blog/tags/english/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged english</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="english.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <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>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28          2nd February 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>My
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
  33 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
  34 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
  35 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
  36 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
  37 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
  38 version too.</p>
  39
  40 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
  41 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
  42 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
  43 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
  44 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
  45 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
  46 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
  47 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
  48
  49 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
  50 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
  51 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
  52 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
  53 it. :)</p>
  54
  55 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  56 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  57 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
  58
  59       </div>
  60       <div class="tags">
  61
  62
  63         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>.
  64
  65
  66       </div>
  67     </div>
  68     <div class="padding"></div>
  69
  70     <div class="entry">
  71       <div class="title">
  72         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
  73       </div>
  74       <div class="date">
  75         22nd January 2013
  76       </div>
  77       <div class="body">
  78         <p>Yesterday, I
  79 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
  80 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
  81 pluggable hardware devices, which I
  82 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
  83 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
  84 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
  85 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
  86 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
  87 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
  88 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
  89 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
  90 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
  91 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
  92
  93 <pre>
  94 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
  95 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
  96 </pre>
  97
  98 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
  99 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
 100 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
 101 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
 102
 103 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
 104 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
 105 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
 106 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
 107 word.</p>
 108
 109 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
 110 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
 111 process.</p>
 112
 113 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
 114 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
 115
 116       </div>
 117       <div class="tags">
 118
 119
 120         Tags: <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>.
 121
 122
 123       </div>
 124     </div>
 125     <div class="padding"></div>
 126
 127     <div class="entry">
 128       <div class="title">
 129         <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>
 130       </div>
 131       <div class="date">
 132         21st January 2013
 133       </div>
 134       <div class="body">
 135         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
 136 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
 137 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
 138 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
 139 it, fetch the
 140 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
 141 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
 142 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
 143 autostart script.</p>
 144
 145 <p>The design is simple:</p>
 146
 147 <ul>
 148
 149 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
 150 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
 151
 152 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
 153 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 154 initially did.</li>
 155
 156 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 157 the APT database, a database
 158 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 159 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 160
 161 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 162 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 163 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 164 package or packages.</li>
 165
 166 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 167 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 168
 169 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 170 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 171
 172 </ul>
 173
 174 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 175 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 176 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 177 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 178
 179 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 180 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 181 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 182 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 183 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 184
 185 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 186 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 187 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 188 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 189 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 190 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 191 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 192 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 193
 194 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 195 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 196 '<tt>svn checkout
 197 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 198 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 199 devscripts package.</p>
 200
 201 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
 202 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
 203 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
 204 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
 205 instructions</a> for details.</p>
 206
 207       </div>
 208       <div class="tags">
 209
 210
 211         Tags: <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>.
 212
 213
 214       </div>
 215     </div>
 216     <div class="padding"></div>
 217
 218     <div class="entry">
 219       <div class="title">
 220         <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>
 221       </div>
 222       <div class="date">
 223         19th January 2013
 224       </div>
 225       <div class="body">
 226         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
 227 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
 228 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
 229 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
 230 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
 231 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
 232 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
 233 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
 234 not a durable solution.
 235
 236 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
 237 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
 238
 239 <ul>
 240
 241 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
 242   than A4).</li>
 243 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
 244 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
 245 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
 246 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
 247 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
 248 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
 249 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
 250 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
 251 size).</li>
 252 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
 253   X.org packages.</li>
 254 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
 255   the time).
 256
 257 </ul>
 258
 259 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
 260 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
 261 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
 262 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
 263 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
 264 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
 265 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
 266 still be useful.</p>
 267
 268 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
 269 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
 270 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
 271 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
 272 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
 273 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
 274
 275       </div>
 276       <div class="tags">
 277
 278
 279         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 280
 281
 282       </div>
 283     </div>
 284     <div class="padding"></div>
 285
 286     <div class="entry">
 287       <div class="title">
 288         <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>
 289       </div>
 290       <div class="date">
 291         18th January 2013
 292       </div>
 293       <div class="body">
 294         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
 295 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
 296 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
 297 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
 298 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
 299 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
 300 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
 301
 302 <pre>
 303 #!/usr/bin/python
 304 import sys
 305 import apt
 306 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 307     cache = apt.Cache()
 308     cache.open(None)
 309     thepkgs = []
 310     for pkg in cache:
 311         version = pkg.candidate
 312         if version is None:
 313             version = pkg.installed
 314         if version is None:
 315             continue
 316         record = version.record
 317         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
 318             continue
 319         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
 320         for t in mime_types:
 321             t = t.rstrip().strip()
 322             if t == mimetype:
 323                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
 324     return thepkgs
 325 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
 326 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
 327     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
 328 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
 329 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 330     print "  %s" %pkg
 331 </pre>
 332
 333 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
 334
 335 <pre>
 336 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
 337 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
 338   gecko-mediaplayer
 339 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
 340 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
 341   browser-plugin-gnash
 342 %
 343 </pre>
 344
 345 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
 346 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
 347 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
 348 anyone working on adding it?</p>
 349
 350 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
 351 request for icweasel support for this feature is
 352 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
 353 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
 354 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
 355 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
 356
 357       </div>
 358       <div class="tags">
 359
 360
 361         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 362
 363
 364       </div>
 365     </div>
 366     <div class="padding"></div>
 367
 368     <div class="entry">
 369       <div class="title">
 370         <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>
 371       </div>
 372       <div class="date">
 373         16th January 2013
 374       </div>
 375       <div class="body">
 376         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
 377 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
 378 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
 379 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
 380 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
 381 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
 382 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
 383 downloaded by the browser.</p>
 384
 385 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
 386 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
 387 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
 388 can be found on the
 389 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
 390 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
 391 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
 392 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
 393 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
 394
 395 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
 396
 397 <pre>
 398   count MIME type
 399   ----- -----------------------
 400      32 text/plain
 401      30 audio/mpeg
 402      29 image/png
 403      28 image/jpeg
 404      27 application/ogg
 405      26 audio/x-mp3
 406      25 image/tiff
 407      25 image/gif
 408      22 image/bmp
 409      22 audio/x-wav
 410      20 audio/x-flac
 411      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 412      18 video/x-ms-asf
 413      18 audio/x-musepack
 414      18 audio/x-mpeg
 415      18 application/x-ogg
 416      17 video/mpeg
 417      17 audio/x-scpls
 418      17 audio/ogg
 419      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 420 </pre>
 421
 422 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
 423
 424 <pre>
 425   count MIME type
 426   ----- -----------------------
 427      33 text/plain
 428      32 image/png
 429      32 image/jpeg
 430      29 audio/mpeg
 431      27 image/gif
 432      26 image/tiff
 433      26 application/ogg
 434      25 audio/x-mp3
 435      22 image/bmp
 436      21 audio/x-wav
 437      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 438      19 audio/x-mpeg
 439      18 video/mpeg
 440      18 audio/x-scpls
 441      18 audio/x-flac
 442      18 application/x-ogg
 443      17 video/x-ms-asf
 444      17 text/html
 445      17 audio/x-musepack
 446      16 image/x-xbitmap
 447 </pre>
 448
 449 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 450
 451 <pre>
 452   count MIME type
 453   ----- -----------------------
 454      31 text/plain
 455      31 image/png
 456      31 image/jpeg
 457      29 audio/mpeg
 458      28 application/ogg
 459      27 image/gif
 460      26 image/tiff
 461      26 audio/x-mp3
 462      23 audio/x-wav
 463      22 image/bmp
 464      21 audio/x-flac
 465      20 audio/x-mpegurl
 466      19 audio/x-mpeg
 467      18 video/x-ms-asf
 468      18 video/mpeg
 469      18 audio/x-scpls
 470      18 application/x-ogg
 471      17 audio/x-musepack
 472      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 473      16 video/x-msvideo
 474 </pre>
 475
 476 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
 477 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
 478 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
 479 issues.</p>
 480
 481 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
 482 discovering a typo in my script.</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/Using_modalias_info_to_find_packages_handling_my_hardware.html">Using modalias info to find packages handling my hardware</a>
 498       </div>
 499       <div class="date">
 500         15th January 2013
 501       </div>
 502       <div class="body">
 503         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
 504 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
 505 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
 506 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
 507 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
 508 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
 509 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
 510 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
 511 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
 512 packages.</p>
 513
 514 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
 515 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
 516 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
 517 modalias.</p>
 518
 519 <p><blockquote>
 520 Package: package-name
 521 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
 522 </blockquote></p>
 523
 524 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
 525 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
 526
 527 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
 528 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
 529
 530 <p><blockquote>
 531 Package: cheese
 532 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
 533 </blockquote></p>
 534
 535 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
 536 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
 537
 538 <p><blockquote>
 539 Package: pcmciautils
 540 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
 541 </blockquote></p>
 542
 543 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
 544 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
 545
 546 <p><blockquote>
 547 Package: colorhug-client
 548 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
 549 </blockquote></p>
 550
 551 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
 552 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
 553 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
 554
 555 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
 556 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
 557 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
 558 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
 559 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
 560 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
 561 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
 562 Raring.</p>
 563
 564 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
 565 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
 566 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
 567 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
 568 try the
 569 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
 570 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
 571 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
 572 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
 573
 574 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
 575 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
 576
 577 <p><blockquote>
 578 % ./hw-support-lookup
 579 <br>yubikey-personalization
 580 <br>%
 581 </blockquote></p>
 582
 583 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
 584 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
 585
 586 <p><blockquote>
 587 % ./hw-support-lookup
 588 <br>pcmciautils
 589 <br>%
 590 </blockquote></p>
 591
 592 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
 593 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
 594 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
 595
 596 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
 597 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
 598 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
 599 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
 600 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
 601 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
 602 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
 603 see if it work.</p>
 604
 605 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 606 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 607 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 608 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 609
 610       </div>
 611       <div class="tags">
 612
 613
 614         Tags: <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>.
 615
 616
 617       </div>
 618     </div>
 619     <div class="padding"></div>
 620
 621     <div class="entry">
 622       <div class="title">
 623         <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>
 624       </div>
 625       <div class="date">
 626         14th January 2013
 627       </div>
 628       <div class="body">
 629         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
 630 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
 631 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
 632 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
 633 in
 634 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 635 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
 636
 637 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
 638
 639 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
 640 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
 641 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
 642 &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;,
 643 &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
 644 &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;.
 645
 646 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
 647 this shell script:</p>
 648
 649 <pre>
 650 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
 651 </pre>
 652
 653 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
 654 using modinfo:</p>
 655
 656 <pre>
 657 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
 658 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
 659 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
 660 %
 661 </pre>
 662
 663 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
 664
 665 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
 666 Bridge memory controller:</p>
 667
 668 <p><blockquote>
 669 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
 670 </blockquote></p>
 671
 672 <p>This represent these values:</p>
 673
 674 <pre>
 675  v   00008086  (vendor)
 676  d   00002770  (device)
 677  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
 678  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
 679  bc  06        (bus class)
 680  sc  00        (bus subclass)
 681  i   00        (interface)
 682 </pre>
 683
 684 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
 685 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
 686 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
 687 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
 688
 689 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
 690 means.</p>
 691
 692 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
 693
 694 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
 695 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
 696
 697 <p><blockquote>
 698 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
 699 </blockquote></p>
 700
 701 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
 702
 703 <pre>
 704  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
 705  p    0001  (device product)
 706  d    0206  (bcddevice)
 707  dc     09  (device class)
 708  dsc    00  (device subclass)
 709  dp     00  (device protocol)
 710  ic     09  (interface class)
 711  isc    00  (interface subclass)
 712  ip     00  (interface protocol)
 713 </pre>
 714
 715 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
 716 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
 717 these alias entries show up:</p>
 718
 719 <p><blockquote>
 720 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
 721 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
 722 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
 723 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
 724 </blockquote></p>
 725
 726 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
 727 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
 728 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
 729
 730 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
 731
 732 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
 733 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
 734
 735 <p><blockquote>
 736 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 737 </blockquote></p>
 738
 739 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
 740
 741 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
 742
 743 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
 744 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
 745 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
 746
 747 <p><blockquote>
 748 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
 749 </blockquote></p>
 750
 751 <p>The values present are</p>
 752
 753 <pre>
 754  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
 755  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
 756  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
 757  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
 758  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
 759  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
 760  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
 761  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
 762  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
 763  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
 764  ct   10             (chassis type)
 765  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
 766 </pre>
 767
 768 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
 769 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
 770
 771 <pre>
 772   3 Desktop
 773   4 Low Profile Desktop
 774   5 Pizza Box
 775   6 Mini Tower
 776   7 Tower
 777   8 Portable
 778   9 Laptop
 779  10 Notebook
 780  11 Hand Held
 781  12 Docking Station
 782  13 All In One
 783  14 Sub Notebook
 784  15 Space-saving
 785  16 Lunch Box
 786  17 Main Server Chassis
 787  18 Expansion Chassis
 788  19 Sub Chassis
 789  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
 790  21 Peripheral Chassis
 791  22 RAID Chassis
 792  23 Rack Mount Chassis
 793  24 Sealed-case PC
 794  25 Multi-system
 795  26 CompactPCI
 796  27 AdvancedTCA
 797  28 Blade
 798  29 Blade Enclosing
 799 </pre>
 800
 801 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
 802 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
 803 claim it is a desktop.</p>
 804
 805 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
 806
 807 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
 808 test machine:</p>
 809
 810 <p><blockquote>
 811 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
 812 </blockquote></p>
 813
 814 <p>The values present are</p>
 815
 816 <pre>
 817   ty  01  (type)
 818   pr  00  (prototype)
 819   id  00  (id)
 820   ex  00  (extra)
 821 </pre>
 822
 823 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
 824 the valid values are.</p>
 825
 826 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
 827
 828 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
 829 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
 830 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
 831 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
 832 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
 833 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
 834 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
 835
 836 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
 837
 838 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
 839 one can use the following shell script:</p>
 840
 841 <pre>
 842   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
 843     echo "$id" ; \
 844     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
 845   done
 846 </pre>
 847
 848 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
 849 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
 850
 851 <pre>
 852   acpi:ACPI0003:
 853     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
 854   acpi:device:
 855   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
 856   acpi:IBM0068:
 857     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
 858     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
 859     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
 860     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
 861   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 862     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
 863     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
 864     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
 865   [...]
 866 </pre>
 867
 868 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 869 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 870 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 871 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 872
 873 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
 874 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
 875 in /sys/ with space in them.</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/isenkram">isenkram</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/Moved_the_pymissile_Debian_packaging_to_collab_maint.html">Moved the pymissile Debian packaging to collab-maint</a>
 891       </div>
 892       <div class="date">
 893         10th January 2013
 894       </div>
 895       <div class="body">
 896         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
 897 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
 898 Launcher and updated the Debian package
 899 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
 900 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
 901 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
 902 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
 903 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
 904 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
 905 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
 906 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
 907 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
 908 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
 909 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
 910 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
 911 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
 912 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
 913 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
 914
 915       </div>
 916       <div class="tags">
 917
 918
 919         Tags: <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>.
 920
 921
 922       </div>
 923     </div>
 924     <div class="padding"></div>
 925
 926     <div class="entry">
 927       <div class="title">
 928         <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>
 929       </div>
 930       <div class="date">
 931          9th January 2013
 932       </div>
 933       <div class="body">
 934         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
 935 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
 936 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
 937 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
 938 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
 939 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
 940 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
 941 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
 942 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
 943 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
 944 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
 945
 946 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
 947 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
 948 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
 949 simple:
 950
 951 <ul>
 952
 953 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
 954   starting when a user log in.</li>
 955
 956 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
 957   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
 958
 959 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
 960   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
 961   packages.</li>
 962
 963 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
 964   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
 965
 966 </ul>
 967
 968 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
 969 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
 970 discover database to find packages and
 971 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
 972 packages.</p>
 973
 974 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
 975 draft package is now checked into
 976 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 977 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
 978 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
 979 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
 980 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
 981 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
 982 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
 983 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
 984 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
 985 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
 986 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
 987 because of the freeze).</p>
 988
 989 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
 990 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
 991 inserted):</p>
 992
 993 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
 994
 995 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
 996 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
 997 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
 998
 999 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
1000 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
1001 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
1002 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
1003 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
1004 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
1005 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
1006
1007 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
1008 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
1009 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
1010 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
1011 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
1012 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
1013 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
1014 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
1015 not be installed?</p>
1016
1017 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
1018 please send me an email. :)</p>
1019
1020       </div>
1021       <div class="tags">
1022
1023
1024         Tags: <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>.
1025
1026
1027       </div>
1028     </div>
1029     <div class="padding"></div>
1030
1031     <div class="entry">
1032       <div class="title">
1033         <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>
1034       </div>
1035       <div class="date">
1036          2nd January 2013
1037       </div>
1038       <div class="body">
1039         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
1040 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
1041 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
1042 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
1043 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
1044 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
1045 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
1046 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
1047 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
1048 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
1049
1050 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
1051 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
1052 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
1053
1054       </div>
1055       <div class="tags">
1056
1057
1058         Tags: <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>.
1059
1060
1061       </div>
1062     </div>
1063     <div class="padding"></div>
1064
1065     <div class="entry">
1066       <div class="title">
1067         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
1068       </div>
1069       <div class="date">
1070         28th December 2012
1071       </div>
1072       <div class="body">
1073         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
1074 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
1075 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
1076 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
1077 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
1078 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
1079 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
1080 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
1081 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
1082 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
1083 followed by many others. :)</p>
1084
1085 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
1086 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
1087 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
1088 you want to donate to the project.</p>
1089
1090       </div>
1091       <div class="tags">
1092
1093
1094         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1095
1096
1097       </div>
1098     </div>
1099     <div class="padding"></div>
1100
1101     <div class="entry">
1102       <div class="title">
1103         <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>
1104       </div>
1105       <div class="date">
1106         25th December 2012
1107       </div>
1108       <div class="body">
1109         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1110 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1111
1112 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1113 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1114 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1115 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1116 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1117 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1118 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1119 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1120 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1121 name.</p>
1122
1123 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1124 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1125 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1126
1127 <blockquote><pre>
1128 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1129 cd bitcoin
1130 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1131 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1132 </pre></blockquote>
1133
1134 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1135 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1136 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1137 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1138 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1139 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1140 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1141 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1142 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1143
1144 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1145 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1146 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1147
1148       </div>
1149       <div class="tags">
1150
1151
1152         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>.
1153
1154
1155       </div>
1156     </div>
1157     <div class="padding"></div>
1158
1159     <div class="entry">
1160       <div class="title">
1161         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1162       </div>
1163       <div class="date">
1164         21st December 2012
1165       </div>
1166       <div class="body">
1167         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1168 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1169 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1170 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1171 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1172 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1173 is now maintained by a
1174 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1175 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1176 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1177 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1178 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1179 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1180 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
1181 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1182 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1183 Corallo in a
1184 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
1185 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1186 Debian package.</p>
1187
1188 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1189 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1190 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1191 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1192 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1193 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1194 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1195 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
1196 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1197 new version to unstable.
1198
1199 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1200 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
1201 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1202 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1203 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1204 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1205 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1206 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
1207 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1208 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1209 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
1210 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1211 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1212 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
1213 have not tested them.</p>
1214
1215 <p>My
1216 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1217 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1218 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1219 years ago, as can be
1220 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1221 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
1222 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1223 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1224 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
1225 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1226 the same address as last time,
1227 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1228
1229       </div>
1230       <div class="tags">
1231
1232
1233         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>.
