
26829
26830
26831         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>.
26832
26833
26834       </div>
26835     </div>
26836     <div class="padding"></div>
26837
26838     <div class="entry">
26839       <div class="title">
26840         <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>
26841       </div>
26842       <div class="date">
26843         30th March 2009
26844       </div>
26845       <div class="body">
26846         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
26847 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
26848 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
26849 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
26850 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
26851 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
26852 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
26853 application.</p>
26854
26855 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
26856 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
26857 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
26858 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
26859 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
26860 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
26861 blocked from doing so.</p>
26862
26863 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
26864 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
26865 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
26866 requirements change.</p>
26867
26868 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
26869 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
26870 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
26871
26872       </div>
26873       <div class="tags">
26874
26875
26876         Tags: <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>.
26877
26878
26879       </div>
26880     </div>
26881     <div class="padding"></div>
26882
26883     <div class="entry">
26884       <div class="title">
26885         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
26886       </div>
26887       <div class="date">
26888         29th March 2009
26889       </div>
26890       <div class="body">
26891         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
26892 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
26893 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
26894 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
26895 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
26896 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
26897 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
26898 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
26899 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
26900 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
26901 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
26902 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
26903 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
26904 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
26905 now. :)</p>
26906
26907       </div>
26908       <div class="tags">
26909
26910
26911         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>.
26912
26913
26914       </div>
26915     </div>
26916     <div class="padding"></div>
26917
26918     <div class="entry">
26919       <div class="title">
26920         <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>
26921       </div>
26922       <div class="date">
26923         29th March 2009
26924       </div>
26925       <div class="body">
26926         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
26927 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
26928 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
26929 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
26930 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
26931 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
26932
26933 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
26934 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
26935 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
26936 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
26937 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
26938 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
26939 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
26940 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
26941 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
26942 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
26943 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
26944 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
26945 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
26946
26947 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
26948 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
26949 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
26950 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
26951
26952 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
26953 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
26954
26955 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
26956 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
26957 new IETF work group?</p>
26958
26959       </div>
26960       <div class="tags">
26961
26962
26963         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>.
26964
26965
26966       </div>
26967     </div>
26968     <div class="padding"></div>
26969
26970     <div class="entry">
26971       <div class="title">
26972         <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>
26973       </div>
26974       <div class="date">
26975         28th February 2009
26976       </div>
26977       <div class="body">
26978         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
26979 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
26980 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
26981 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
26982 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
26983 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
26984 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
26985 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
26986 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
26987 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
26988 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
26989 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
26990 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
26991 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
26992 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
26993 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
26994 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
26995 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
26996 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
26997 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
26998 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
26999 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
27000 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
27001 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
27002 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
27003 machine.</p>
27004
27005 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
27006 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
27007 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
27008 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
27009 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
27010 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
27011 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
27012
27013 <pre>
27014 use LWP::Simple;
27015 use POSIX;
27016 use WWW::Mechanize;
27017 use Date::Parse;
27018 [...]
27019 sub get_support_info {
27020     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
27021     my $str;
27022
27023     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
27024         # fetch website from Dell support
27025         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
27026         my $webpage = get($url);
27027         return undef unless ($webpage);
27028
27029         my $daysleft = -1;
27030         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
27031         foreach my $line (@lines) {
27032             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
27033             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
27034             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
27035
27036             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
27037             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
27038             my $lastend = "";
27039             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
27040                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
27041
27042                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
27043                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
27044                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
27045                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
27046                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
27047                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
27048                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
27049             }
27050             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
27051             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
27052                 if ($lastend lt $today);
27053         }
27054     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
27055         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
27056         my $url =
27057             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
27058         $mech->get($url);
27059         my $fields = {
27060             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
27061             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
27062             'country' => 'NO',
27063             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
27064             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
27065         };
27066         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
27067                             fields      => $fields );
27068         # Next step is screen scraping
27069         my $content = $mech->content();
27070
27071         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
27072         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
27073         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
27074         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
27075
27076         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
27077
27078         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
27079             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
27080                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
27081             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
27082             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
27083                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
27084             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
27085                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
27086
27087             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
27088
27089             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
27090                 if ($end lt $today);
27091         }
27092     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
27093         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
27094         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
27095         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
27096             my $content =
27097                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
27098             if ($content) {
27099                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
27100                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
27101                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
27102                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
27103
27104                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
27105                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
27106
27107                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
27108
27109                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
27110                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
27111                     if ($end lt $today);
27112             }
27113         }
27114     }
27115     return $str;
27116 }
27117 </pre>
27118
27119 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
27120 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
27121 from dmidecode.</p>
27122
27123 <pre>
27124 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
27125                        "447707-B21");
27126 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
27127 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
27128                        "1234567");
27129 </pre>
27130
27131 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
27132 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
27133
27134 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
27135 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
27136 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
27137 do so.</p>
27138
27139       </div>
27140       <div class="tags">
27141
27142
27143         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>.