1234
1235
1236       </div>
1237     </div>
1238     <div class="padding"></div>
1239
1240     <div class="entry">
1241       <div class="title">
1242         <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>
1243       </div>
1244       <div class="date">
1245         18th December 2012
1246       </div>
1247       <div class="body">
1248         <p>A few days ago I came across
1249 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
1250 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
1251 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
1252 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
1253 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
1254 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
1255 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
1256 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
1257 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
1258
1259 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
1260 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
1261 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
1262 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
1263
1264 <blockquote><pre>
1265 2004-05-27 Book Store
1266       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
1267       Liabilities:Visa
1268 </pre></blockquote>
1269
1270 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
1271 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
1272 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
1273 Spang</a>,
1274 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
1275 Keen</a>,
1276 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
1277 Cantino</a> and
1278 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
1279 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
1280 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
1281 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
1282 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
1283
1284 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
1285 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
1286 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
1287 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
1288 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
1289
1290 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
1291 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
1292 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
1293 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
1294 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
1295 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
1296 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
1297 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
1298 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
1299
1300       </div>
1301       <div class="tags">
1302
1303
1304         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
1305
1306
1307       </div>
1308     </div>
1309     <div class="padding"></div>
1310
1311     <div class="entry">
1312       <div class="title">
1313         <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>
1314       </div>
1315       <div class="date">
1316          6th December 2012
1317       </div>
1318       <div class="body">
1319         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
1320 Oslo</a>, we use the
1321 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
1322 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
1323 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
1324 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
1325 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
1326 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
1327 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
1328 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
1329 Python.</p>
1330
1331 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
1332 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
1333 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
1334 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
1335 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
1336 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
1337
1338 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
1339 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
1340 user currently logged in:</p>
1341
1342 <blockquote><pre>
1343 #!/usr/bin/env python
1344 import getpass
1345 import xmlrpclib
1346 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
1347 username = getpass.getuser()
1348 password = getpass.getpass()
1349 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
1350 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
1351 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
1352 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
1353 result = server.logout(sessionid)
1354 print result
1355 </pre></blockquote>
1356
1357 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
1358 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
1359
1360       </div>
1361       <div class="tags">
1362
1363
1364         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>.
1365
1366
1367       </div>
1368     </div>
1369     <div class="padding"></div>
1370
1371     <div class="entry">
1372       <div class="title">
1373         <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>
1374       </div>
1375       <div class="date">
1376         17th November 2012
1377       </div>
1378       <div class="body">
1379         <p>While working on a
1380 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
1381 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
1382 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
1383 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
1384 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
1385 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
1386
1387 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
1388 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
1389 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
1390 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
1391 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
1392 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
1393 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
1394 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
1395 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
1396 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
1397 arguments.</p>
1398
1399 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
1400 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
1401 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
1402 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
1403 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
1404 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
1405 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
1406 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
1407
1408 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
1409 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
1410 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
1411 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
1412 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
1413 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
1414 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
1415 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
1416 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
1417 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
1418 correct right holder.</p>
1419
1420 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
1421 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
1422 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
1423 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
1424 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
1425 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
1426 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
1427 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
1428 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
1429 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
1430 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
1431 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
1432 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
1433 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
1434
1435 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
1436 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
1437 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
1438
1439 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
1440 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
1441
1442       </div>
1443       <div class="tags">
1444
1445
1446         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>.
1447
1448
1449       </div>
1450     </div>
1451     <div class="padding"></div>
1452
1453     <div class="entry">
1454       <div class="title">
1455         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
1456       </div>
1457       <div class="date">
1458         14th November 2012
1459       </div>
1460       <div class="body">
1461         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
1462 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
1463 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
1464 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
1465 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
1466 the people behind the German
1467 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
1468 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
1469 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
1470
1471 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1472
1473 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
1474 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
1475 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
1476
1477 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
1478 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
1479 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
1480 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
1481 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
1482 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
1483
1484 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
1485 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
1486 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
1487 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
1488 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
1489 relationship management and the communication processes in the
1490 project.</p>
1491
1492 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
1493 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
1494 and a yoga teacher.</p>
1495
1496 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1497 project?</strong></p>
1498
1499 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
1500
1501 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
1502 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
1503 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
1504 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
1505 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
1506 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
1507 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
1508 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
1509 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
1510 parents.</p>
1511
1512 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
1513 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
1514 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
1515 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
1516 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
1517 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
1518 Germany.</p>
1519
1520 <p>For information about our school project you can read
1521 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
1522 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
1523
1524 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1525 Edu?</strong></p>
1526
1527 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
1528 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
1529
1530 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
1531 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
1532 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
1533 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
1534 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
1535 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
1536 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
1537 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
1538 teachers, parents...</p>
1539
1540 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1541 Edu?</strong></p>
1542
1543 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
1544 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
1545
1546 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
1547 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
1548 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
1549 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
1550 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
1551
1552 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
1553 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
1554 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
1555 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
1556 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
1557 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
1558 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
1559
1560 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1561
1562 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
1563 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
1564 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
1565 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
1566
1567 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1568 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1569
1570 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
1571 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
1572 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
1573 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
1574 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
1575
1576 <ul>
1577
1578 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
1579 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
1580 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
1581
1582 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
1583 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
1584 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
1585 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
1586 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
1587 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
1588 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
1589
1590 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
1591 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
1592 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
1593 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
1594
1595 </ul>
1596
1597       </div>
1598       <div class="tags">
1599
1600
1601         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
1602
1603
1604       </div>
1605     </div>
1606     <div class="padding"></div>
1607
1608     <div class="entry">
1609       <div class="title">
1610         <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>
1611       </div>
1612       <div class="date">
1613          4th November 2012
1614       </div>
1615       <div class="body">
1616         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
1617 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
1618 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
1619 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
1620 see how a member of the bitcoin community
1621 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
1622 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
1623 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
1624 competition.  My thoughts go to the
1625 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
1626 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
1627 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
1628 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
1629 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
1630
1631 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
1632 that the community already seem to have
1633 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
1634 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
1635 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
1636 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
1637 wealth is available.</p>
1638
1639       </div>
1640       <div class="tags">
1641
1642
1643         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>.
1644
1645
1646       </div>
1647     </div>
1648     <div class="padding"></div>
1649
1650     <div class="entry">
1651       <div class="title">
1652         <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>
1653       </div>
1654       <div class="date">
1655         26th October 2012
1656       </div>
1657       <div class="body">
1658         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
1659 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
1660 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
1661 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
1662 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
1663 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
1664 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
1665 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
1666 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
1667 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
1668 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
1669 it every time.</p>
1670
1671 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
1672 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
1673 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
1674 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
1675 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
1676 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
1677 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
1678 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
1679 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
1680 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
1681 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
1682 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
1683
1684 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
1685 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
1686 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
1687 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
1688 article: First the unplanned outage:
1689
1690 <blockquote><pre>
1691 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
1692 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
1693 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
1694 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
1695 Duration:    40 minutes
1696 Scope:       Exchange 2003
1697 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
1698              a cluster failover.
1699
1700 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
1701              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
1702 Technician:  [xxx]
1703 </pre></blockquote>
1704
1705 Next the planned outage:
1706
1707 <blockquote><pre>
1708 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
1709 Severity:    Major (Planned)
1710 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
1711 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
1712 Duration:    10 hours
1713 Scope:       H2 Transport
1714 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
1715              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
1716              4510s.
1717 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
1718              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
1719              connectivity.
1720 Technician:  [xxx]
1721 </pre></blockquote>
1722
1723 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
1724 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
1725 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
1726 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
1727 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
1728 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
1729 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
1730
1731 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
1732 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
1733 university too.  We do register
1734 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
1735 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
1736 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
1737 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
1738 for other sites to consider too?</p>
1739
1740       </div>
1741       <div class="tags">
1742
1743
1744         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>.
1745
1746
1747       </div>
1748     </div>
1749     <div class="padding"></div>
1750
1751     <div class="entry">
1752       <div class="title">
1753         <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>
1754       </div>
1755       <div class="date">
1756         22nd October 2012
1757       </div>
1758       <div class="body">
1759         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
1760 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
1761 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
1762 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
1763 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
1764 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
1765 background information is available in Norwegian from
1766 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
1767 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
1768 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
1769 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
1770 willing to
1771 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
1772 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
1773 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
1774 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
1775 sounded like
1776 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
1777 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
1778 later.</p>
1779
1780 <p>And thought this action is
1781 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
1782 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
1783 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
1784 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
1785 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
1786 rights.</p>
1787
1788 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
1789 unacceptable terms.  For example
1790 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
1791 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
1792 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
1793 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
1794 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
1795
1796 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
1797 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
1798 restored the account of the user, as reported by
1799 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
1800 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
1801 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
1802 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
1803 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
1804 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
1805 reading two opinions from
1806 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
1807 Phipps</a> and
1808 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
1809 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
1810 details about the original story.</p>
1811
1812       </div>
1813       <div class="tags">
1814
1815
1816         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>.
1817
1818
1819       </div>
1820     </div>
1821     <div class="padding"></div>
1822
1823     <div class="entry">
1824       <div class="title">
1825         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
1826       </div>
1827       <div class="date">
1828         18th October 2012
1829       </div>
1830       <div class="body">
1831         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
1832 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
1833 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
1834 across a marvellous drawing by
1835 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
1836 visualising some of what is going on.
1837
1838 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
1839 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
1840
1841 <blockquote>
1842 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
1843 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
1844 </blockquote>
1845
1846 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
1847 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
1848 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
1849 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
1850 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
1851 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
1852
1853       </div>
1854       <div class="tags">
1855
1856
1857         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>.
1858
1859
1860       </div>
1861     </div>
1862     <div class="padding"></div>
1863
1864     <div class="entry">
1865       <div class="title">
1866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
1867       </div>
1868       <div class="date">
1869         12th October 2012
1870       </div>
1871       <div class="body">
1872         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
1873 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
1874 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
1875 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
1876 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
1877 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
1878 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
1879 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
1880 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
1881 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
1882 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
1883 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
1884 matter".</p>
1885
1886 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
1887 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
1888 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
1889 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
1890 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
1891 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
1892 to argue its side.</p>
1893
1894 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
1895 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
1896 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
1897 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
1898
1899 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
1900 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
1901 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
1902
1903       </div>
1904       <div class="tags">
1905
1906
1907         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>.
1908
1909
1910       </div>
1911     </div>
1912     <div class="padding"></div>
1913
1914     <div class="entry">
1915       <div class="title">
1916         <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>
1917       </div>
1918       <div class="date">
1919          3rd October 2012
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="body">
1922         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
1923 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
1924 the computer science book collection available in his local
1925 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
1926 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
1927 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
1928 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
1929 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
1930 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
1931 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
1932 recently published books.</p>
1933
1934 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
1935 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
1936 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
1937 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
1938 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
1939 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
1940 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
1941 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
1942 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
1943 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
1944 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
1945 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
1946 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
1947 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
1948 for the library that evening.</p>
1949
1950 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
1951 going to know that for example
1952 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
1953 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
1954 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
1955 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
1956 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
1957 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
1958 book right away.</p>
1959
1960       </div>
1961       <div class="tags">
1962
1963
1964         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1965
1966
1967       </div>
1968     </div>
1969     <div class="padding"></div>
1970
1971     <div class="entry">
1972       <div class="title">
1973         <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>
1974       </div>
1975       <div class="date">
1976         23rd September 2012
1977       </div>
1978       <div class="body">
1979         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
1980 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
1981 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1982 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
1983 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
1984 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
1985
1986 When I started, I
1987 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
1988 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
1989 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
1990 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
1991 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
1992 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
1993 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
1994
1995 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
1996
1997 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
1998 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
1999 the project files currently available from
2000 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2001
2002 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2003 the updated
2004 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2005 and
2006 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2007 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2008 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2009 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2010
2011       </div>
2012       <div class="tags">
2013
2014
2015         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>.
2016
2017
2018       </div>
2019     </div>
2020     <div class="padding"></div>
2021
2022     <div class="entry">
2023       <div class="title">
2024         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
2025       </div>
2026       <div class="date">
2027         17th September 2012
2028       </div>
2029       <div class="body">
2030         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
2031 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
2032 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
2033 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
2034 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
2035 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
2036 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
2037
2038 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2039
2040 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
2041 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
2042 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
2043 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
2044 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
2045 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
2046 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
2047 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
2048 training is anyway very important</p>
2049
2050 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
2051 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
2052 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
2053 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
2054 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
2055
2056 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2057 project?</strong></p>
2058
2059 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
2060 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
2061 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
2062 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
2063 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
2064 hole.</p>
2065
2066 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2067 Edu?</strong></p>
2068
2069 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
2070 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
2071 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
2072 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
2073 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
2074 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
2075 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
2076 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
2077 hassle.</p>
2078
2079 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2080 Edu?</strong></p>
2081
2082 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
2083 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
2084 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
2085 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
2086 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
2087 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
2088 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
2089 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
2090
2091 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2092
2093 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
2094 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
2095 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
2096 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
2097 has the same...</p>
2098
2099 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
2100 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
2101 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
2102 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
2103
2104 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2105 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2106
2107 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
2108 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
2109 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
2110
2111 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
2112 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
2113 don't.</p>
2114
2115 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
2116 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
2117 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
2118 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
2119 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
2120 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
2121 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
2122
2123       </div>
2124       <div class="tags">
2125
2126
2127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
2128
2129
2130       </div>
2131     </div>
2132     <div class="padding"></div>
2133
2134     <div class="entry">
2135       <div class="title">
2136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
2137       </div>
2138       <div class="date">
2139         15th September 2012
2140       </div>
2141       <div class="body">
2142         <p>After the
2143 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
2144 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
2145 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
2146 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
2147 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
2148 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
2149 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
2150 was
2151 <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
2152 formal working group should be formed.</p>
2153
2154 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
2155 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
2156 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
2157 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
2158 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
2159 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
2160 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
2161 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
2162
2163 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
2164 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
2165 IETF.</p>
2166
2167       </div>
2168       <div class="tags">
2169
2170
2171         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>.
2172
2173
2174       </div>
2175     </div>
2176     <div class="padding"></div>
2177
2178     <div class="entry">
2179       <div class="title">
2180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
2181       </div>
2182       <div class="date">
2183         12th September 2012
2184       </div>
2185       <div class="body">
2186         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
2187 publication of of
2188 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
2189 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
2190 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
2191 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
2192 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
2193 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
2194 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
2195 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
2196 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
2197 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
2198
2199 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
2200 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
2201 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
2202 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
2203
2204 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
2205 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
2206
2207       </div>
2208       <div class="tags">
2209
2210
2211         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>.
2212
2213
2214       </div>
2215     </div>
2216     <div class="padding"></div>
2217
2218     <div class="entry">
2219       <div class="title">
2220         <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>
2221       </div>
2222       <div class="date">
2223          7th September 2012
2224       </div>
2225       <div class="body">
2226         <p>As I
2227 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2228 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2229 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2230 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2231 repository for the project</a>.</p>
2232
2233 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2234 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2235 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2236 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
2237
2238 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2239 PostScript formats at
2240 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2241 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
2242
2243       </div>
2244       <div class="tags">
2245
2246
2247         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2248
2249
2250       </div>
2251     </div>
2252     <div class="padding"></div>
2253
2254     <div class="entry">
2255       <div class="title">
2256         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/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>
2257       </div>
2258       <div class="date">
2259         23rd August 2012
2260       </div>
2261       <div class="body">
2262         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
2263 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
2264 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
2265 revisit the great site
2266 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
2267 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
2268 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
2269
2270       </div>
2271       <div class="tags">
2272
2273
2274         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>.
2275
2276
2277       </div>
2278     </div>
2279     <div class="padding"></div>
2280
2281     <div class="entry">
2282       <div class="title">
2283         <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>
2284       </div>
2285       <div class="date">
2286         17th August 2012
2287       </div>
2288       <div class="body">
2289         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
2290 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2291 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2292 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
2293 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
2294 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
2295 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
2296 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
2297 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
2298 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
2299 summer I
2300 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
2301 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
2302 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
2303
2304 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
2305 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
2306 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
2307 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
2308 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
2309 progress:</p>
2310
2311 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
2312
2313 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
2314 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
2315 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
2316 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
2317 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
2318 english version of the docbook source.</p>
2319
2320 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2321 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2322 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2323 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
2324 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
2325 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
2326 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
2327 project files currently available from <a
2328 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2329
2330 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2331 the updated
2332 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2333 and
2334 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2335 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2336 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2337 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2338
2339       </div>
2340       <div class="tags">
2341
2342
2343         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>.
2344
2345
2346       </div>
2347     </div>
2348     <div class="padding"></div>
2349
2350     <div class="entry">
2351       <div class="title">
2352         <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>
2353       </div>
2354       <div class="date">
2355         10th August 2012
2356       </div>
2357       <div class="body">
2358         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
2359 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
2360 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
2361 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
2362 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
2363 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
2364 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
2365 case for the language
2366 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
2367 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
2368
2369 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
2370 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
2371 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
2372 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
2373 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
2374
2375 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
2376 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
2377 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
2378 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
2379 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
2380 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
2381 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
2382 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
2383 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
2384 alias for 'nb'.</p>
2385
2386 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
2387 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
2388 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
2389 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
2390 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
2391 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
2392 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
2393 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
2394 at the same time. :(</p>
2395
2396 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
2397 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
2398 processors. :(</p>
2399
2400 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
2401
2402       </div>
2403       <div class="tags">
2404
2405
2406         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>.
2407
2408
2409       </div>
2410     </div>
2411     <div class="padding"></div>
2412
2413     <div class="entry">
2414       <div class="title">
2415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
2416       </div>
2417       <div class="date">
2418         31st July 2012
2419       </div>
2420       <div class="body">
2421         <p>I tried to send this text to the
2422 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
2423 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
2424 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
2425 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
2426 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
2427 out.</p>
2428
2429 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
2430 learning curve at the moment.</p>
2431
2432 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
2433 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
2434 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
2435 available from
2436 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
2437 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
2438 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
2439 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
2440 Squeeze.</p>
2441
2442 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
2443 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
2444 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
2445 problems.</p>
2446
2447 <ul>
2448
2449 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
2450    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
2451    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
2452    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
2453    index references spanning several pages (See
2454    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
2455    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
2456    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
2457
2458 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
2459    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
2460    #683163</a>).</li>
2461
2462 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
2463    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
2464    footnote and text body, see
2465    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
2466    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
2467    refs listed are not right).</li>
2468
2469 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
2470
2471 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
2472    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
2473
2474 </ul>
2475
2476 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
2477 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
2478 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
2479
2480 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
2481
2482       </div>
2483       <div class="tags">
2484
2485
2486         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>.
2487
2488
2489       </div>
2490     </div>
2491     <div class="padding"></div>
2492
2493     <div class="entry">
2494       <div class="title">
2495         <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>
2496       </div>
2497       <div class="date">
2498         21st July 2012
2499       </div>
2500       <div class="body">
2501         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
2502 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
2503 norwegian version</a> of the book
2504 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2505 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
2506 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
2507 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
2508 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2509
2510 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
2511 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
2512 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
2513 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
2514 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
2515 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
2516 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
2517 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
2518 print. :)</p>
2519
2520 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
2521 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
2522 language.</p>
2523
2524       </div>
2525       <div class="tags">
2526
2527
2528         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>.
2529
2530
2531       </div>
2532     </div>
2533     <div class="padding"></div>
2534
2535     <div class="entry">
2536       <div class="title">
2537         <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>
2538       </div>
2539       <div class="date">
2540         16th July 2012
2541       </div>
2542       <div class="body">
2543         <p>I am currently working on a
2544 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
2545 to translate</a> the book
2546 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
2547 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
2548 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
2549 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
2550 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
2551 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
2552 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2553
2554 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
2555 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
2556 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
2557 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
2558 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
2559 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
2560 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
2561 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
2562 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
2563
2564       </div>
2565       <div class="tags">
2566
2567
2568         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>.
2569
2570
2571       </div>
2572     </div>
2573     <div class="padding"></div>
2574
2575     <div class="entry">
2576       <div class="title">
2577         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
2578       </div>
2579       <div class="date">
2580          9th July 2012
2581       </div>
2582       <div class="body">
2583         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2584 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
2585 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
2586 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
2587 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
2588 to adjust and scale the just released
2589 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
2590 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
2591 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
2592
2593 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2594
2595 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
2596 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
2597 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
2598 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
2599 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
2600 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
2601 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
2602 perspective when working with IT.</p>
2603
2604 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2605 project?</strong></p>
2606
2607 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
2608 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
2609 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
2610 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
2611 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
2612 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
2613
2614 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2615 Edu?</strong></p>
2616
2617 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
2618 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
2619 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
2620 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
2621 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
2622 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
2623 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
2624 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
2625 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
2626 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
2627 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
2628 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
2629 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
2630 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
2631 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
2632 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
2633 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
2634 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
2635 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
2636 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
2637 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
2638 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
2639 quicker to update.
2640
2641 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2642 Edu?</strong></p>
2643
2644 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
2645 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
2646 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
2647 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
2648 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
2649 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
2650
2651 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
2652 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
2653 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
2654 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
2655 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
2656 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
2657 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
2658 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
2659 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
2660 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
2661 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
2662 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
2663 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
2664 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
2665 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
2666
2667 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
2668 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
2669 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
2670 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
2671 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
2672 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
2673 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
2674 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
2675
2676 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
2677 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
2678 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
2679 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
2680 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
2681 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
2682 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
2683 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
2684 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
2685 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
2686 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
2687 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
2688 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
2689 sound file.</p>
2690
2691 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
2692 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
2693 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
2694 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
2695 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
2696 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
2697 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
2698 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
2699 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
2700
2701 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2702
2703 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
2704 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
2705 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
2706 )</p>
2707
2708 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2709 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2710
2711 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
2712 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
2713 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
2714 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
2715 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
2716 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
2717 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
2718 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
2719 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
2720 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
2721 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
2722 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
2723 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
2724 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
2725 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
2726
2727 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
2728 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
2729 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
2730 management with Airtime</a>,
2731 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
2732 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
2733 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
2734 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
2735 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
2736
2737       </div>
2738       <div class="tags">
2739
2740
2741         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
2742
2743
2744       </div>
2745     </div>
2746     <div class="padding"></div>
2747
2748     <div class="entry">
2749       <div class="title">
2750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
2751       </div>
2752       <div class="date">
2753          8th July 2012
2754       </div>
2755       <div class="body">
2756         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
2757 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
2758 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
2759 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
2760 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
2761 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
2762 Steinberg in his blog post
2763 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
2764 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
2765 spending of your tax money.</p>
2766
2767 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
2768 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
2769 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
2770 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
2771 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
2772 purchases.</p>
2773
2774       </div>
2775       <div class="tags">
2776
2777
2778         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2779
2780
2781       </div>
2782     </div>
2783     <div class="padding"></div>
2784
2785     <div class="entry">
2786       <div class="title">
2787         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
2788       </div>
2789       <div class="date">
2790          7th July 2012
2791       </div>
2792       <div class="body">
2793         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2794 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
2795 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
2796 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
2797 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
2798 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
2799 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
2800 receive.  The software is
2801
2802 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
2803 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
2804 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
2805 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
2806 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
2807 Windows</a>.</p>
2808
2809 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
2810 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
2811
2812 <p><ul>
2813
2814   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
2815     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
2816
2817   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
2818     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
2819     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
2820     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
2821     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
2822     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
2823     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
2824     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
2825     </li>
2826
2827   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
2828     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
2829
2830   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
2831     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
2832
2833   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
2834     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
2835
2836   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
2837
2838   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
2839     formats </li>
2840
2841   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
2842     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
2843     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
2844     (as separate sets)</li>
2845
2846   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
2847     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
2848     percentage)</li>
2849
2850   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
2851     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
2852     memory):
2853     <ul>
2854       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
2855       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
2856       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
2857       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
2858       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
2859       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
2860       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
2861       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
2862       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
2863       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
2864           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
2865           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
2866           activity)</li>
2867       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
2868       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
2869     </ul></li>
2870
2871   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
2872     <ul>
2873       <li>Break periods</li>
2874       <li>For teacher(s):
2875         <ul>
2876           <li>Not available periods</li>
2877           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
2878           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
2879           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
2880           <li>Min hours daily</li>
2881           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
2882
2883           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
2884             days per week</li>
2885         </ul></li>
2886       <li>For students (sets):
2887         <ul>
2888           <li>Not available periods</li>
2889           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
2890           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
2891           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
2892           <li>Min hours daily</li>
2893           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
2894
2895           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
2896             days per week</li>
2897         </ul></li>
2898       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
2899         <ul>
2900           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
2901           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
2902           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
2903           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
2904           <li>End(s) students day</li>
2905           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
2906           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
2907             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
2908           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
2909           <li>Not overlapping</li>
2910           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
2911           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
2912         </ul></li>
2913     </ul></li>
2914
2915   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
2916     <ul>
2917       <li>Room not available periods</li>
2918       <li>For teacher(s):
2919         <ul>
2920           <li>Home room(s)</li>
2921           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
2922           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
2923         </ul>
2924       </li>
2925
2926       <li>For students (sets):
2927         <ul>
2928           <li>Home room(s)</li>
2929           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
2930           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
2931         </ul>
2932       </li>
2933       <li>Preferred room(s):
2934         <ul>
2935           <li>For a subject</li>
2936           <li>For an activity tag</li>
2937           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
2938           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
2939         </ul>
2940       </li>
2941
2942       <li>For a set of activities:
2943         <ul>
2944           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
2945         </ul>
2946       </li>
2947     </ul>
2948   </li>
2949 </ul></p>
2950
2951 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
2952 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
2953 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
2954 manually, check it out.
2955
2956 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
2957 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
2958 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
2959 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
2960 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
2961 section</a>.</p>
2962
2963       </div>
2964       <div class="tags">
2965
2966
2967         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2968
2969
2970       </div>
2971     </div>
2972     <div class="padding"></div>
2973
2974     <div class="entry">
2975       <div class="title">
2976         <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>
2977       </div>
2978       <div class="date">
2979          3rd July 2012
2980       </div>
2981       <div class="body">
2982         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
2983 project (Norwegian version of
2984 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
2985 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
2986 a problem with the municipalities using
2987 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
2988 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
2989 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
2990 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
2991 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
2992 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
2993 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
2994 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
2995 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
2996 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
2997 the From: header.</p>
2998
2999 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
3000 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
3001 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
3002 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
3003 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
3004 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
3005 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
3006 behaviour.</p>
3007
3008 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
3009 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
3010 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
3011 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
3012 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
3013 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
3014 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
3015
3016       </div>
3017       <div class="tags">
3018
3019
3020         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>.
3021
3022
3023       </div>
3024     </div>
3025     <div class="padding"></div>
3026
3027     <div class="entry">
3028       <div class="title">
3029         <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>
3030       </div>
3031       <div class="date">
3032         26th June 2012
3033       </div>
3034       <div class="body">
3035         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
3036 another interview with the people behind
3037 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
3038 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
3039 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
3040 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
3041 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
3042 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3043 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
3044
3045 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3046
3047 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
3048 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
3049 ICT in schools</p>
3050
3051 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3052 project?</strong></p>
3053
3054 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
3055 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
3056 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
3057 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
3058
3059 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3060 Edu?</strong></p>
3061
3062 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
3063 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
3064 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
3065 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
3066
3067 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3068 Edu?</strong></p>
3069
3070 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
3071 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
3072 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
3073 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
3074 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
3075 technologies in school.</p>
3076
3077 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3078
3079 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
3080 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
3081 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
3082
3083 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3084 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3085
3086 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
3087 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
3088 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
3089 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
3090
3091 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
3092 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
3093 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
3094
3095 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
3096 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
3097 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
3098 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
3099 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
3100 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
3101 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
3102 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
3103 working there.</p>
3104
3105       </div>
3106       <div class="tags">
3107
3108
3109         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3110
3111
3112       </div>
3113     </div>
3114     <div class="padding"></div>
3115
3116     <div class="entry">
3117       <div class="title">
3118         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
3119       </div>
3120       <div class="date">
3121         24th June 2012
3122       </div>
3123       <div class="body">
3124         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
3125 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
3126 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
3127 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
3128 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
3129 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
3130 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
3131 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
3132 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
3133 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
3134 missing in my book.</p>
3135
3136 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
3137 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
3138 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
3139 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
3140 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
3141 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
3142 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
3143
3144       </div>
3145       <div class="tags">
3146
3147
3148         Tags: <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>.
3149
3150
3151       </div>
3152     </div>
3153     <div class="padding"></div>
3154
3155     <div class="entry">
3156       <div class="title">
3157         <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>
3158       </div>
3159       <div class="date">
3160         11th June 2012
3161       </div>
3162       <div class="body">
3163         <p>During my work on
3164 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
3165 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
3166 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
3167 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
3168 explanation.</p>
3169
3170 <p><ul>
3171
3172 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
3173 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
3174 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
3175 system depend on tasksel tasks in
3176 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
3177 installation.</li>
3178
3179 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
3180 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
3181 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
3182 at least try to enable it for these services:
3183 <ul>
3184
3185   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
3186     quotas.</li>
3187   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
3188   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
3189   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
3190   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
3191   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
3192
3193 </ul></li>
3194
3195 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
3196 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
3197 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
3198 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
3199
3200 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
3201 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
3202 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
3203
3204 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
3205 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
3206 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
3207 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
3208 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
3209 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
3210
3211 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
3212 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
3213 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
3214 in Wheezy.
3215
3216 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
3217 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
3218 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
3219
3220 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
3221 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
3222 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
3223 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
3224
3225 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
3226 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
3227 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
3228 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
3229
3230 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
3231 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
3232 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
3233
3234 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
3235 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
3236 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
3237
3238 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
3239 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
3240 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
3241 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
3242 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
3243
3244 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
3245 <ul>
3246
3247 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
3248 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
3249 <li>and probably more?</li>
3250 </ul></li>
3251
3252 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
3253 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
3254 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
3255 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
3256 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
3257 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
3258 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
3259 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
3260
3261
3262 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
3263 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
3264 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
3265 use.</li>
3266
3267 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
3268 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
3269 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
3270 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
3271 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
3272
3273 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
3274 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
3275 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
3276 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
3277 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
3278 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
3279
3280 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
3281 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
3282 There are at least three implementations,
3283 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
3284 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
3285 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
3286 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
3287 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
3288 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
3289 given room.</li>
3290
3291 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
3292 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
3293 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
3294 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
3295 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
3296 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
3297 investigated.</li>
3298
3299 </ul></p>
3300
3301 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
3302 version.</p>
3303
3304       </div>
3305       <div class="tags">
3306
3307
3308         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3309
3310
3311       </div>
3312     </div>
3313     <div class="padding"></div>
3314
3315     <div class="entry">
3316       <div class="title">
3317         <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>
3318       </div>
3319       <div class="date">
3320          9th June 2012
3321       </div>
3322       <div class="body">
3323         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
3324 <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
3325 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
3326 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
3327 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
3328 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
3329 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
3330 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
3331 be willing to pay for.</p>
3332
3333 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
3334 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
3335 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
3336 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
3337 Orwell</a>.</p>
3338
3339       </div>
3340       <div class="tags">
3341
3342
3343         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>.
3344
3345
3346       </div>
3347     </div>
3348     <div class="padding"></div>
3349
3350     <div class="entry">
3351       <div class="title">
3352         <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>
3353       </div>
3354       <div class="date">
3355          6th June 2012
3356       </div>
3357       <div class="body">
3358         <p>A few days ago
3359 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
3360 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
3361 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
3362 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
3363 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
3364 code for HP, Dell and IBM
3365 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
3366 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
3367 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
3368 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
3369 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
3370
3371 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
3372 output:
3373
3374 <blockquote><pre>
3375 % 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>
3376 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": ""})
3377 %
3378 </pre></blockquote>
3379
3380 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
3381 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
3382 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
3383
3384       </div>
3385       <div class="tags">
3386
3387
3388         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>.
3389
3390
3391       </div>
3392     </div>
3393     <div class="padding"></div>
3394
3395     <div class="entry">
3396       <div class="title">
3397         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
3398       </div>
3399       <div class="date">
3400          2nd June 2012
3401       </div>
3402       <div class="body">
3403         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
3404 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3405 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
3406 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
3407 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3408 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
3409
3410 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3411
3412 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
3413 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
3414 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
3415 by Angela).</p>
3416
3417 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
3418 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
3419 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
3420 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
3421 becoming an osteopath.</p>
3422
3423 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
3424 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
3425 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
3426 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
3427 skills with communication skills.</p>
3428
3429 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3430 project?</strong></p>
3431
3432 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
3433 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
3434 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
3435 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
3436 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
3437
3438 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
3439 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
3440 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
3441 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
3442 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
3443 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
3444 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
3445 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
3446 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
3447
3448 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
3449 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
3450 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
3451
3452 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
3453
3454 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
3455 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
3456 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
3457 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
3458 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
3459 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
3460 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
3461 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
3462 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
3463 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
3464 point.</p>
3465
3466 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
3467 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
3468 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
3469 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
3470 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
3471 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
3472
3473 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
3474 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
3475 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
3476 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
3477 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
3478 spare time.</p>
3479
3480 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
3481 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
3482 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
3483 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
3484 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
3485
3486 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
3487 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
3488 avoidance do exist.</p>
3489
3490 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
3491 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
3492 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
3493 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
3494 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
3495 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
3496 and probably a gain for all.</p>
3497
3498 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3499 Edu?</strong></p>
3500
3501 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
3502 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
3503 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
3504 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
3505 project communication, honest communication within the group of
3506 developers, etc.</p>
3507
3508 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3509 Edu?</strong></p>
3510
3511 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
3512
3513 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
3514 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
3515 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
3516 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
3517 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
3518 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
3519 contribute).</p>
3520
3521 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
3522 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
3523 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
3524 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
3525 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
3526 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
3527 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
3528 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
3529 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
3530 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
3531
3532 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3533
3534 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
3535
3536 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
3537 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
3538 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
3539
3540 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
3541 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
3542 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
3543 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
3544
3545 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
3546 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
3547 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
3548 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
3549 whiteboard.</p>
3550
3551 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
3552
3553 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3554 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3555
3556 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
3557 enrol people.</p>
3558
3559       </div>
3560       <div class="tags">
3561
3562
3563         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3564
3565
3566       </div>
3567     </div>
3568     <div class="padding"></div>
3569
3570     <div class="entry">
3571       <div class="title">
3572         <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>
3573       </div>
3574       <div class="date">
3575          1st June 2012
3576       </div>
3577       <div class="body">
3578         <p>A few years ago I wrote
3579 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
3580 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
3581 I have learned from colleges here at the
3582 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
3583 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
3584 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
3585 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
3586 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
3587
3588 <p><pre>
3589 use strict;
3590 use warnings;
3591 use SOAP::Lite;
3592 use Data::Dumper;
3593 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
3594 my $App = 'test';
3595 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
3596 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
3597 my $s = SOAP::Lite
3598     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
3599     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
3600     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
3601     ;
3602 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
3603     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
3604     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
3605     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
3606 );
3607 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
3608 </pre></p>
3609
3610 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
3611
3612 <p><pre>
3613 $VAR1 = {
3614           'Asset' => {
3615                      'Entitlements' => {
3616                                        'EntitlementData' => [
3617                                                             {
3618                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
3619                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
3620                                                               'Provider' => '',
3621                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
3622                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
3623                                                             },
3624                                                             {
3625                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
3626                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
3627                                                               'Provider' => '',
3628                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
3629                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
3630                                                             },
3631                                                             {
3632                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
3633                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
3634                                                               'Provider' => '',
3635                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
3636                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
3637                                                             }
3638                                                           ]
3639                                      },
3640                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
3641                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
3642                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
3643                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
3644                                           'Buid' => '2323',
3645                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
3646                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
3647                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
3648                                         }
3649                    }
3650         };
3651 </pre></p>
3652
3653 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
3654 service outside the
3655 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
3656 documentation</a>, and according to
3657 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
3658 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
3659 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
3660
3661 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
3662 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
3663
3664       </div>
3665       <div class="tags">
3666
3667
3668         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>.
3669
3670
3671       </div>
3672     </div>
3673     <div class="padding"></div>
3674
3675     <div class="entry">
3676       <div class="title">
3677         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
3678       </div>
3679       <div class="date">
3680         31st May 2012
3681       </div>
3682       <div class="body">
3683         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
3684 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
3685 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
3686 running Debian Squeeze, where
3687 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
3688 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
3689 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
3690 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
3691 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
3692 another day.</p>
3693
3694 <p>After calibration, I get a
3695 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
3696 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
3697 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
3698 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
3699 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
3700 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
3701 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
3702 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
3703 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
3704 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
3705 and a simple</p>
3706
3707 <p><pre>
3708 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
3709 </pre></p>
3710
3711 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
3712 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
3713 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
3714 enough for now.</p>
3715
3716       </div>
3717       <div class="tags">
3718
3719
3720         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3721
3722
3723       </div>
3724     </div>
3725     <div class="padding"></div>
3726
3727     <div class="entry">
3728       <div class="title">
3729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
3730       </div>
3731       <div class="date">
3732         27th May 2012
3733       </div>
3734       <div class="body">
3735         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
3736 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3737 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
3738 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
3739 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
3740 since then, helping to make sure the
3741 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3742 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
3743
3744 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3745
3746 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
3747 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
3748 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
3749 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
3750 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
3751 our computer network.</p>
3752
3753 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
3754 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
3755 (4 months).</p>
3756
3757 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3758 project?</strong></p>
3759
3760 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
3761 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
3762 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
3763 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
3764 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
3765 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
3766 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
3767 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
3768 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
3769 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
3770 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
3771 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
3772 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
3773 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
3774
3775 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3776 Edu?</strong></p>
3777
3778 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
3779 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
3780 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
3781 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
3782 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
3783 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
3784 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
3785 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
3786
3787 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3788 Edu?</strong></p>
3789
3790 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
3791 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
3792 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
3793 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
3794 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
3795 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
3796 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
3797 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
3798 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
3799 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
3800 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
3801 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
3802
3803 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3804
3805 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
3806 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
3807 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
3808
3809 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3810 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3811
3812 <p><ol>
3813
3814 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
3815 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
3816 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
3817 developing.</li>
3818
3819 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
3820 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
3821 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
3822 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
3823 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
3824
3825 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
3826 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
3827 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
3828
3829 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
3830 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
3831 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
3832 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
3833
3834 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
3835 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
3836 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
3837
3838 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
3839
3840 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
3841 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
3842 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
3843 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
3844
3845 </ol></p>
3846
3847       </div>
3848       <div class="tags">
3849
3850
3851         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3852
3853
3854       </div>
3855     </div>
3856     <div class="padding"></div>
3857
3858     <div class="entry">
3859       <div class="title">
3860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
3861       </div>
3862       <div class="date">
3863         26th May 2012
3864       </div>
3865       <div class="body">
3866         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
3867 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
3868 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
3869 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
3870 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
3871
3872 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
3873 <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>
3874 comment:</p>
3875
3876 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
3877 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
3878 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
3879 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
3880 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
3881 </blockquote></p>
3882
3883 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
3884 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
3885 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
3886 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
3887 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
3888 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
3889 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
3890 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
3891 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
3892 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
3893 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
3894 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
3895 of wasted effort.</p>
3896
3897 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
3898 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
3899 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
3900
3901 <p>See
3902 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
3903 and
3904 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
3905 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
3906 </blockquote></p>
3907
3908       </div>
3909       <div class="tags">
3910
3911
3912         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>.
3913
3914
3915       </div>
3916     </div>
3917     <div class="padding"></div>
3918
3919     <div class="entry">
3920       <div class="title">
3921         <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>
3922       </div>
3923       <div class="date">
3924         18th May 2012
3925       </div>
3926       <div class="body">
3927         <p>In january, I
3928 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
3929 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
3930 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
3931 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
3932 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
3933 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
3934 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
3935 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
3936 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
3937 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
3938
3939 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
3940 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
3941 drivers. :)</p>
3942
3943       </div>
3944       <div class="tags">
3945
3946
3947         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3948
3949
3950       </div>
3951     </div>
3952     <div class="padding"></div>
3953
3954     <div class="entry">
3955       <div class="title">
3956         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
3957       </div>
3958       <div class="date">
3959         13th May 2012
3960       </div>
3961       <div class="body">
3962         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
3963 publish another interview with the people behind
3964 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
3965 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
3966 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
3967 details get right before release.