27144
27145
27146       </div>
27147     </div>
27148     <div class="padding"></div>
27149
27150     <div class="entry">
27151       <div class="title">
27152         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
27153       </div>
27154       <div class="date">
27155         20th February 2009
27156       </div>
27157       <div class="body">
27158         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
27159 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
27160 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
27161 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
27162 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
27163 the "missing" computer.</p>
27164
27165 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
27166 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
27167 code blocks as defined in the
27168 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
27169 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
27170 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
27171 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
27172 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
27173 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
27174 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
27175 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
27176 codes.</p>
27177
27178 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
27179 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
27180 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
27181 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
27182 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
27183 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
27184
27185 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
27186 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
27187 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
27188 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
27189 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
27190 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
27191 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
27192 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
27193 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
27194 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
27195
27196 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
27197 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
27198 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
27199
27200       </div>
27201       <div class="tags">
27202
27203
27204         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>.
27205
27206
27207       </div>
27208     </div>
27209     <div class="padding"></div>
27210
27211     <div class="entry">
27212       <div class="title">
27213         <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>
27214       </div>
27215       <div class="date">
27216         17th January 2009
27217       </div>
27218       <div class="body">
27219         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
27220 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
27221 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
27222 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
27223 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
27224 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
27225 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
27226 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
27227 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
27228 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
27229 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
27230 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
27231 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
27232 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
27233
27234 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
27235 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
27236 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
27237 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
27238 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
27239 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
27240 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
27241 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
27242 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
27243 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
27244 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
27245 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
27246 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
27247 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
27248 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
27249 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
27250 playing when the download is done.</p>
27251
27252 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
27253 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
27254 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
27255 too.</p>
27256
27257 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
27258 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
27259 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
27260 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
27261
27262       </div>
27263       <div class="tags">
27264
27265
27266         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
27267
27268
27269       </div>
27270     </div>
27271     <div class="padding"></div>
27272
27273     <div class="entry">
27274       <div class="title">
27275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
27276       </div>
27277       <div class="date">
27278         28th December 2008
27279       </div>
27280       <div class="body">
27281         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
27282 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
27283 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
27284 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
27285 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
27286 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
27287 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
27288 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
27289 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
27290 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
27291 source, sink and mixer applications and
27292 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
27293 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
27294 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
27295 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
27296 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
27297 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
27298 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
27299 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
27300 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
27301
27302 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
27303 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
27304 larger stick as well.</p>
27305
27306       </div>
27307       <div class="tags">
27308
27309
27310         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>.
27311
27312
27313       </div>
27314     </div>
27315     <div class="padding"></div>
27316
27317     <div class="entry">
27318       <div class="title">
27319         <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>
27320       </div>
27321       <div class="date">
27322          7th December 2008
27323       </div>
27324       <div class="body">
27325         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
27326 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
27327 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
27328 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
27329 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
27330 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
27331 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
27332 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
27333
27334 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
27335 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
27336 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
27337 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
27338 of these cards.</p>
27339
27340       </div>
27341       <div class="tags">
27342
27343
27344         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>.
27345
27346
27347       </div>
27348     </div>
27349     <div class="padding"></div>
27350
27351     <div class="entry">
27352       <div class="title">
27353         <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>
27354       </div>
27355       <div class="date">
27356         25th November 2008
27357       </div>
27358       <div class="body">
27359         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
27360 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
27361 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
27362 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
27363 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
27364 notes are available on
27365 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
27366 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
27367 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
27368 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
27369 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
27370 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
27371 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
27372 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
27373 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
27374
27375 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
27376 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
27377
27378       </div>
27379       <div class="tags">
27380
27381
27382         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>.