3968
3969 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3970
3971 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
3972 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
3973 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
3974 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
3975 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
3976 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
3977 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
3978 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
3979
3980 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
3981 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
3982 home since 2006.</p>
3983
3984 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3985 project?</strong></p>
3986
3987 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
3988 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
3989 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
3990 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
3991 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
3992 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
3993
3994 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
3995 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
3996 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
3997 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
3998 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
3999 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
4000 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
4001 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
4002 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
4003 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
4004 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
4005 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
4006 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
4007 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
4008 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
4009 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
4010
4011 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4012 Edu?</strong></p>
4013
4014 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
4015 for me as today.</p>
4016
4017 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
4018
4019 <p><ul>
4020
4021 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
4022 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
4023
4024 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
4025 cost.</li>
4026
4027 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
4028 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
4029 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
4030 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
4031 server</li>
4032
4033 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
4034 school.</li>
4035
4036 </ul></p>
4037
4038 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
4039 came up in this way:</p>
4040
4041 <p><ul>
4042
4043 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
4044 now.</li>
4045
4046 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
4047 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
4048 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
4049
4050 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
4051 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
4052 interfaces used in the past.</li>
4053
4054 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
4055 different needs.</li>
4056
4057 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
4058
4059 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
4060 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
4061 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
4062
4063 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
4064 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
4065
4066 </ul></p>
4067
4068 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4069 Edu?</strong></p>
4070
4071 <p><ul>
4072
4073 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
4074 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
4075 whole municipality areas.</li>
4076
4077 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
4078 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
4079 politicians.</li>
4080
4081 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
4082
4083 </ul></p>
4084
4085 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4086
4087 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
4088 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
4089 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
4090 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
4091 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
4092 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
4093
4094 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
4095 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
4096 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
4097 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
4098 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
4099
4100 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4101 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4102
4103 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
4104 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
4105 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
4106
4107       </div>
4108       <div class="tags">
4109
4110
4111         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4112
4113
4114       </div>
4115     </div>
4116     <div class="padding"></div>
4117
4118     <div class="entry">
4119       <div class="title">
4120         <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>
4121       </div>
4122       <div class="date">
4123         30th April 2012
4124       </div>
4125       <div class="body">
4126         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
4127 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
4128
4129 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
4130 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
4131 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
4132 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
4133 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
4134 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
4135 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
4136 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
4137 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
4138 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
4139 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
4140 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
4141 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
4142 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
4143 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
4144 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
4145
4146 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
4147 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
4148 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
4149 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
4150 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
4151 finally found a Danish supplier
4152 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
4153 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
4154 days ago.</p>
4155
4156 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
4157 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
4158 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
4159 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
4160 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
4161 toys.</p>
4162
4163       </div>
4164       <div class="tags">
4165
4166
4167         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4168
4169
4170       </div>
4171     </div>
4172     <div class="padding"></div>
4173
4174     <div class="entry">
4175       <div class="title">
4176         <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>
4177       </div>
4178       <div class="date">
4179         26th April 2012
4180       </div>
4181       <div class="body">
4182         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
4183 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
4184 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
4185 that the video editor application included with
4186 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
4187 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
4188 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
4189
4190 <p><blockquote>
4191 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
4192 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
4193 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
4194 </blockquote></p>
4195
4196 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
4197
4198 <p><blockquote>
4199 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
4200 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
4201 </blockquote></p>
4202
4203 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
4204 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
4205 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
4206 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
4207 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
4208 video.  AMR is
4209 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
4210 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
4211 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
4212 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
4213 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
4214 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
4215 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
4216
4217 <p>I know why I prefer
4218 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
4219 standards</a> also for video.</p>
4220
4221       </div>
4222       <div class="tags">
4223
4224
4225         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4226
4227
4228       </div>
4229     </div>
4230     <div class="padding"></div>
4231
4232     <div class="entry">
4233       <div class="title">
4234         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
4235       </div>
4236       <div class="date">
4237         19th April 2012
4238       </div>
4239       <div class="body">
4240         <p>Here in Norway, the
4241 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
4242 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
4243 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
4244 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
4245 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
4246 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
4247 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
4248 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
4249 on the same level.</p>
4250
4251 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
4252 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
4253 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
4254 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
4255 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
4256 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
4257 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
4258 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
4259 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
4260 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
4261 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
4262 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
4263 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
4264 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
4265 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
4266 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
4267 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
4268 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
4269
4270 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
4271 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
4272 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
4273 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
4274 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
4275 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
4276 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
4277 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
4278
4279 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
4280 from Simon Phipps
4281 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
4282 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
4283
4284 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
4285 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
4286 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
4287 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
4288 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
4289 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
4290 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
4291 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
4292 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
4293
4294       </div>
4295       <div class="tags">
4296
4297
4298         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>.
4299
4300
4301       </div>
4302     </div>
4303     <div class="padding"></div>
4304
4305     <div class="entry">
4306       <div class="title">
4307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
4308       </div>
4309       <div class="date">
4310         15th April 2012
4311       </div>
4312       <div class="body">
4313         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
4314 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
4315 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
4316 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
4317 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
4318 up in the recently released
4319 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
4320 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
4321
4322 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4323
4324 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
4325 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
4326 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
4327 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
4328 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
4329 information technology and science/technology.</p>
4330
4331 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4332 project?</strong></p>
4333
4334 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
4335 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
4336 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
4337 contributing.</p>
4338
4339 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4340 Edu?</strong></p>
4341
4342 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
4343 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
4344 Debian Project!</p>
4345
4346 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4347 Edu?</strong></p>
4348
4349 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
4350 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
4351 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
4352 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
4353 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
4354 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
4355 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
4356
4357 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
4358 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
4359
4360 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4361
4362 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
4363 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
4364 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
4365 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
4366
4367 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4368 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4369
4370 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
4371 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
4372 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
4373 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
4374 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
4375 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
4376 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
4377
4378 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
4379 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
4380 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
4381 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
4382 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
4383 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
4384 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
4385 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
4386
4387       </div>
4388       <div class="tags">
4389
4390
4391         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4392
4393
4394       </div>
4395     </div>
4396     <div class="padding"></div>
4397
4398     <div class="entry">
4399       <div class="title">
4400         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
4401       </div>
4402       <div class="date">
4403          8th April 2012
4404       </div>
4405       <div class="body">
4406         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
4407 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
4408 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
4409 contributor to the
4410 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
4411 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
4412
4413 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4414
4415 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
4416 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
4417
4418 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4419 project?</strong></p>
4420
4421 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
4422 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
4423 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
4424 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
4425 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
4426 "localisation".</p>
4427
4428 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4429 Edu?</strong></p>
4430
4431 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4432 Edu?</strong></p>
4433
4434 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
4435 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
4436 education system.</p>
4437
4438 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
4439 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
4440 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
4441 money on the latest hardware.</p>
4442
4443 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4444
4445 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
4446 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
4447 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
4448
4449 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4450 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4451
4452 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
4453 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
4454 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
4455
4456       </div>
4457       <div class="tags">
4458
4459
4460         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4461
4462
4463       </div>
4464     </div>
4465     <div class="padding"></div>
4466
4467     <div class="entry">
4468       <div class="title">
4469         <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>
4470       </div>
4471       <div class="date">
4472          6th April 2012
4473       </div>
4474       <div class="body">
4475         <p>Recently I have spent time with
4476 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
4477 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4478 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
4479 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
4480 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
4481 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
4482 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
4483 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
4484
4485 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
4486 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
4487 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
4488 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
4489 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
4490 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
4491 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
4492 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
4493
4494 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
4495 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
4496 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
4497 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
4498 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
4499 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
4500 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
4501 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
4502
4503 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
4504 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
4505 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
4506 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
4507 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
4508 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
4509 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
4510 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
4511 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
4512 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
4513
4514 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
4515 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
4516 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
4517 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
4518
4519 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
4520 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
4521
4522       </div>
4523       <div class="tags">
4524
4525
4526         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4527
4528
4529       </div>
4530     </div>
4531     <div class="padding"></div>
4532
4533     <div class="entry">
4534       <div class="title">
4535         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
4536       </div>
4537       <div class="date">
4538          5th April 2012
4539       </div>
4540       <div class="body">
4541         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
4542 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
4543 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
4544 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
4545 for schools.  Check out his article
4546 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
4547 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
4548
4549       </div>
4550       <div class="tags">
4551
4552
4553         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4554
4555
4556       </div>
4557     </div>
4558     <div class="padding"></div>
4559
4560     <div class="entry">
4561       <div class="title">
4562         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
4563       </div>
4564       <div class="date">
4565          1st April 2012
4566       </div>
4567       <div class="body">
4568         <p>Germany is a core area for the
4569 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4570 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
4571 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
4572
4573 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4574
4575 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
4576 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
4577 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
4578 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
4579 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
4580 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
4581 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
4582 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
4583
4584 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
4585 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
4586 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
4587 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
4588 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
4589 the end of April this year.</p>
4590
4591 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4592 project?</strong></p>
4593
4594 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
4595 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
4596 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
4597 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
4598 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
4599 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
4600 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
4601 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
4602 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
4603 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
4604 Skolelinux.</p>
4605
4606 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
4607 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
4608 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
4609 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
4610 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
4611 the admin teachers.</p>
4612
4613 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4614 Edu?</strong></p>
4615
4616 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
4617 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
4618 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
4619
4620 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
4621 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
4622 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
4623 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
4624 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
4625
4626 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4627 Edu?</strong></p>
4628
4629 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
4630
4631 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4632
4633 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
4634 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
4635 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
4636 LibreOffice.</p>
4637
4638 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4639 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4640
4641 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
4642 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
4643 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
4644
4645       </div>
4646       <div class="tags">
4647
4648
4649         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4650
4651
4652       </div>
4653     </div>
4654     <div class="padding"></div>
4655
4656     <div class="entry">
4657       <div class="title">
4658         <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>
4659       </div>
4660       <div class="date">
4661         25th March 2012
4662       </div>
4663       <div class="body">
4664         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
4665
4666 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
4667 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
4668 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
4669 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
4670 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
4671 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
4672 and download as a
4673 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
4674 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
4675
4676 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
4677   <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"' />
4678     <p>Download video as
4679       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
4680 </video></p>
4681
4682       </div>
4683       <div class="tags">
4684
4685
4686         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4687
4688
4689       </div>
4690     </div>
4691     <div class="padding"></div>
4692
4693     <div class="entry">
4694       <div class="title">
4695         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
4696       </div>
4697       <div class="date">
4698         19th March 2012
4699       </div>
4700       <div class="body">
4701         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4702 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
4703 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
4704 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
4705 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
4706
4707 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4708
4709 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
4710 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
4711 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
4712 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
4713 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
4714 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
4715 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
4716 installations.</p>
4717
4718 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4719 project?</strong></p>
4720
4721 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
4722 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
4723 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
4724 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
4725 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
4726 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
4727 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
4728 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
4729 these things we decided to try it.</p>
4730
4731 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4732 Edu?</strong></p>
4733
4734 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
4735 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
4736 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
4737 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
4738 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
4739 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
4740 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
4741 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
4742
4743 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4744 Edu?</strong></p>
4745
4746 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
4747 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
4748 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
4749 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
4750 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
4751
4752 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4753
4754 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
4755 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
4756 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
4757 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
4758 that counts...)</p>
4759
4760 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4761 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4762
4763 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
4764 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
4765 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
4766 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
4767 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
4768 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
4769 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
4770 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
4771 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
4772 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
4773 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
4774
4775 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
4776 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
4777 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
4778
4779       </div>
4780       <div class="tags">
4781
4782
4783         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4784
4785
4786       </div>
4787     </div>
4788     <div class="padding"></div>
4789
4790     <div class="entry">
4791       <div class="title">
4792         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
4793       </div>
4794       <div class="date">
4795         16th March 2012
4796       </div>
4797       <div class="body">
4798         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
4799 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
4800 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
4801 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
4802
4803 <ol>
4804
4805 <li>The documentation is written in a
4806 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
4807 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
4808 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
4809 docbook XML.</li>
4810
4811 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
4812 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
4813 with the translated text.</li>
4814
4815 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
4816 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
4817 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
4818 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
4819 images.</li>
4820
4821 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
4822 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
4823
4824 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
4825 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
4826
4827 </ol>
4828
4829 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
4830 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
4831 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
4832 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
4833 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
4834
4835 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
4836 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
4837 package</a>.</p>
4838
4839       </div>
4840       <div class="tags">
4841
4842
4843         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4844
4845
4846       </div>
4847     </div>
4848     <div class="padding"></div>
4849
4850     <div class="entry">
4851       <div class="title">
4852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
4853       </div>
4854       <div class="date">
4855         11th March 2012
4856       </div>
4857       <div class="body">
4858         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
4859 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
4860 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
4861 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
4862 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
4863 you have not done so already.</p>
4864
4865 <p>I plan to present the new version at
4866 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
4867 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
4868 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
4869
4870       </div>
4871       <div class="tags">
4872
4873
4874         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4875
4876
4877       </div>
4878     </div>
4879     <div class="padding"></div>
4880
4881     <div class="entry">
4882       <div class="title">
4883         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
4884       </div>
4885       <div class="date">
4886          9th March 2012
4887       </div>
4888       <div class="body">
4889         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
4890 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
4891 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4892 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
4893 more international audience.</p>
4894
4895 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
4896 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
4897 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
4898 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
4899 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
4900 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
4901 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
4902
4903
4904 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4905
4906 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
4907 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
4908 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
4909 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
4910 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
4911 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
4912 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
4913 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
4914 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
4915 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
4916 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
4917
4918 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4919 project?</strong></p>
4920
4921 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
4922 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
4923 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
4924 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
4925 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
4926 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
4927 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
4928 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
4929 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
4930 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
4931 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
4932 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
4933 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
4934
4935 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4936 Edu?</strong></p>
4937
4938 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
4939 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
4940 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
4941 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
4942 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
4943 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
4944 Japan.</p>
4945
4946 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4947 Edu?</strong></p>
4948
4949 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
4950 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
4951 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
4952 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
4953 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
4954 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
4955 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
4956 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
4957 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
4958 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
4959 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
4960 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
4961 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
4962 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
4963 help.</p>
4964
4965 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4966
4967 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
4968 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
4969 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
4970 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
4971 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
4972 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
4973 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
4974 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
4975 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
4976 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
4977 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
4978
4979 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4980 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4981
4982 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
4983 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
4984 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
4985 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
4986 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
4987 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
4988 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
4989 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
4990 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
4991 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
4992 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
4993 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
4994
4995       </div>
4996       <div class="tags">
4997
4998
4999         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5000
5001
5002       </div>
5003     </div>
5004     <div class="padding"></div>
5005
5006     <div class="entry">
5007       <div class="title">
5008         <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>
5009       </div>
5010       <div class="date">
5011          7th March 2012
5012       </div>
5013       <div class="body">
5014         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
5015
5016 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
5017 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
5018 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
5019 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
5020 download as a
5021 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
5022 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
5023
5024 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
5025   <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"' />
5026     <p>Download video as
5027       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
5028 </video></p>
5029
5030       </div>
5031       <div class="tags">
5032
5033
5034         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5035
5036
5037       </div>
5038     </div>
5039     <div class="padding"></div>
5040
5041     <div class="entry">
5042       <div class="title">
5043         <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>
5044       </div>
5045       <div class="date">
5046          4th March 2012
5047       </div>
5048       <div class="body">
5049         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
5050 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5051 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5052 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
5053 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
5054 need a software solution for your school.</p>
5055
5056       </div>
5057       <div class="tags">
5058
5059
5060         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5061
5062
5063       </div>
5064     </div>
5065     <div class="padding"></div>
5066
5067     <div class="entry">
5068       <div class="title">
5069         <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>
5070       </div>
5071       <div class="date">
5072          3rd March 2012
5073       </div>
5074       <div class="body">
5075         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
5076 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
5077 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
5078 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
5079 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
5080 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
5081 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
5082 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
5083 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
5084 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
5085 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
5086 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
5087 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
5088 year...</p>
5089
5090 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
5091 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
5092 name,
5093 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
5094 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
5095 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
5096 mean). I've been following
5097 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
5098 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
5099 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
5100 Check it out. :)</p>
5101
5102       </div>
5103       <div class="tags">
5104
5105
5106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5107
5108
5109       </div>
5110     </div>
5111     <div class="padding"></div>
5112
5113     <div class="entry">
5114       <div class="title">
5115         <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>
5116       </div>
5117       <div class="date">
5118         27th February 2012
5119       </div>
5120       <div class="body">
5121         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
5122 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5123 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
5124 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
5125 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
5126 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
5127 need a software solution for your school.</p>
5128
5129       </div>
5130       <div class="tags">
5131
5132
5133         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5134
5135
5136       </div>
5137     </div>
5138     <div class="padding"></div>
5139
5140     <div class="entry">
5141       <div class="title">
5142         <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>
5143       </div>
5144       <div class="date">
5145         19th February 2012
5146       </div>
5147       <div class="body">
5148         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
5149 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
5150 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
5151 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5152 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
5153 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
5154 solution for your school.</p>
5155
5156       </div>
5157       <div class="tags">
5158
5159
5160         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5161
5162
5163       </div>
5164     </div>
5165     <div class="padding"></div>
5166
5167     <div class="entry">
5168       <div class="title">
5169         <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>
5170       </div>
5171       <div class="date">
5172         14th February 2012
5173       </div>
5174       <div class="body">
5175         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
5176 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
5177 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
5178 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
5179 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
5180 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
5181 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
5182 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
5183 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
5184
5185 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
5186 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
5187 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
5188 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
5189 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
5190
5191 <blockquote><pre>
5192 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
5193 do
5194     printf "Failed disk $d: "
5195     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
5196 done
5197 </blockquote></pre>
5198
5199 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
5200 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
5201
5202 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
5203
5204 <blockquote><pre>
5205 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5206 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5207 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
5208 </blockquote></pre>
5209
5210 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
5211 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
5212 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
5213 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
5214 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
5215 mounted inside my box.</p>
5216
5217 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
5218 Software RAID in the
5219 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
5220 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
5221 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
5222 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
5223 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
5224 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
5225
5226       </div>
5227       <div class="tags">
5228
5229
5230         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>.
5231
5232
5233       </div>
5234     </div>
5235     <div class="padding"></div>
5236
5237     <div class="entry">
5238       <div class="title">
5239         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5240       </div>
5241       <div class="date">
5242         13th February 2012
5243       </div>
5244       <div class="body">
5245         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
5246 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
5247 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
5248 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
5249 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
5250 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
5251 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
5252 change the global proxy setting by editing
5253 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
5254 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
5255
5256 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
5257 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
5258 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
5259
5260 <blockquote><pre>
5261 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
5262 {
5263    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
5264        isPlainHostName(host) ||
5265        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
5266       return "DIRECT";
5267    else
5268       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
5269 }
5270 </pre></blockquote>
5271
5272 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
5273
5274 <blockquote><pre>
5275 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
5276 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
5277 </pre></blockquote>
5278
5279 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
5280 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
5281 would be used for
5282 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
5283 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
5284 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
5285 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
5286 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
5287 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
5288 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
5289 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
5290 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
5291 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
5292
5293 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
5294 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
5295 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
5296 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
5297 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
5298 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
5299
5300 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
5301 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
5302 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
5303 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
5304 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
5305 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
5306 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
5307 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
5308 the network setup changes.</p>
5309
5310 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
5311 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
5312 draft</a> and a
5313 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
5314 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
5315
5316       </div>
5317       <div class="tags">
5318
5319
5320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5321
5322
5323       </div>
5324     </div>
5325     <div class="padding"></div>
5326
5327     <div class="entry">
5328       <div class="title">
5329         <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>
5330       </div>
5331       <div class="date">
5332          5th February 2012
5333       </div>
5334       <div class="body">
5335         <p>Since the Lenny version of
5336 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
5337 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
5338 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
5339 in the morning.  This is done using the
5340 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
5341
5342 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
5343 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
5344 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
5345 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
5346 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
5347 the
5348 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
5349 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
5350 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
5351 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
5352 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
5353
5354 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
5355 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
5356 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
5357 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
5358 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
5359 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
5360 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
5361
5362 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
5363 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
5364 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
5365 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
5366 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
5367
5368       </div>
5369       <div class="tags">
5370
5371
5372         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5373
5374
5375       </div>
5376     </div>
5377     <div class="padding"></div>
5378
5379     <div class="entry">
5380       <div class="title">
5381         <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>
5382       </div>
5383       <div class="date">
5384          4th February 2012
5385       </div>
5386       <div class="body">
5387         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
5388 publish the third beta version of
5389 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
5390 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
5391 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
5392 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
5393 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
5394 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
5395 on the project announcement list.</p>
5396
5397 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
5398 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
5399
5400 <ul>
5401
5402 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
5403   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
5404   the installation.</li>
5405
5406 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
5407   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
5408
5409 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
5410   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
5411   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
5412
5413 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
5414   for the local system administrator is created during installation
5415   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
5416   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
5417   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
5418   up to date on the system.</li>
5419
5420 </ul>
5421
5422 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
5423 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
5424 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
5425 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
5426
5427 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
5428 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
5429 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
5430 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
5431 will see you there?</p>
5432
5433       </div>
5434       <div class="tags">
5435
5436
5437         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5438
5439
5440       </div>
5441     </div>
5442     <div class="padding"></div>
5443
5444     <div class="entry">
5445       <div class="title">
5446         <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>
5447       </div>
5448       <div class="date">
5449         27th January 2012
5450       </div>
5451       <div class="body">
5452         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
5453 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
5454 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
5455 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
5456 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
5457 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
5458 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
5459
5460 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
5461 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
5462 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
5463 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
5464 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
5465 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
5466 not taken care of by this.</p>
5467
5468 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
5469 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
5470 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
5471 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
5472 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
5473 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
5474 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
5475 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
5476 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
5477 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
5478 firmware packages.</p>
5479
5480 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
5481 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
5482 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
5483 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
5484 initrd with extra firmware, the
5485 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
5486 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
5487 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
5488
5489 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
5490 network cards working.  For this,
5491 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
5492 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
5493 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
5494
5495 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
5496 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
5497 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
5498
5499 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
5500 try.</p>
5501
5502       </div>
5503       <div class="tags">
5504
5505
5506         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5507
5508
5509       </div>
5510     </div>
5511     <div class="padding"></div>
5512
5513     <div class="entry">
5514       <div class="title">
5515         <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>
5516       </div>
5517       <div class="date">
5518         25th January 2012
5519       </div>
5520       <div class="body">
5521         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
5522 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
5523 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
5524 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
5525 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
5526
5527 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
5528 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
5529 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
5530 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
5531 this is done, log on to the central server and run
5532 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
5533 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
5534 will look similar to this:</p>
5535
5536 <p><blockquote><pre>
5537 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
5538 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
5539 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.
5540
5541 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
5542
5543 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5544 enter password: *******
5545 %
5546 </pre></blockquote></p>
5547
5548 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
5549 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
5550 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
5551 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
5552 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
5553 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
5554 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
5555 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
5556 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
5557 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
5558 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
5559 automatically.</p>
5560
5561 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
5562 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
5563
5564 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
5565 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
5566 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
5567
5568       </div>
5569       <div class="tags">
5570
5571
5572         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5573
5574
5575       </div>
5576     </div>
5577     <div class="padding"></div>
5578
5579     <div class="entry">
5580       <div class="title">
5581         <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>
5582       </div>
5583       <div class="date">
5584         10th January 2012
5585       </div>
5586       <div class="body">
5587         <p>In the Squeeze version of
5588 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
5589 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
5590 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
5591 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
5592 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
5593 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
5594 first time.</p>
5595
5596 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
5597 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
5598 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
5599 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
5600
5601 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
5602 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
5603 new setting.</p>
5604
5605 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
5606 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
5607 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
5608
5609       </div>
5610       <div class="tags">
5611
5612
5613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5614
5615
5616       </div>
5617     </div>
5618     <div class="padding"></div>
5619
5620     <div class="entry">
5621       <div class="title">
5622         <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>
5623       </div>
5624       <div class="date">
5625          7th January 2012
5626       </div>
5627       <div class="body">
5628         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
5629 the second beta version of
5630 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
5631 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
5632 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
5633 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
5634 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
5635 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
5636 on the project announcement list.</p>
5637
5638       </div>
5639       <div class="tags">
5640
5641
5642         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5643
5644
5645       </div>
5646     </div>
5647     <div class="padding"></div>
5648
5649     <div class="entry">
5650       <div class="title">
5651         <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>
5652       </div>
5653       <div class="date">
5654          3rd January 2012
5655       </div>
5656       <div class="body">
5657         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
5658 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
5659 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
5660 interesting.</p>
5661
5662 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
5663 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
5664 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
5665 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
5666 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
5667 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
5668 wrap up its tasks.</p>
5669
5670 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
5671 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
5672 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
5673 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
5674 because I was typing.</P>
5675
5676 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
5677 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
5678 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
5679 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
5680 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
5681 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
5682 generate entropy.</p>
5683
5684 <p>The fix is in
5685 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
5686 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
5687 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
5688 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
5689
5690       </div>
5691       <div class="tags">
5692
5693
5694         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5695
5696
5697       </div>
5698     </div>
5699     <div class="padding"></div>
5700
5701     <div class="entry">
5702       <div class="title">
5703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5704       </div>
5705       <div class="date">
5706         21st November 2011
5707       </div>
5708       <div class="body">
5709         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5710 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5711 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5712 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5713 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5714 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5715 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5716 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5717 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5718 the tools to do so.</p>
5719
5720 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5721 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5722 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5723 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5724
5725 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5726 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5727 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5728 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5729 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5730 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5731 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5732 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5733
5734 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5735 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5736 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5737
5738 <p><pre>
5739 #!/usr/bin/perl
5740 use strict;
5741 use warnings;
5742 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5743 BEGIN {
5744     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5745     my %rhelmodules = (
5746         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
5747         );
5748     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5749         eval "use $module;";
5750         if ($@) {
5751             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5752             system("yum install -y $pkg");
5753             eval "use $module;";
5754         }
5755     }
5756 }
5757 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5758
5759 upgrade_dell();
5760
5761 exit 0;
5762
5763 sub run_firmware_script {
5764     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5765     unless ($script) {
5766         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5767         exit 1
5768     }
5769     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5770
5771     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5772         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5773     } else {
5774         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5775     }
5776 }
5777
5778 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5779     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5780     # Run firmware packages
5781     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5782         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5783         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5784         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5785             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5786             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5787         }
5788         closedir $dh;
5789     }
5790 }
5791
5792 sub download {
5793     my $url = shift;
5794     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5795     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5796 }
5797
5798 sub upgrade_dell {
5799     my @dirs;
5800     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5801     chomp $product;
5802
5803     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5804
5805         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5806         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5807
5808         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5809             CLEANUP => 1
5810             );
5811         chdir($tmpdir);
5812         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5813         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5814         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5815         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5816         my $fwopts = "-q";
5817         if (@paths) {
5818             for my $url (@paths) {
5819                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5820             }
5821             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5822         } else {
5823             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5824             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5825         }
5826         chdir('/');
5827     } else {
5828         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5829         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5830     }
5831 }
5832
5833 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5834     my $path = shift;
5835     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5836     download($url);
5837 }
5838
5839 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5840 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5841 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5842 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5843     my $filename = shift;
5844
5845     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5846     chomp $product;
5847     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5848
5849     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5850
5851     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5852     my @paths;
5853     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5854         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
5855         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
5856         my $oscode;
5857         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
5858             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
5859         } else {
5860             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
5861         }
5862         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5863         {
5864             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
5865         }
5866     }
5867     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5868         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
5869
5870         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5871         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5872
5873         my $cpath = $component->{path};
5874         for my $path (@paths) {
5875             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5876                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5877             }
5878         }
5879     }
5880     return @paths;
5881 }
5882 </pre>
5883
5884 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5885 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5886 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5887 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5888 outdated.</p>
5889
5890       </div>
5891       <div class="tags">
5892
5893
5894         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5895
5896
5897       </div>
5898     </div>
5899     <div class="padding"></div>
5900
5901     <div class="entry">
5902       <div class="title">
5903         <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>
5904       </div>
5905       <div class="date">
5906          7th October 2011
5907       </div>
5908       <div class="body">
5909         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
5910 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
5911 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
5912 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
5913 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
5914 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
5915 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
5916 models.</p>
5917
5918 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
5919 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
5920 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
5921 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
5922
5923 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
5924 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
5925 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
5926 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
5927 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
5928 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
5929 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
5930 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
5931 distributed.</p>
5932
5933 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
5934
5935 <ul>
5936
5937 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
5938   other relevant equipment.</li>
5939
5940 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
5941
5942 </ul>
5943
5944 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
5945 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
5946 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
5947 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
5948 books available.</p>
5949
5950 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
5951 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
5952 libraries. :)</p>
5953
5954       </div>
5955       <div class="tags">
5956
5957
5958         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>.
5959
5960
5961       </div>
5962     </div>
5963     <div class="padding"></div>
5964
5965     <div class="entry">
5966       <div class="title">
5967         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
5968       </div>
5969       <div class="date">
5970         17th September 2011
5971       </div>
5972       <div class="body">
5973         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
5974 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
5975 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
5976 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
5977 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
5978 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
5979 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
5980 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
5981
5982 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
5983
5984 <blockquote><pre>
5985 #!/bin/sh
5986 # apt-get install lsdvd
5987 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
5988 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
5989 </pre></blockquote>
5990
5991 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
5992 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
5993 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
5994 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
5995
5996 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
5997 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
5998 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
5999 back as an ISO.
6000
6001 <blockquote><pre>
6002 #!/bin/sh
6003 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
6004 set -e
6005 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
6006 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
6007 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
6008 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
6009 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
6010 </pre></blockquote>
6011
6012 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
6013
6014 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
6015 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
6016 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
6017 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
6018 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
6019
6020 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
6021 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
6022 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
6023 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
6024 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
6025 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
6026
6027       </div>
6028       <div class="tags">
6029
6030
6031         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>.
6032
6033
6034       </div>
6035     </div>
6036     <div class="padding"></div>
6037
6038     <div class="entry">
6039       <div class="title">
6040         <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>
6041       </div>
6042       <div class="date">
6043          4th August 2011
6044       </div>
6045       <div class="body">
6046         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
6047 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
6048 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
6049 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
6050 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
6051 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
6052 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
6053 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6054 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
6055
6056 <p><blockquote>
6057 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6058 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6059 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6060 </blockquote></p>
6061
6062 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6063 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6064 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6065 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6066 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6067 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6068 hard to explain.</p>
6069
6070 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6071 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
6072 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6073 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6074 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6075 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6076 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6077 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6078 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6079 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6080 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6081 mode).</p>
6082
6083 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6084 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6085 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
6086 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6087 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
6088 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6089 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6090 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6091 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6092
6093 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6094 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6095 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6096 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6097 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6098 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6099 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6100 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6101
6102 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6103 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6104 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6105
6106       </div>
6107       <div class="tags">
6108
6109
6110         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>.
6111
6112
6113       </div>
6114     </div>
6115     <div class="padding"></div>
6116
6117     <div class="entry">
6118       <div class="title">
6119         <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>
6120       </div>
6121       <div class="date">
6122         30th July 2011
6123       </div>
6124       <div class="body">
6125         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6126 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6127 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6128 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6129 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6130 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6131 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6132 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6133 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6134 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6135 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6136 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6137 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6138
6139 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6140 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6141 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6142 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6143 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6144 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6145 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6146 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6147 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6148
6149 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6150 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6151 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6152 is presented.</p>
6153
6154 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6155 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6156 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6157 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6158 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6159 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6160 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6161 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6162 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6163 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6164 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6165 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6166 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6167 find time to push this forward.</p>
6168
6169       </div>
6170       <div class="tags">
6171
6172
6173         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>.
6174
6175
6176       </div>
6177     </div>
6178     <div class="padding"></div>
6179
6180     <div class="entry">
6181       <div class="title">
6182         <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>
6183       </div>
6184       <div class="date">
6185         29th July 2011
6186       </div>
6187       <div class="body">
6188         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6189 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6190 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6191 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6192 issues.</p>
6193
6194 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6195 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6196 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6197
6198 <ol>
6199
6200 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6201 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6202 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6203 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6204 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6205 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6206 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6207 Debian.</li>
6208
6209 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6210 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6211 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6212 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6213 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6214 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6215 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6216 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6217 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6218 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6219 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6220 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6221 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6222
6223 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6224 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6225 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6226 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6227 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6228 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6229 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6230 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6231 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6232 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6233
6234 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6235 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6236 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6237 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6238 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6239 latter behaviour.</li>
6240
6241 </ol>
6242
6243 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6244 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6245 it do not matter much.</p>
6246
6247 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6248 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6249 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6250
6251       </div>
6252       <div class="tags">
6253
6254
6255         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6256
6257
6258       </div>
6259     </div>
6260     <div class="padding"></div>
6261
6262     <div class="entry">
6263       <div class="title">
6264         <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>
6265       </div>
6266       <div class="date">
6267         26th July 2011
6268       </div>
6269       <div class="body">
6270         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
6271 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6272 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6273 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6274 security support for a few years.</p>
6275
6276 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6277 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6278 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6279 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6280 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6281 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6282 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6283 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6284 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6285 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6286 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6287 easier in the future.</p>
6288
6289 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6290 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6291 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6292 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6293 do not have time for.</p>
6294
6295       </div>
6296       <div class="tags">
6297
6298
6299         Tags: <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>.
6300
6301
6302       </div>
6303     </div>
6304     <div class="padding"></div>
6305
6306     <div class="entry">
6307       <div class="title">
6308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
6309       </div>
6310       <div class="date">
6311         20th June 2011
6312       </div>
6313       <div class="body">
6314         <p>Reading
6315 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
6316 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
6317 parts of the
6318 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
6319 and
6320 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
6321 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
6322 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
6323 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
6324
6325       </div>
6326       <div class="tags">
6327
6328
6329         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>.
6330
6331
6332       </div>
6333     </div>
6334     <div class="padding"></div>
6335
6336     <div class="entry">
6337       <div class="title">
6338         <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>
6339       </div>
6340       <div class="date">
6341         30th April 2011
6342       </div>
6343       <div class="body">
6344         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
6345 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
6346 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
6347 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
6348 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
6349 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
6350 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
6351 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
6352 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
6353 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
6354
6355 <p>Where is it?  Visit
6356 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
6357 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
6358 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
6359 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
6360
6361       </div>
6362       <div class="tags">
6363
6364
6365         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>.
6366
6367
6368       </div>
6369     </div>
6370     <div class="padding"></div>
6371
6372     <div class="entry">
6373       <div class="title">
6374         <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>
6375       </div>
6376       <div class="date">
6377         29th April 2011
6378       </div>
6379       <div class="body">
6380         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
6381 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
6382 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
6383 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
6384 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
6385 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
6386 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
6387 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
6388 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
6389 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
6390 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
6391 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
6392 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
6393
6394 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
6395 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
6396 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
6397 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
6398 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
6399 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
6400 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
6401 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
6402 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
6403 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
6404 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
6405 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
6406 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
6407
6408 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
6409 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
6410 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
6411 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
6412 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
6413 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
6414 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
6415 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
6416 it.</p>
6417
6418 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
6419 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
6420 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
6421 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
6422 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
6423 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
6424 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
6425
6426 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
6427 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
6428 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
6429 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
6430 and range= options.</p>
6431
6432 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
6433 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
6434 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
6435 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
6436 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
6437 to best handle this.  I've noticed
6438 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
6439 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
6440 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
6441 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
6442
6443 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
6444 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
6445 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
6446 discussions instead of only
6447 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
6448 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
6449 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
6450 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
6451 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
6452 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
6453
6454       </div>
6455       <div class="tags">
6456
6457
6458         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>.
6459
6460
6461       </div>
6462     </div>
6463     <div class="padding"></div>
6464
6465     <div class="entry">
6466       <div class="title">
6467         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
6468       </div>
6469       <div class="date">
6470          6th April 2011
6471       </div>
6472       <div class="body">
6473         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
6474 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
6475 A few days ago the project
6476 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
6477 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
6478 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
6479 into Gnash.</p>
6480
6481       </div>
6482       <div class="tags">
6483
6484
6485         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>.
6486
6487
6488       </div>
6489     </div>
6490     <div class="padding"></div>
6491
6492     <div class="entry">
6493       <div class="title">
6494         <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>
6495       </div>
6496       <div class="date">
6497          3rd April 2011
6498       </div>
6499       <div class="body">
6500         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6501 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6502 update in English.</p>
6503
6504 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6505 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6506 of the British service
6507 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6508 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6509 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6510 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6511 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6512 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6513 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6514 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6515 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6516 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6517 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6518 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6519 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6520
6521 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6522 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6523 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6524 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6525 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6526 public infrastructure.</p>
6527
6528 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6529 such service?</p>
6530
6531       </div>
6532       <div class="tags">
6533
6534
6535         Tags: <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>.
6536
6537
6538       </div>
6539     </div>
6540     <div class="padding"></div>
6541
6542     <div class="entry">
6543       <div class="title">
6544         <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>
6545       </div>
6546       <div class="date">
6547         28th January 2011
6548       </div>
6549       <div class="body">
6550         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6551 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6552 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6553 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6554 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6555 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6556 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6557 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6558 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6559 out which security holes were present in our free software
6560 collection.</p>
6561
6562 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6563 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6564 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6565 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6566 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6567 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6568 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6569 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6570 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6571 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6572 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6573 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6574 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6575 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6576 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6577 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6578
6579 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6580 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6581 check out, one could look up
6582 <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
6583 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6584 The most recent one is
6585 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6586 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6587 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6588
6589 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6590 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
6591 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6592 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6593 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6594 security issues out.</p>
6595
6596 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6597 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6598 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6599 RHEL is providing
6600 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6601 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6602 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6603
6604 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6605 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6606 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6607 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6608 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6609 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6610 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6611 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6612 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6613 established soon.</p>
6614
6615 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6616 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6617 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6618 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6619 for their packages.</p>
6620
6621       </div>
6622       <div class="tags">
6623
6624
6625         Tags: <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>.
6626
6627
6628       </div>
6629     </div>
6630     <div class="padding"></div>
6631
6632     <div class="entry">
6633       <div class="title">
6634         <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>
6635       </div>
6636       <div class="date">
6637         23rd January 2011
6638       </div>
6639       <div class="body">
6640         <p>In the
6641 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6642 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6643 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6644 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6645 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6646 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6647 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6648 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6649 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6650 one of my machines like this:</p>
6651
6652 <pre>
6653 loaded modules:
6654 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6655 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6656 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6657 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6658 10de:03ec pata_amd
6659 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6660 1022:1103 k8temp
6661 109e:036e bttv
6662 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6663 11ab:4364 sky2
6664 </pre>
6665
6666 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6667 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6668
6669 <pre>
6670 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6671     echo loaded pci modules:
6672     (
6673         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6674         for address in * ; do
6675             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6676                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6677                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6678                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6679                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6680                     echo "$id $module"
6681                 fi
6682             fi
6683         done
6684     )
6685     echo
6686 fi
6687 </pre>
6688
6689 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6690 mappings:</p>
6691
6692 <pre>
6693 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6694     echo loaded usb modules:
6695     (
6696         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6697         for address in * ; do
6698             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6699                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6700                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6701                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6702                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6703                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6704                         echo "$id $module"
6705                     fi
6706                 fi
6707             fi
6708         done
6709     )
6710     echo
6711 fi
6712 </pre>
6713
6714 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6715 well.</p>
6716
6717       </div>
6718       <div class="tags">
6719
6720
6721         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6722
6723
6724       </div>
6725     </div>
6726     <div class="padding"></div>
6727
6728     <div class="entry">
6729       <div class="title">
6730         <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>
6731       </div>
6732       <div class="date">
6733         16th January 2011
6734       </div>
6735       <div class="body">
6736         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
6737 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
6738 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
6739 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
6740 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
6741 the Wikipedia article on
6742 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
6743 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
6744 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
6745 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
6746 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
6747 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
6748 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
6749 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
6750 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
6751 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
6752 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
6753 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
6754
6755 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
6756 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
6757 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
6758 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
6759 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
6760 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
6761 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
6762 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
6763 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
6764 from last week</a>.</p>
6765
6766 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
6767 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
6768 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
6769 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
6770 was without royalties and license terms, check out
6771 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
6772 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
6773
6774 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
6775 available from
6776 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
6777 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
6778 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
6779
6780 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
6781 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
6782 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
6783 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
6784
6785       </div>
6786       <div class="tags">
6787
6788
6789         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6790
6791
6792       </div>
6793     </div>
6794     <div class="padding"></div>
6795
6796     <div class="entry">
6797       <div class="title">
6798         <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>
6799       </div>
6800       <div class="date">
6801         12th January 2011
6802       </div>
6803       <div class="body">
6804         <p>Today I discovered
6805 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
6806 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
6807 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
6808 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
6809 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
6810 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
6811 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
6812 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
6813 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
6814 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
6815 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
6816 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
6817 on the Google announcement is available from
6818 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
6819 A good read. :)</p>
6820
6821 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
6822 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
6823 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
6824 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
6825 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
6826 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
6827 browsers support H.264, and others support
6828 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
6829 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
6830 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
6831 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
6832 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
6833 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
6834 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
6835 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
6836
6837 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
6838 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
6839 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
6840 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
6841 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
6842 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
6843 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
6844
6845 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
6846 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
6847 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
6848 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
6849 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
6850 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
6851 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
6852
6853 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
6854 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
6855 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
6856 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
6857 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
6858 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
6859 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
6860
6861 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
6862 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
6863 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
6864 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
6865 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
6866 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
6867 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
6868 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
6869 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
6870 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
6871 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
6872 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
6873 I guess time will tell.</p>
6874
6875 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
6876 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
6877 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
6878
6879       </div>
6880       <div class="tags">
6881
6882
6883         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6884
6885
6886       </div>
6887     </div>
6888     <div class="padding"></div>
6889
6890     <div class="entry">
6891       <div class="title">
6892         <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>
6893       </div>
6894       <div class="date">
6895         30th December 2010
6896       </div>
6897       <div class="body">
6898         <p>After trying to
6899 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
6900 Ogg Theora</a> to
6901 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
6902 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
6903 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
6904 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
6905 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
6906 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
6907 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
6908
6909 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
6910 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
6911 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
6912 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
6913 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
6914 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
6915 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
6916
6917 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
6918 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
6919
6920       </div>
6921       <div class="tags">
6922
6923
6924         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>.