27383
27384
27385       </div>
27386     </div>
27387     <div class="padding"></div>
27388
27389     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
27390     <div id="sidebar">
27391
27392
27393
27394 <h2>Archive</h2>
27395 <ul>
27396
27397 <li>2017
27398 <ul>
27399
27400 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (2)</a></li>
27401
27402 </ul></li>
27403
27404 <li>2016
27405 <ul>
27406
27407 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
27408
27409 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
27410
27411 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
27412
27413 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
27414
27415 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
27416
27417 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
27418
27419 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
27420
27421 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
27422
27423 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
27424
27425 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
27426
27427 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
27428
27429 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
27430
27431 </ul></li>
27432
27433 <li>2015
27434 <ul>
27435
27436 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
27437
27438 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
27439
27440 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
27441
27442 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
27443
27444 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
27445
27446 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
27447
27448 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
27449
27450 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
27451
27452 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
27453
27454 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
27455
27456 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
27457
27458 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
27459
27460 </ul></li>
27461
27462 <li>2014
27463 <ul>
27464
27465 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
27466
27467 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
27468
27469 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
27470
27471 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
27472
27473 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
27474
27475 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
27476
27477 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
27478
27479 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
27480
27481 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
27482
27483 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
27484
27485 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
27486
27487 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
27488
27489 </ul></li>
27490
27491 <li>2013
27492 <ul>
27493
27494 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
27495
27496 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
27497
27498 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
27499
27500 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
27501
27502 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
27503
27504 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
27505
27506 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
27507
27508 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
27509
27510 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
27511
27512 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
27513
27514 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
27515
27516 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
27517
27518 </ul></li>
27519
27520 <li>2012
27521 <ul>
27522
27523 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
27524
27525 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
27526
27527 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
27528
27529 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
27530
27531 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
27532
27533 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
27534
27535 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
27536
27537 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
27538
27539 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
27540
27541 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
27542
27543 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
27544
27545 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
27546
27547 </ul></li>
27548
27549 <li>2011
27550 <ul>
27551
27552 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
27553
27554 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
27555
27556 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
27557
27558 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
27559
27560 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
27561
27562 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
27563
27564 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
27565
27566 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
27567
27568 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
27569
27570 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
27571
27572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
27573
27574 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
27575
27576 </ul></li>
27577
27578 <li>2010
27579 <ul>
27580
27581 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
27582
27583 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
27584
27585 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
27586
27587 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
27588
27589 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
27590
27591 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
27592
27593 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
27594
27595 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
27596
27597 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
27598
27599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
27600
27601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
27602
27603 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
27604
27605 </ul></li>
27606
27607 <li>2009
27608 <ul>
27609
27610 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
27611
27612 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
27613
27614 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
27615
27616 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
27617
27618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
27619
27620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
27621
27622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
27623
27624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
27625
27626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
27627
27628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
27629
27630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
27631
27632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
27633
27634 </ul></li>
27635
27636 <li>2008
27637 <ul>
27638
27639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
27640
27641 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
27642
27643 </ul></li>
27644
27645 </ul>
27646
27647
27648
27649 <h2>Tags</h2>
27650 <ul>
27651
27652  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
27653
27654  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
27655
27656  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
27657
27658  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
27659
27660  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
27661
27662  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (16)</a></li>
27663
27664  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
27665
27666  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
27667
27668  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (145)</a></li>
27669
27670  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
27671
27672  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
27673
27674  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (16)</a></li>
27675
27676  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (23)</a></li>
27677
27678  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
27679
27680  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (337)</a></li>
27681
27682  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
27683
27684  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
27685
27686  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (29)</a></li>
27687
27688  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
27689
27690  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
27691
27692  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
27693
27694  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
27695
27696  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (15)</a></li>
27697
27698  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (20)</a></li>
27699
27700  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
27701
27702  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
27703
27704  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
27705
27706  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
27707
27708  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
27709
27710  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (39)</a></li>
27711
27712  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (9)</a></li>
27713
27714  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (285)</a></li>
27715
27716  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (183)</a></li>
27717
27718  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (26)</a></li>
27719
27720  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
27721
27722  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (62)</a></li>
27723
27724  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (97)</a></li>
27725
27726  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
27727
27728  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
27729
27730  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
27731
27732  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
27733
27734  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
27735
27736  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
27737
27738  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (5)</a></li>
27739
27740  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
27741
27742  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (52)</a></li>
27743
27744  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
27745
27746  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
27747
27748  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (50)</a></li>
27749
27750  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (5)</a></li>
27751
27752  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (11)</a></li>
27753
27754  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (45)</a></li>
27755
27756  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
27757
27758  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
27759
27760  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
27761
27762  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (59)</a></li>
27763
27764  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
27765
27766  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (39)</a></li>
27767
27768 </ul>
27769
27770
27771     </div>
27772     <p style="text-align: right">
27773  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
27774 </p>
27775
27776   </body>
27777 </html>