6925
6926
6927       </div>
6928     </div>
6929     <div class="padding"></div>
6930
6931     <div class="entry">
6932       <div class="title">
6933         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
6934       </div>
6935       <div class="date">
6936         27th December 2010
6937       </div>
6938       <div class="body">
6939         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
6940 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
6941 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
6942 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
6943 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
6944 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
6945 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
6946 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
6947
6948 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
6949 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
6950 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
6951 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
6952 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
6953 page</a>.</p>
6954
6955 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
6956 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
6957 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
6958 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
6959 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
6960 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
6961 specification on equal terms.</p>
6962
6963 <blockquote>
6964
6965 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
6966 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
6967 open standard:</p>
6968
6969 <ul>
6970
6971 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6972 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6973 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
6974 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
6975
6976 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
6977 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
6978 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
6979 nominal fee.</li>
6980
6981 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
6982 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
6983 free basis.</li>
6984
6985 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
6986
6987 </ul>
6988 </blockquote>
6989
6990 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
6991 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
6992 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
6993 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
6994 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
6995 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
6996 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
6997
6998 <blockquote>
6999
7000 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
7001
7002 <ol>
7003
7004 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
7005 tilgængelig.</li>
7006
7007 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
7008 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
7009
7010 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
7011 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
7012
7013 </ol>
7014
7015 </blockquote>
7016
7017 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
7018 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
7019
7020 <blockquote>
7021
7022 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
7023
7024 <ol>
7025
7026 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
7027 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
7028
7029 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
7030 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
7031 Standard themselves;</li>
7032
7033 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
7034 any party or in any business model;</li>
7035
7036 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
7037 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
7038 parties;</li>
7039
7040 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
7041 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
7042 parties.</li>
7043
7044 </ol>
7045
7046 </blockquote>
7047
7048 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
7049 its
7050 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
7051 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
7052
7053 <blockquote>
7054 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
7055
7056 <ul>
7057
7058 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
7059   democratic:
7060
7061          <ul>
7062
7063          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
7064             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
7065             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
7066             and managed.</li>
7067
7068          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
7069             method, can be changed through input from all
7070             participants.</li>
7071
7072          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
7073             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
7074
7075          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
7076             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
7077
7078          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
7079             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
7080             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
7081
7082          </ul>
7083
7084 </li>
7085
7086 </ul>
7087
7088 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
7089 <ul>
7090
7091 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
7092   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
7093   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
7094   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
7095   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
7096
7097 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
7098   a technical or economic barriers</li>
7099
7100 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
7101   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
7102   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
7103   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
7104   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
7105   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
7106   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
7107   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
7108   intended to function.</li>
7109
7110 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
7111   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
7112   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
7113
7114 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
7115   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
7116   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
7117   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
7118   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
7119   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
7120   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
7121   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
7122
7123       <ul>
7124
7125       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
7126         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
7127         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
7128
7129       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
7130         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
7131         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
7132         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
7133
7134       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
7135         licensor</li>
7136
7137       </ul>
7138 </li>
7139
7140 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
7141   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
7142   or restricted licensing terms</li>
7143
7144 </ul>
7145
7146 </blockquote>
7147
7148 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
7149 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
7150 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
7151 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
7152 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
7153 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
7154 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
7155 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
7156 Standards.</p>
7157
7158       </div>
7159       <div class="tags">
7160
7161
7162         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>.
7163
7164
7165       </div>
7166     </div>
7167     <div class="padding"></div>
7168
7169     <div class="entry">
7170       <div class="title">
7171         <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>
7172       </div>
7173       <div class="date">
7174         25th December 2010
7175       </div>
7176       <div class="body">
7177         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
7178 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
7179
7180 <blockquote>
7181
7182 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
7183 as follows:</p>
7184
7185 <ol>
7186
7187 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
7188 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
7189 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
7190
7191 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7192 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7193 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
7194 parties.</li>
7195
7196 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
7197 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
7198 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
7199
7200 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
7201 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
7202
7203 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
7204
7205 </ol>
7206
7207 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
7208 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
7209 products based on the standard.</p>
7210 </blockquote>
7211
7212 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
7213 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
7214 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
7215 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
7216 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
7217 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
7218 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
7219 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
7220
7221 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
7222
7223 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
7224 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
7225 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
7226 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
7227 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
7228 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
7229 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
7230 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
7231 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
7232 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
7233 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
7234 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
7235 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
7236 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
7237
7238 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
7239
7240 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
7241 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
7242 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
7243 documentation indicating this.</p>
7244
7245 <p>According to
7246 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
7247 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
7248 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
7249 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
7250 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
7251 report is correct.</p>
7252
7253 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
7254
7255 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
7256 container format</a> and both the
7257 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
7258 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
7259 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
7260
7261 <blockquote>
7262
7263 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
7264 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
7265 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
7266 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
7267 specification compliance.
7268
7269 </blockquote>
7270
7271 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
7272 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
7273 this is the term:<p>
7274
7275 <blockquote>
7276
7277 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
7278 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
7279 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
7280 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
7281 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
7282 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
7283 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
7284 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
7285 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
7286 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
7287 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
7288 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
7289
7290 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
7291 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
7292 </blockquote>
7293
7294 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
7295 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
7296 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
7297 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
7298 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
7299
7300 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
7301
7302 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
7303 Theora format.
7304 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
7305 and
7306 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
7307 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
7308 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
7309 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
7310 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
7311 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
7312 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
7313 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
7314
7315 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
7316
7317 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
7318
7319 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
7320
7321 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
7322 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
7323 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
7324 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
7325 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
7326 this.</p>
7327
7328 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
7329 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
7330
7331       </div>
7332       <div class="tags">
7333
7334
7335         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7336
7337
7338       </div>
7339     </div>
7340     <div class="padding"></div>
7341
7342     <div class="entry">
7343       <div class="title">
7344         <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>
7345       </div>
7346       <div class="date">
7347         25th December 2010
7348       </div>
7349       <div class="body">
7350         <p>A few days ago
7351 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
7352 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
7353 2.0 of
7354 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
7355 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
7356 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
7357 Nothing very surprising there, given
7358 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
7359 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
7360 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
7361 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
7362 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
7363 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
7364 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
7365 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
7366 standard definition from its content.</p>
7367
7368 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
7369 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
7370 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
7371 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
7372 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
7373 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
7374 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
7375 background information about that story is available in
7376 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
7377 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
7378
7379 <blockquote>
7380 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
7381 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
7382 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
7383
7384 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
7385
7386 <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>
7387
7388 <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>
7389
7390 <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>
7391
7392 <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>
7393
7394 <p>
7395 <ul>
7396 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
7397 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
7398 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
7399 </ul>
7400 </p>
7401
7402 <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>
7403
7404 <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>
7405
7406 <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>
7407
7408 <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>
7409
7410 <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>
7411
7412
7413 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
7414 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
7415 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
7416 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
7417 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
7418 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
7419
7420 </p>
7421
7422 <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>
7423
7424 <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>
7425
7426 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
7427
7428 <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>
7429
7430 <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>
7431
7432 <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>
7433
7434 <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>
7435
7436 <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>
7437
7438 <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>
7439
7440 <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>
7441
7442 <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>
7443
7444 <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>
7445
7446 <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>
7447
7448 <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>
7449
7450 <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>
7451
7452 <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>
7453
7454 <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>
7455
7456 <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>
7457
7458 <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>
7459
7460 <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>
7461
7462 <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>
7463
7464 <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>
7465
7466 <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>
7467
7468 <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>
7469
7470 <p>On security:</p>
7471
7472 <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>
7473
7474 <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>
7475
7476 <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>
7477
7478 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
7479
7480 <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>
7481
7482 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
7483
7484 <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>
7485
7486 <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>
7487
7488 <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>
7489
7490 <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>
7491
7492 <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>
7493
7494 <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>
7495
7496 <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>
7497
7498 <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>
7499
7500 <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>
7501
7502 <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>
7503
7504 <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>
7505
7506 <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>
7507
7508 <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>
7509
7510 <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>
7511
7512 <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>
7513
7514 <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>
7515
7516 <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>
7517
7518 <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>
7519
7520 <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>
7521
7522 <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>
7523
7524 <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>
7525
7526 <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>
7527
7528 <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>
7529
7530 <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>
7531
7532 <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>
7533
7534 <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>
7535
7536 <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>
7537
7538 <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>
7539
7540 <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>
7541
7542 <p>Cordially,<br>
7543 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
7544 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
7545 </blockquote>
7546
7547       </div>
7548       <div class="tags">
7549
7550
7551         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>.
7552
7553
7554       </div>
7555     </div>
7556     <div class="padding"></div>
7557
7558     <div class="entry">
7559       <div class="title">
7560         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
7561       </div>
7562       <div class="date">
7563         25th December 2010
7564       </div>
7565       <div class="body">
7566         <p>Half a year ago I
7567 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
7568 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
7569 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
7570 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
7571
7572 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
7573 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
7574 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
7575 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
7576 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
7577 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
7578 got such a great test tool available.</p>
7579
7580       </div>
7581       <div class="tags">
7582
7583
7584         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>.
7585
7586
7587       </div>
7588     </div>
7589     <div class="padding"></div>
7590
7591     <div class="entry">
7592       <div class="title">
7593         <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>
7594       </div>
7595       <div class="date">
7596         22nd December 2010
7597       </div>
7598       <div class="body">
7599         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
7600 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
7601 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
7602 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
7603 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
7604 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
7605 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
7606 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
7607 university.</p>
7608
7609 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
7610 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
7611 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
7612 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
7613 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
7614 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
7615 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
7616 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
7617
7618 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
7619 I perform on a new model.</p>
7620
7621 <ul>
7622
7623 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
7624 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
7625 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
7626
7627 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
7628 installation, X.org is working.</li>
7629
7630 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
7631 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
7632 reported by the program.</li>
7633
7634 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
7635 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
7636 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
7637 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
7638 normally test this by playing
7639 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
7640 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
7641
7642 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
7643 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
7644
7645 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
7646 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
7647
7648 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
7649 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
7650
7651 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
7652 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
7653 few.</li>
7654
7655 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
7656 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
7657 notice this.</li>
7658
7659 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
7660 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
7661 resume.</li>
7662
7663 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
7664 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
7665 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
7666 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
7667 not.</li>
7668
7669 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
7670 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
7671 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
7672 existence.</li>
7673
7674 </ul>
7675
7676 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
7677 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
7678 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
7679 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
7680 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
7681 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
7682 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
7683 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
7684
7685       </div>
7686       <div class="tags">
7687
7688
7689         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>.
7690
7691
7692       </div>
7693     </div>
7694     <div class="padding"></div>
7695
7696     <div class="entry">
7697       <div class="title">
7698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
7699       </div>
7700       <div class="date">
7701         11th December 2010
7702       </div>
7703       <div class="body">
7704         <p>As I continue to explore
7705 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
7706 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
7707 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
7708
7709 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
7710 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
7711 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
7712 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
7713 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
7714 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
7715 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
7716 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
7717 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
7718 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
7719 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
7720 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
7721 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
7722 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
7723 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
7724 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
7725 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
7726 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
7727 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
7728 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
7729
7730 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
7731 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
7732 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
7733 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
7734 If the Skolelinux foundation
7735 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
7736 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
7737 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
7738 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
7739 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
7740 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
7741 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
7742 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
7743
7744 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
7745 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
7746 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
7747 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
7748 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
7749 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
7750 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
7751 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
7752 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
7753 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
7754 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
7755 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
7756 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
7757 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
7758 currencies.</p>
7759
7760 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
7761 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
7762 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
7763 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
7764 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
7765 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
7766 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
7767 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
7768 BitCoins.  Check out
7769 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
7770 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
7771 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
7772 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
7773 yet.</p>
7774
7775 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
7776 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
7777 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
7778 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
7779 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
7780
7781       </div>
7782       <div class="tags">
7783
7784
7785         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>.
7786
7787
7788       </div>
7789     </div>
7790     <div class="padding"></div>
7791
7792     <div class="entry">
7793       <div class="title">
7794         <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>
7795       </div>
7796       <div class="date">
7797         10th December 2010
7798       </div>
7799       <div class="body">
7800         <p>With this weeks lawless
7801 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
7802 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
7803 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
7804 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
7805 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
7806 A blog post from
7807 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
7808 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
7809 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
7810 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
7811 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
7812 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
7813 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
7814
7815 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
7816 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
7817 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
7818 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
7819 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
7820 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
7821 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
7822 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
7823 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
7824 Debian</a> soon.</p>
7825
7826 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
7827 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
7828 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
7829 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
7830 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
7831 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
7832 you can even get
7833 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
7834 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
7835 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
7836 on the current exchange rates.</p>
7837
7838 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
7839 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
7840 donations to the address
7841 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
7842
7843       </div>
7844       <div class="tags">
7845
7846
7847         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>.
7848
7849
7850       </div>
7851     </div>
7852     <div class="padding"></div>
7853
7854     <div class="entry">
7855       <div class="title">
7856         <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>
7857       </div>
7858       <div class="date">
7859          9th December 2010
7860       </div>
7861       <div class="body">
7862         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
7863 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
7864 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
7865 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
7866 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
7867 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
7868 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
7869 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
7870 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
7871 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
7872 operational.</p>
7873
7874 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
7875 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
7876 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
7877 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
7878 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
7879 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
7880 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
7881
7882       </div>
7883       <div class="tags">
7884
7885
7886         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>.
7887
7888
7889       </div>
7890     </div>
7891     <div class="padding"></div>
7892
7893     <div class="entry">
7894       <div class="title">
7895         <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>
7896       </div>
7897       <div class="date">
7898         29th November 2010
7899       </div>
7900       <div class="body">
7901         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7902 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
7903 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
7904 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
7905 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
7906 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
7907
7908 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
7909 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
7910 will hold its
7911 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
7912 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
7913 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
7914 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
7915 vote this year.</p>
7916
7917       </div>
7918       <div class="tags">
7919
7920
7921         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7922
7923
7924       </div>
7925     </div>
7926     <div class="padding"></div>
7927
7928     <div class="entry">
7929       <div class="title">
7930         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
7931       </div>
7932       <div class="date">
7933         27th November 2010
7934       </div>
7935       <div class="body">
7936         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
7937 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
7938 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
7939 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
7940 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
7941 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
7942 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
7943 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
7944
7945 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
7946 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7947 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
7948 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
7949 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
7950 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
7951 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
7952 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
7953 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
7954 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
7955 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
7956
7957 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
7958 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
7959 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
7960 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
7961 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
7962 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
7963 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
7964 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
7965 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
7966 what is going on.</p>
7967
7968       </div>
7969       <div class="tags">
7970
7971
7972         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>.
7973
7974
7975       </div>
7976     </div>
7977     <div class="padding"></div>
7978
7979     <div class="entry">
7980       <div class="title">
7981         <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>
7982       </div>
7983       <div class="date">
7984         22nd November 2010
7985       </div>
7986       <div class="body">
7987         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
7988 upgrade testing of the
7989 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7990 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
7991 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
7992 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
7993
7994 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7995
7996 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7997
7998 <blockquote><p>
7999   apache2.2-bin
8000   aptdaemon
8001   baobab
8002   binfmt-support
8003   browser-plugin-gnash
8004   cheese-common
8005   cli-common
8006   cups-pk-helper
8007   dmz-cursor-theme
8008   empathy
8009   empathy-common
8010   freedesktop-sound-theme
8011   freeglut3
8012   gconf-defaults-service
8013   gdm-themes
8014   gedit-plugins
8015   geoclue
8016   geoclue-hostip
8017   geoclue-localnet
8018   geoclue-manual
8019   geoclue-yahoo
8020   gnash
8021   gnash-common
8022   gnome
8023   gnome-backgrounds
8024   gnome-cards-data
8025   gnome-codec-install
8026   gnome-core
8027   gnome-desktop-environment
8028   gnome-disk-utility
8029   gnome-screenshot
8030   gnome-search-tool
8031   gnome-session-canberra
8032   gnome-system-log
8033   gnome-themes-extras
8034   gnome-themes-more
8035   gnome-user-share
8036   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8037   gstreamer0.10-tools
8038   gtk2-engines
8039   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8040   gtk2-engines-smooth
8041   hamster-applet
8042   libapache2-mod-dnssd
8043   libapr1
8044   libaprutil1
8045   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
8046   libaprutil1-ldap
8047   libart2.0-cil
8048   libboost-date-time1.42.0
8049   libboost-python1.42.0
8050   libboost-thread1.42.0
8051   libchamplain-0.4-0
8052   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
8053   libcheese-gtk18
8054   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8055   libcryptui0
8056   libdiscid0
8057   libelf1
8058   libepc-1.0-2
8059   libepc-common
8060   libepc-ui-1.0-2
8061   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8062   libfreerdp0
8063   libgconf2.0-cil
8064   libgdata-common
8065   libgdata7
8066   libgdu-gtk0
8067   libgee2
8068   libgeoclue0
8069   libgexiv2-0
8070   libgif4
8071   libglade2.0-cil
8072   libglib2.0-cil
8073   libgmime2.4-cil
8074   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8075   libgnome2.24-cil
8076   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
8077   libgpod-common
8078   libgpod4
8079   libgtk2.0-cil
8080   libgtkglext1
8081   libgtksourceview2.0-common
8082   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8083   libmono-addins0.2-cil
8084   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
8085   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8086   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
8087   libmono-posix2.0-cil
8088   libmono-security2.0-cil
8089   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8090   libmono-system2.0-cil
8091   libmtp8
8092   libmusicbrainz3-6
8093   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
8094   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
8095   libopal3.6.8
8096   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
8097   libpt2.6.7
8098   libpython2.6
8099   librpm1
8100   librpmio1
8101   libsdl1.2debian
8102   libsrtp0
8103   libssh-4
8104   libtelepathy-farsight0
8105   libtelepathy-glib0
8106   libtidy-0.99-0
8107   media-player-info
8108   mesa-utils
8109   mono-2.0-gac
8110   mono-gac
8111   mono-runtime
8112   nautilus-sendto
8113   nautilus-sendto-empathy
8114   p7zip-full
8115   pkg-config
8116   python-aptdaemon
8117   python-aptdaemon-gtk
8118   python-axiom
8119   python-beautifulsoup
8120   python-bugbuddy
8121   python-clientform
8122   python-coherence
8123   python-configobj
8124   python-crypto
8125   python-cupshelpers
8126   python-elementtree
8127   python-epsilon
8128   python-evolution
8129   python-feedparser
8130   python-gdata
8131   python-gdbm
8132   python-gst0.10
8133   python-gtkglext1
8134   python-gtksourceview2
8135   python-httplib2
8136   python-louie
8137   python-mako
8138   python-markupsafe
8139   python-mechanize
8140   python-nevow
8141   python-notify
8142   python-opengl
8143   python-openssl
8144   python-pam
8145   python-pkg-resources
8146   python-pyasn1
8147   python-pysqlite2
8148   python-rdflib
8149   python-serial
8150   python-tagpy
8151   python-twisted-bin
8152   python-twisted-conch
8153   python-twisted-core
8154   python-twisted-web
8155   python-utidylib
8156   python-webkit
8157   python-xdg
8158   python-zope.interface
8159   remmina
8160   remmina-plugin-data
8161   remmina-plugin-rdp
8162   remmina-plugin-vnc
8163   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8164   rhythmbox-plugins
8165   rpm-common
8166   rpm2cpio
8167   seahorse-plugins
8168   shotwell
8169   software-center
8170   system-config-printer-udev
8171   telepathy-gabble
8172   telepathy-mission-control-5
8173   telepathy-salut
8174   tomboy
8175   totem
8176   totem-coherence
8177   totem-mozilla
8178   totem-plugins
8179   transmission-common
8180   xdg-user-dirs
8181   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
8182   xserver-xephyr
8183 </p></blockquote>
8184
8185 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8186
8187 <blockquote><p>
8188   cheese
8189   ekiga
8190   eog
8191   epiphany-extensions
8192   evolution-exchange
8193   fast-user-switch-applet
8194   file-roller
8195   gcalctool
8196   gconf-editor
8197   gdm
8198   gedit
8199   gedit-common
8200   gnome-games
8201   gnome-games-data
8202   gnome-nettool
8203   gnome-system-tools
8204   gnome-themes
8205   gnuchess
8206   gucharmap
8207   guile-1.8-libs
8208   libavahi-ui0
8209   libdmx1
8210   libgalago3
8211   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8212   libgtksourceview2.0-0
8213   liblircclient0
8214   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
8215   libspeexdsp1
8216   libsvga1
8217   rhythmbox
8218   seahorse
8219   sound-juicer
8220   system-config-printer
8221   totem-common
8222   transmission-gtk
8223   vinagre
8224   vino
8225 </p></blockquote>
8226
8227 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8228
8229 <blockquote><p>
8230   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8231 </p></blockquote>
8232
8233 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8234
8235 <blockquote><p>
8236 [nothing]
8237 </p></blockquote>
8238
8239 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
8240
8241 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8242
8243 <blockquote><p>
8244   ksmserver
8245 </p></blockquote>
8246
8247 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8248
8249 <blockquote><p>
8250   kwin
8251   network-manager-kde
8252 </p></blockquote>
8253
8254 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8255
8256 <blockquote><p>
8257   arts
8258   dolphin
8259   freespacenotifier
8260   google-gadgets-gst
8261   google-gadgets-xul
8262   kappfinder
8263   kcalc
8264   kcharselect
8265   kde-core
8266   kde-plasma-desktop
8267   kde-standard
8268   kde-window-manager
8269   kdeartwork
8270   kdeartwork-emoticons
8271   kdeartwork-style
8272   kdeartwork-theme-icon
8273   kdebase
8274   kdebase-apps
8275   kdebase-workspace
8276   kdebase-workspace-bin
8277   kdebase-workspace-data
8278   kdeeject
8279   kdelibs
8280   kdeplasma-addons
8281   kdeutils
8282   kdewallpapers
8283   kdf
8284   kfloppy
8285   kgpg
8286   khelpcenter4
8287   kinfocenter
8288   konq-plugins-l10n
8289   konqueror-nsplugins
8290   kscreensaver
8291   kscreensaver-xsavers
8292   ktimer
8293   kwrite
8294   libgle3
8295   libkde4-ruby1.8
8296   libkonq5
8297   libkonq5-templates
8298   libnetpbm10
8299   libplasma-ruby
8300   libplasma-ruby1.8
8301   libqt4-ruby1.8
8302   marble-data
8303   marble-plugins
8304   netpbm
8305   nuvola-icon-theme
8306   plasma-dataengines-workspace
8307   plasma-desktop
8308   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
8309   plasma-runners-addons
8310   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
8311   plasma-scriptengine-python
8312   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
8313   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
8314   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
8315   plasma-scriptengines
8316   plasma-wallpapers-addons
8317   plasma-widget-folderview
8318   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8319   ruby
8320   sweeper
8321   update-notifier-kde
8322   xscreensaver-data-extra
8323   xscreensaver-gl
8324   xscreensaver-gl-extra
8325   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8326 </p></blockquote>
8327
8328 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8329
8330 <blockquote><p>
8331   ark
8332   google-gadgets-common
8333   google-gadgets-qt
8334   htdig
8335   kate
8336   kdebase-bin
8337   kdebase-data
8338   kdepasswd
8339   kfind
8340   klipper
8341   konq-plugins
8342   konqueror
8343   ksysguard
8344   ksysguardd
8345   libarchive1
8346   libcln6
8347   libeet1
8348   libeina-svn-06
8349   libggadget-1.0-0b
8350   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
8351   libgps19
8352   libkdecorations4
8353   libkephal4
8354   libkonq4
8355   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
8356   libkscreensaver5
8357   libksgrd4
8358   libksignalplotter4
8359   libkunitconversion4
8360   libkwineffects1a
8361   libmarblewidget4
8362   libntrack-qt4-1
8363   libntrack0
8364   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8365   libplasmaclock4a
8366   libplasmagenericshell4
8367   libprocesscore4a
8368   libprocessui4a
8369   libqalculate5
8370   libqedje0a
8371   libqtruby4shared2
8372   libqzion0a
8373   libruby1.8
8374   libscim8c2a
8375   libsmokekdecore4-3
8376   libsmokekdeui4-3
8377   libsmokekfile3
8378   libsmokekhtml3
8379   libsmokekio3
8380   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
8381   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
8382   libsmokekparts3
8383   libsmokektexteditor3
8384   libsmokekutils3
8385   libsmokenepomuk3
8386   libsmokephonon3
8387   libsmokeplasma3
8388   libsmokeqtcore4-3
8389   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
8390   libsmokeqtgui4-3
8391   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
8392   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
8393   libsmokeqtscript4-3
8394   libsmokeqtsql4-3
8395   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
8396   libsmokeqttest4-3
8397   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
8398   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
8399   libsmokeqtxml4-3
8400   libsmokesolid3
8401   libsmokesoprano3
8402   libtaskmanager4a
8403   libtidy-0.99-0
8404   libweather-ion4a
8405   libxklavier16
8406   libxxf86misc1
8407   okteta
8408   oxygencursors
8409   plasma-dataengines-addons
8410   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8411   plasma-widget-lancelot
8412   plasma-widgets-addons
8413   plasma-widgets-workspace
8414   polkit-kde-1
8415   ruby1.8
8416   systemsettings
8417   update-notifier-common
8418 </p></blockquote>
8419
8420 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8421 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8422 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8423 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
8424
8425       </div>
8426       <div class="tags">
8427
8428
8429         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>.
8430
8431
8432       </div>
8433     </div>
8434     <div class="padding"></div>
8435
8436     <div class="entry">
8437       <div class="title">
8438         <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>
8439       </div>
8440       <div class="date">
8441         22nd November 2010
8442       </div>
8443       <div class="body">
8444         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
8445 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
8446 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
8447 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8448 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
8449 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8450 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8451 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
8452 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
8453
8454 <p>I found
8455 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
8456 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8457 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8458 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8459 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
8460 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
8461
8462 <pre>
8463 #!/bin/sh
8464
8465 # Based on
8466 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8467
8468 set -e
8469 set -x
8470
8471 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
8472     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
8473     exit 1
8474 else
8475     host="$1"
8476 fi
8477
8478 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8479     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
8480     exit 1
8481 fi
8482
8483 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
8484 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
8485 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
8486 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8487
8488 img=$host.img
8489 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8490 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8491
8492 parted $img mklabel msdos
8493 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
8494 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8495 parted $img set 1 boot on
8496
8497 modprobe dm-mod
8498 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8499 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8500
8501 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
8502 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8503 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8504
8505 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8506 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8507 </pre>
8508
8509 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
8510 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
8511
8512 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
8513 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
8514 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
8515 seem to work just fine.</p>
8516
8517       </div>
8518       <div class="tags">
8519
8520
8521         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>.
8522
8523
8524       </div>
8525     </div>
8526     <div class="padding"></div>
8527
8528     <div class="entry">
8529       <div class="title">
8530         <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>
8531       </div>
8532       <div class="date">
8533         20th November 2010
8534       </div>
8535       <div class="body">
8536         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
8537 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8538 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
8539 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
8540
8541 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
8542 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
8543 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
8544
8545 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8546
8547 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8548
8549 <blockquote><p>
8550   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
8551   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
8552   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
8553   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
8554   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
8555   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
8556   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
8557   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
8558   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
8559   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
8560   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8561   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8562   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
8563   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
8564   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
8565   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
8566   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8567   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
8568   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8569   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
8570   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
8571   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8572   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
8573   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
8574   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
8575   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8576   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8577   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
8578   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8579   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
8580   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
8581   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8582   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
8583   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
8584   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
8585   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
8586   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
8587   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
8588   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
8589   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
8590   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
8591   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
8592   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
8593   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
8594   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
8595   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
8596   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
8597   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
8598   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
8599   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
8600   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
8601   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
8602   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8603   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
8604   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
8605   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
8606   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
8607   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
8608   zip
8609 </p></blockquote>
8610
8611 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
8612
8613 <blockquote><p>
8614   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
8615   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
8616   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
8617   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
8618   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
8619   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
8620   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
8621   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
8622   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
8623   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
8624   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
8625   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8626   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8627   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8628   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8629   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
8630   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8631   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
8632   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
8633   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
8634   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
8635   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
8636   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8637   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
8638   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
8639   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
8640   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
8641   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
8642   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
8643 </p></blockquote>
8644
8645 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8646
8647 <blockquote><p>
8648   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8649 </p></blockquote>
8650
8651 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8652
8653 <blockquote><p>
8654 [nothing]
8655 </p></blockquote>
8656
8657 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
8658
8659 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8660
8661 <blockquote><p>
8662   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
8663   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8664   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
8665   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
8666   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
8667   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
8668   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8669   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
8670   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
8671   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8672   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
8673   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
8674   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
8675   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
8676   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
8677   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
8678   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
8679   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
8680   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
8681   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
8682   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
8683   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
8684   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
8685   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
8686   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
8687   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
8688   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
8689   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
8690   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
8691   ttf-sazanami-gothic
8692 </p></blockquote>
8693
8694 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8695
8696 <blockquote><p>
8697   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
8698   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
8699   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
8700   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
8701   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
8702   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
8703   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
8704   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
8705   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
8706   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
8707   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
8708   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
8709   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
8710   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
8711   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8712   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8713   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
8714   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
8715   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8716   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
8717   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8718   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
8719   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8720   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8721   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
8722   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
8723   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
8724   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
8725   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
8726   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
8727   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
8728   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
8729   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
8730 </p></blockquote>
8731
8732 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8733
8734 <blockquote><p>
8735   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
8736   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
8737   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
8738   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
8739   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8740   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
8741   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8742 </p></blockquote>
8743
8744 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8745
8746 <blockquote><p>
8747   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
8748 </p></blockquote>
8749
8750       </div>
8751       <div class="tags">
8752
8753
8754         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>.
8755
8756
8757       </div>
8758     </div>
8759     <div class="padding"></div>
8760
8761     <div class="entry">
8762       <div class="title">
8763         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
8764       </div>
8765       <div class="date">
8766         20th November 2010
8767       </div>
8768       <div class="body">
8769         <p>Answering
8770 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
8771 call from the Gnash project</a> for
8772 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
8773 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
8774 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
8775 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
8776 releases out more often.</p>
8777
8778 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
8779 I have considered setting up a <a
8780 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
8781 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
8782 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
8783 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
8784 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
8785 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
8786 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
8787 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
8788 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
8789 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
8790 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
8791 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
8792
8793       </div>
8794       <div class="tags">
8795
8796
8797         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>.
8798
8799
8800       </div>
8801     </div>
8802     <div class="padding"></div>
8803
8804     <div class="entry">
8805       <div class="title">
8806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
8807       </div>
8808       <div class="date">
8809          9th November 2010
8810       </div>
8811       <div class="body">
8812         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
8813
8814 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
8815 3D linked in from
8816 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
8817 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
8818
8819       </div>
8820       <div class="tags">
8821
8822
8823         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>.
8824
8825
8826       </div>
8827     </div>
8828     <div class="padding"></div>
8829
8830     <div class="entry">
8831       <div class="title">
8832         <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>
8833       </div>
8834       <div class="date">
8835          7th November 2010
8836       </div>
8837       <div class="body">
8838         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
8839 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
8840 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
8841 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
8842 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
8843 working using this DVD.</p>
8844
8845 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
8846 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
8847 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
8848 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
8849 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
8850 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
8851 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
8852
8853 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
8854 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
8855 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
8856 Debian archive.</p>
8857
8858 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
8859 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
8860 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
8861 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
8862 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
8863 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
8864 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
8865 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
8866 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
8867 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
8868 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
8869 free X driver should work.</p>
8870
8871 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
8872 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
8873 DVD more useful again.</p>
8874
8875       </div>
8876       <div class="tags">
8877
8878
8879         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8880
8881
8882       </div>
8883     </div>
8884     <div class="padding"></div>
8885
8886     <div class="entry">
8887       <div class="title">
8888         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
8889       </div>
8890       <div class="date">
8891         24th October 2010
8892       </div>
8893       <div class="body">
8894         <p>Some updates.</p>
8895
8896 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
8897 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
8898 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
8899 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
8900 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
8901 :)</p>
8902
8903 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
8904 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
8905 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
8906 It is called
8907 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
8908 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
8909 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
8910 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
8911 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
8912 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
8913
8914 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
8915 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
8916 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
8917 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
8918 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
8919 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
8920 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
8921 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
8922 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
8923 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
8924
8925       </div>
8926       <div class="tags">
8927
8928
8929         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>.
8930
8931
8932       </div>
8933     </div>
8934     <div class="padding"></div>
8935
8936     <div class="entry">
8937       <div class="title">
8938         <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>
8939       </div>
8940       <div class="date">
8941         19th October 2010
8942       </div>
8943       <div class="body">
8944         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
8945 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
8946 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
8947 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
8948 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
8949 AVM2 flash files.</p>
8950
8951 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
8952 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
8953 following text:</P>
8954
8955 <p><blockquote>
8956
8957   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
8958   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
8959
8960   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
8961
8962   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
8963
8964   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
8965   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
8966   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
8967   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
8968   days. The project web page is available from
8969   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
8970   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
8971   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
8972
8973   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
8974   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
8975   to get this to happen.</p>
8976
8977   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
8978   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
8979
8980 </blockquote></p>
8981
8982 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
8983 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
8984 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
8985 :)</p>
8986
8987       </div>
8988       <div class="tags">
8989
8990
8991         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>.
8992
8993
8994       </div>
8995     </div>
8996     <div class="padding"></div>
8997
8998     <div class="entry">
8999       <div class="title">
9000         <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>
9001       </div>
9002       <div class="date">
9003          9th October 2010
9004       </div>
9005       <div class="body">
9006         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
9007 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
9008 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
9009 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
9010 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
9011 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
9012 robots.</p>
9013
9014 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
9015 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
9016 a few less important features too.</p>
9017
9018 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
9019 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
9020 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
9021 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
9022
9023 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
9024 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
9025 source or binary package:</p>
9026
9027 <p><ul>
9028 <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>
9029 <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>
9030 <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>
9031 </ul></p>
9032
9033 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
9034 please let me know.</p>
9035
9036       </div>
9037       <div class="tags">
9038
9039
9040         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>.
9041
9042
9043       </div>
9044     </div>
9045     <div class="padding"></div>
9046
9047     <div class="entry">
9048       <div class="title">
9049         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
9050       </div>
9051       <div class="date">
9052          3rd October 2010
9053       </div>
9054       <div class="body">
9055         <p><ul>
9056
9057 <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
9058 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
9059
9060 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
9061 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
9062 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
9063
9064 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
9065 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
9066 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
9067 simple setup.
9068
9069 </ul></p>
9070
9071       </div>
9072       <div class="tags">
9073
9074
9075         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>.
9076
9077
9078       </div>
9079     </div>
9080     <div class="padding"></div>
9081
9082     <div class="entry">
9083       <div class="title">
9084         <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>
9085       </div>
9086       <div class="date">
9087          9th September 2010
9088       </div>
9089       <div class="body">
9090         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
9091 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
9092 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
9093 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
9094 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
9095 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
9096 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
9097 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
9098 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
9099
9100 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
9101 written:</p>
9102
9103 <blockquote>
9104 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
9105 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
9106 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
9107 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
9108 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
9109
9110 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
9111 standard.</p>
9112 </blockquote>
9113
9114 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
9115 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
9116 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
9117 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
9118
9119 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
9120 read
9121 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
9122 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
9123 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
9124 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
9125 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
9126 the issue.  The solution is to support the
9127 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9128 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
9129 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
9130
9131       </div>
9132       <div class="tags">
9133
9134
9135         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9136
9137
9138       </div>
9139     </div>
9140     <div class="padding"></div>
9141
9142     <div class="entry">
9143       <div class="title">
9144         <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>
9145       </div>
9146       <div class="date">
9147          4th September 2010
9148       </div>
9149       <div class="body">
9150         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
9151 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
9152 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
9153 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
9154 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
9155 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
9156 installed.</p>
9157
9158 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
9159 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
9160 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
9161 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
9162 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9163 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
9164 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
9165 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
9166 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
9167
9168 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
9169 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
9170 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
9171 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
9172 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
9173 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
9174 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
9175 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
9176 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
9177 pages they want to visit.</p>
9178
9179 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
9180 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
9181 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
9182 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
9183 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
9184 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
9185 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
9186 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
9187 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
9188 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
9189 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
9190
9191       </div>
9192       <div class="tags">
9193
9194
9195         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>.
9196
9197
9198       </div>
9199     </div>
9200     <div class="padding"></div>
9201
9202     <div class="entry">
9203       <div class="title">
9204         <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>
9205       </div>
9206       <div class="date">
9207          1st September 2010
9208       </div>
9209       <div class="body">
9210         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
9211 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
9212 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
9213 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
9214 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
9215 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
9216 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
9217 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
9218 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
9219 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
9220 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
9221 drive around.</p>
9222
9223 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
9224 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
9225
9226 <p><pre>
9227 use Spykee;
9228 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
9229 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
9230 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
9231 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
9232 $spykee->left();
9233 sleep 2;
9234 $spykee->right();
9235 sleep 2;
9236 $spykee->forward();
9237 sleep 2;
9238 $spykee->back();
9239 sleep 2;
9240 $spykee->stop();
9241 </pre></p>
9242
9243 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
9244 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
9245 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
9246 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
9247 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
9248 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
9249 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
9250 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
9251 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
9252 going. :).</p>
9253
9254 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
9255 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
9256 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
9257 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
9258
9259       </div>
9260       <div class="tags">
9261
9262
9263         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>.
9264
9265
9266       </div>
9267     </div>
9268     <div class="padding"></div>
9269
9270     <div class="entry">
9271       <div class="title">
9272         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
9273       </div>
9274       <div class="date">
9275         30th August 2010
9276       </div>
9277       <div class="body">
9278         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
9279 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
9280 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
9281 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
9282 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
9283 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
9284 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
9285
9286 <pre>
9287 % ln foo bar
9288 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
9289 %
9290 </pre>
9291
9292 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
9293 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
9294 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
9295 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
9296 nevertheless. :)</p>
9297
9298 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
9299 git from
9300 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
9301
9302       </div>
9303       <div class="tags">
9304
9305
9306         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9307
9308
9309       </div>
9310     </div>
9311     <div class="padding"></div>
9312
9313     <div class="entry">
9314       <div class="title">
9315         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
9316       </div>
9317       <div class="date">
9318         26th August 2010
9319       </div>
9320       <div class="body">
9321         <p>My file system sematics program
9322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
9323 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
9324 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
9325 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
9326 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
9327 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
9328 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
9329 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
9330 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
9331 script:</p>
9332
9333 <pre>
9334 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
9335   mode_t retval = 0;
9336   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
9337   if (-1 != fd) {
9338     unlink(name);
9339     struct stat statbuf;
9340     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
9341       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
9342     }
9343     close(fd);
9344   }
9345   return retval;
9346 }
9347
9348 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
9349 int test_umask(void) {
9350   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
9351
9352   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
9353   mode_t newmode;
9354   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
9355     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
9356            newmode);
9357   }
9358   umask(007);
9359   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
9360     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
9361            newmode);
9362   }
9363
9364   umask (orig_umask);
9365   return 0;
9366 }
9367
9368 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9369   [...]
9370   test_umask();
9371   return 0;
9372 }
9373 </pre>
9374
9375 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
9376
9377 <pre>
9378 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9379 info: testing symlink creation
9380 info: testing subdirectory creation
9381 info: testing fcntl locking
9382   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9383   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9384   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9385   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9386   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9387   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9388 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9389 </pre>
9390
9391 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
9392 result:</p>
9393
9394 <pre>
9395 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9396 info: testing symlink creation
9397 info: testing subdirectory creation
9398 info: testing fcntl locking
9399   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9400   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9401   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9402   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9403   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9404   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9405 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9406   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
9407   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
9408 </pre>
9409
9410 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
9411 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
9412 directory.</p>
9413
9414 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
9415 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
9416
9417 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9418 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9419 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
9420
9421       </div>
9422       <div class="tags">
9423
9424
9425         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9426
9427
9428       </div>
9429     </div>
9430     <div class="padding"></div>
9431
9432     <div class="entry">
9433       <div class="title">
9434         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
9435       </div>
9436       <div class="date">
9437         15th August 2010
9438       </div>
9439       <div class="body">
9440         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
9441 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
9442 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
9443 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
9444 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
9445 long time.</p>
9446
9447       </div>
9448       <div class="tags">
9449
9450
9451         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>.
9452
9453
9454       </div>
9455     </div>
9456     <div class="padding"></div>
9457
9458     <div class="entry">
9459       <div class="title">
9460         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
9461       </div>
9462       <div class="date">
9463          9th August 2010
9464       </div>
9465       <div class="body">
9466         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
9467 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
9468 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
9469 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
9470 generated configuration.</p>
9471
9472 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
9473 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
9474 without any manual configuration.</p>
9475
9476 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
9477 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
9478 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
9479 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
9480 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
9481 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
9482 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
9483 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
9484 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
9485 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
9486 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
9487 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
9488 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
9489 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
9490 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
9491 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
9492 use.</p>
9493
9494 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
9495 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
9496 working properly out of the box:</p>
9497
9498 <ul>
9499 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
9500 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
9501 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
9502 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
9503 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
9504 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
9505 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
9506 </ul>
9507
9508 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
9509
9510 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
9511 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
9512 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
9513 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
9514 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
9515
9516 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
9517 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
9518 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
9519 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
9520 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
9521 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
9522 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
9523 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
9524
9525 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
9526 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
9527 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
9528 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
9529 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
9530 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
9531 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
9532 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
9533 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
9534 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
9535 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
9536 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
9537 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
9538 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
9539 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
9540 current DNS domain is used.</p>
9541
9542 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
9543 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
9544 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
9545 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
9546 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
9547 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
9548 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
9549 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
9550 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
9551 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
9552 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
9553 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
9554 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
9555
9556 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
9557 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
9558 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
9559 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
9560 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
9561 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
9562 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
9563 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
9564 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
9565 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
9566 do for now. :)</p>
9567
9568 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
9569 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
9570 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
9571 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
9572 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
9573 yet.</p>
9574
9575 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9576 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9577
9578 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
9579 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
9580 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
9581 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
9582
9583       </div>
9584       <div class="tags">
9585
9586
9587         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9588
9589
9590       </div>
9591     </div>
9592     <div class="padding"></div>
9593
9594     <div class="entry">
9595       <div class="title">
9596         <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>
9597       </div>
9598       <div class="date">
9599          8th August 2010
9600       </div>
9601       <div class="body">
9602         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
9603 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
9604 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
9605 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
9606 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
9607 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
9608 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
9609
9610 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
9611 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
9612 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
9613 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
9614 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
9615 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
9616 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
9617
9618 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
9619 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
9620 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
9621 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
9622 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
9623
9624 <pre>
9625 /*
9626  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
9627  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
9628  * directory.
9629  * License: GPL v2 or later
9630  *
9631  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
9632  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
9633 */
9634
9635 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
9636 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
9637 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
9638
9639 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
9640
9641 #include &lt;errno.h>
9642 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
9643 #include &lt;stdio.h>
9644 #include &lt;string.h>
9645 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
9646 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
9647 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
9648 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
9649 #include &lt;unistd.h>
9650
9651 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
9652 /*
9653  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
9654  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
9655  * below.
9656  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
9657  */
9658 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
9659 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
9660   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
9661 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
9662   char *zErrMsg;
9663   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
9664   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
9665   unlink(name);
9666   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
9667   if( rc ){
9668     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
9669     sqlite3_close(db);
9670     return -1;
9671   }
9672
9673   /* create tables */
9674   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
9675   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
9676     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
9677     sqlite3_close(db);
9678     return -1;
9679   }
9680   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
9681   sqlite3_close(db);
9682   return 0;
9683 }
9684 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9685
9686 /*
9687  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
9688  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
9689  * done in the sqlite3 library.
9690  * See also
9691  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
9692  * POSIX specification
9693  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
9694  */
9695 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
9696   struct flock fl;
9697   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
9698   unlink(name);
9699   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
9700   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
9701
9702   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
9703   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
9704   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
9705   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9706   fl.l_len    = 1;
9707   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
9708   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9709
9710   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
9711   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
9712   fl.l_len    = 510;
9713   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
9714   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9715
9716   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
9717   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9718   fl.l_len    = 1;
9719   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
9720   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9721
9722   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
9723   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9724   fl.l_len    = 1;
9725   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
9726   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9727
9728   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
9729   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
9730   fl.l_len    = 510;
9731   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9732
9733   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
9734   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9735   fl.l_len    = 2;
9736   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
9737   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9738
9739   close(fd);
9740   return 0;
9741 }
9742
9743 /*
9744  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
9745  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
9746  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
9747  * slowing down file operations.
9748  */
9749 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
9750 #define LEVELS 5
9751   char *path = strdup("test");
9752   char *dirs[LEVELS];
9753   int level;
9754   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
9755   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
9756     char *newpath = NULL;
9757     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
9758       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
9759              path, strerror(errno));
9760       break;
9761     }
9762     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
9763     free(path);
9764     path = newpath;
9765   }
9766   return 0;
9767 }
9768
9769 /*
9770  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
9771  * KDE.
9772  */
9773 int test_symlinks(void) {
9774   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
9775   unlink("symlink");
9776   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
9777     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
9778   return 0;
9779 }
9780
9781 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9782   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
9783   test_symlinks();
9784   test_subdirectory_creation();
9785 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
9786   test_sqlite_open();
9787 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9788   test_gcompris_locking();
9789   return 0;
9790 }
9791 </pre>
9792
9793 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
9794 this:</p>
9795
9796 <pre>
9797 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9798 info: testing symlink creation
9799 info: testing subdirectory creation
9800 info: sqlite worked
9801 info: testing fcntl locking
9802   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9803   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9804   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9805   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9806   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9807   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9808 </pre>
9809
9810 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
9811 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
9812 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
9813 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
9814 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
9815 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
9816 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
9817 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
9818
9819 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
9820 it. :)</p>
9821
9822 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9823 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9824 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
9825
9826       </div>
9827       <div class="tags">
9828
9829
9830         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9831
9832
9833       </div>
9834     </div>
9835     <div class="padding"></div>
9836
9837     <div class="entry">
9838       <div class="title">
9839         <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>
9840       </div>
9841       <div class="date">
9842          7th August 2010
9843       </div>
9844       <div class="body">
9845         <p>A few days ago, I
9846 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
9847 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
9848 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
9849 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
9850 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
9851 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
9852 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
9853 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
9854 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
9855
9856 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
9857 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
9858 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
9859 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
9860 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
9861 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
9862 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
9863 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
9864 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
9865 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
9866 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
9867 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
9868 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
9869 gave it a IP address.</p>
9870
9871 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
9872 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
9873 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
9874 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
9875 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
9876 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
9877 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
9878 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
9879
9880 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
9881 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
9882 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
9883 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
9884 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
9885 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
9886
9887 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
9888 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
9889 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
9890 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
9891 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
9892 with UID and GID values.</p>
9893
9894 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9895 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9896
9897       </div>
9898       <div class="tags">
9899
9900
9901         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9902
9903
9904       </div>
9905     </div>
9906     <div class="padding"></div>
9907
9908     <div class="entry">
9909       <div class="title">
9910         <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>
9911       </div>
9912       <div class="date">
9913          3rd August 2010
9914       </div>
9915       <div class="body">
9916         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
9917 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
9918 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
9919 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
9920 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
9921 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
9922 servers.</p>
9923
9924 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
9925 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
9926 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
9927 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
9928 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
9929 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
9930 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
9931 .uio.no.</p>
9932
9933 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
9934 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
9935 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
9936 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
9937 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
9938 university servers.</p>
9939
9940 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
9941 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
9942 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
9943 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
9944 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
9945 uses.</p>
9946
9947       </div>
9948       <div class="tags">
9949
9950
9951         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9952
9953
9954       </div>
9955     </div>
9956     <div class="padding"></div>
9957
9958     <div class="entry">
9959       <div class="title">
9960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
9961       </div>
9962       <div class="date">
9963         27th July 2010
9964       </div>
9965       <div class="body">
9966         <p>I discovered this while doing
9967 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
9968 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
9969 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9970 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9971 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
9972
9973 <p>An example is from todays
9974 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
9975 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9976 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
9977 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9978 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9979 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9980 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
9981
9982 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
9983
9984 <blockquote><pre>
9985 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9986  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
9987   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
9988 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9989  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9990 </pre></blockquote>
9991
9992 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9993 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
9994 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9995 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9996 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9997 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9998 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9999 of dependency loops.</p>
10000
10001 <p>Thanks to
10002 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
10003 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
10004 dependencies
10005 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
10006 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
10007
10008 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
10009 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
10010 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
10011 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
10012 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
10013 it.</p>
10014
10015       </div>
10016       <div class="tags">
10017
10018
10019         Tags: <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>.
10020
10021
10022       </div>
10023     </div>
10024     <div class="padding"></div>
10025
10026     <div class="entry">
10027       <div class="title">
10028         <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>
10029       </div>
10030       <div class="date">
10031         27th July 2010
10032       </div>
10033       <div class="body">
10034         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
10035 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
10036 completed.</p>
10037
10038 <blockquote>
10039 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
10040 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
10041 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
10042 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
10043 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
10044 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
10045 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
10046 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
10047
10048 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
10049 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
10050 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
10051
10052 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
10053 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
10054 much.</p>
10055
10056 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
10057
10058 <ul>
10059 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
10060 <ul>
10061   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
10062          combination with some new artwork
10063   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
10064   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
10065   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
10066   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
10067   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
10068   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
10069   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
10070   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
10071   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
10072 </ul></li>
10073 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
10074     Enabled for:
10075 <ul>
10076   <li>PAM
10077   <li>LDAP
10078   <li>IMAP
10079   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
10080 </ul>
10081 </li>
10082 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
10083 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
10084     fetched from LDAP.</li>
10085 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
10086 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
10087 </ul>
10088 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
10089
10090 <ul>
10091 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
10092     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
10093     for testing.</li>
10094 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
10095     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
10096     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
10097 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
10098 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
10099 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
10100 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
10101     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
10102 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
10103     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
10104     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
10105 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
10106     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
10107     and help out with translations.</li>
10108 </ul>
10109
10110 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
10111
10112 <ul>
10113 <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>
10114 <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>
10115 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10116 </ul>
10117 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
10118
10119 <ul>
10120 <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>
10121 <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>
10122 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10123 </ul>
10124
10125 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
10126 get closer to the final release.</p>
10127
10128 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
10129
10130 <ul>
10131 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10132 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10133 </ul>
10134
10135 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
10136 <ul>
10137 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10138 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10139 </ul>
10140 <p>How to report bugs:
10141 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
10142
10143 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
10144 </blockquote>
10145
10146       </div>
10147       <div class="tags">
10148
10149
10150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10151
10152
10153       </div>
10154     </div>
10155     <div class="padding"></div>
10156
10157     <div class="entry">
10158       <div class="title">
10159         <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>
10160       </div>
10161       <div class="date">
10162         25th July 2010
10163       </div>
10164       <div class="body">
10165         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
10166 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
10167 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
10168 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
10169 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
10170
10171 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
10172 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
10173 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
10174 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
10175 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
10176 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
10177 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
10178
10179 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
10180 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
10181 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
10182 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
10183 up. :)</p>
10184
10185 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
10186 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
10187 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
10188
10189 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
10190 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
10191 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
10192 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
10193 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
10194 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
10195 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
10196 release another day.</p>
10197
10198 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
10199 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10200
10201       </div>
10202       <div class="tags">
10203
10204
10205         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10206
10207
10208       </div>
10209     </div>
10210     <div class="padding"></div>
10211
10212     <div class="entry">
10213       <div class="title">
10214         <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>
10215       </div>
10216       <div class="date">
10217         18th July 2010
10218       </div>
10219       <div class="body">
10220         <p>Thanks to
10221 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
10222 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
10223 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
10224 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
10225 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
10226 only available from the development server, until more experience is
10227 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
10228
10229 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
10230 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
10231 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
10232 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
10233 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
10234 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
10235 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
10236
10237       </div>
10238       <div class="tags">
10239
10240
10241         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>.
10242
10243
10244       </div>
10245     </div>
10246     <div class="padding"></div>
10247
10248     <div class="entry">
10249       <div class="title">
10250         <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>
10251       </div>
10252       <div class="date">
10253         17th July 2010
10254       </div>
10255       <div class="body">
10256         <p>This is a
10257 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
10258 on my
10259 <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
10260 work</a> on
10261 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
10262 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
10263
10264 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
10265 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
10266 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
10267 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
10268
10269 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
10270 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
10271 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
10272
10273 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
10274
10275 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
10276 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
10277 the web.
10278
10279 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
10280 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
10281 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
10282 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
10283 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
10284 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
10285
10286 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
10287 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
10288 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
10289 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
10290 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
10291 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
10292 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
10293 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
10294 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
10295 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
10296 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
10297 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
10298 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
10299 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
10300 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
10301 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
10302
10303 <blockquote><pre>
10304 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10305   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10306   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10307   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10308   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10309   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10310   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10311
10312 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10313   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10314   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
10315   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
10316   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
10317   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
10318 </pre></blockquote>
10319
10320 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
10321 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
10322 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
10323 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10324 also exist.</p>
10325
10326 <blockquote><pre>
10327 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10328 objectclass: top
10329 objectclass: dnsdomain
10330 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10331 dc: tjener
10332 arecord: 10.0.2.2
10333 associateddomain: tjener.intern
10334
10335 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10336 objectclass: top
10337 objectclass: dnsdomain2
10338 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10339 dc: 2
10340 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
10341 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
10342 </pre></blockquote>
10343
10344 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
10345 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
10346 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
10347 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
10348 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
10349 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
10350 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
10351 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
10352 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
10353 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
10354 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
10355 instead.</p>
10356
10357 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
10358 like this:</p>
10359
10360 <blockquote><pre>
10361 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10362   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10363   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10364   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10365   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10366   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10367
10368 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10369   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
10370 </pre></blockquote>
10371
10372 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
10373 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
10374 reverse lookups.</p>
10375
10376 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
10377 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
10378 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
10379 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
10380
10381 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
10382 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
10383 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
10384
10385 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
10386 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
10387 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
10388 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
10389 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
10390
10391 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
10392 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
10393 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
10394 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
10395 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
10396
10397 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
10398 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
10399 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
10400 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
10401 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
10402 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
10403
10404 <blockquote><pre>
10405 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
10406     SUP top
10407     AUXILIARY
10408     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
10409           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
10410           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
10411           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
10412           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
10413     ))
10414 </pre></blockquote>
10415
10416 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
10417 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
10418 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
10419 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
10420 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
10421 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
10422
10423 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
10424
10425 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
10426 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
10427 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
10428 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
10429 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
10430
10431 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
10432 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
10433 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
10434 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
10435
10436 <blockquote><pre>
10437 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
10438 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
10439 </pre></blockquote>
10440
10441 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
10442 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
10443 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
10444 search result is this entry:</p>
10445
10446 <blockquote><pre>
10447 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10448 cn: dhcp
10449 objectClass: top
10450 objectClass: dhcpServer
10451 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10452 </pre></blockquote>
10453
10454 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
10455 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
10456 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
10457 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
10458 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
10459 The search result is this entry:</p>
10460
10461 <blockquote><pre>
10462 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10463 cn: DHCP Config
10464 objectClass: top
10465 objectClass: dhcpService
10466 objectClass: dhcpOptions
10467 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10468 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
10469 dhcpStatements: authoritative
10470 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
10471 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
10472 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
10473 </pre></blockquote>
10474
10475 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
10476 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
10477 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
10478 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
10479 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
10480 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
10481 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
10482 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
10483 related computer objects.</p>
10484
10485 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
10486 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
10487 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
10488 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
10489 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
10490 like:</p>
10491
10492 <blockquote><pre>
10493 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10494 cn: hostname
10495 objectClass: top
10496 objectClass: dhcpHost
10497 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10498 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
10499 </pre></blockquote>
10500
10501 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
10502 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
10503 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
10504 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
10505 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
10506 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
10507 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
10508 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
10509 structural object class.
10510
10511 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
10512
10513 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
10514 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
10515 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
10516 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
10517 in the configuration.</p>
10518
10519 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
10520 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
10521 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
10522 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
10523 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
10524 structure.</p>
10525
10526 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
10527 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
10528
10529 <blockquote><pre>
10530 ou=services
10531   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
10532     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
10533     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10534       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10535         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10536     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10537       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10538         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10539     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
10540       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
10541 </pre></blockquote>
10542
10543 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
10544 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
10545 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
10546 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
10547
10548 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
10549 like this:</p>
10550
10551 <blockquote><pre>
10552 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10553 dc: hostname
10554 objectClass: top
10555 objectClass: dhcpHost
10556 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10557 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
10558 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10559 arecord: 10.11.12.13
10560 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10561 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
10562 </pre></blockquote>
10563
10564 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
10565 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
10566 auxiliary object class.</p>
10567
10568       </div>
10569       <div class="tags">
10570
10571
10572         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>.
10573
10574
10575       </div>
10576     </div>
10577     <div class="padding"></div>
10578
10579     <div class="entry">
10580       <div class="title">
10581         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
10582       </div>
10583       <div class="date">
10584         14th July 2010
10585       </div>
10586       <div class="body">
10587         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
10588 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
10589 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
10590 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
10591 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
10592
10593 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
10594 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
10595
10596 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
10597 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
10598 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
10599 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
10600 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
10601 to a slave DNS server.</p>
10602
10603 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
10604 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
10605 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
10606 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
10607 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
10608 seem to work.</p>
10609
10610 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
10611 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
10612 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
10613 this:</p>
10614
10615 <blockquote><pre>
10616   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10617   cn: hostname
10618   objectClass: dhcphost
10619   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10620   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
10621   associateddomain: hostname.intern
10622   arecord: 10.11.12.13
10623   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10624   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
10625   ldapconfigsound: Y
10626 </pre></blockquote>
10627
10628 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
10629 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
10630 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
10631 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
10632
10633 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
10634 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
10635 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
10636 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
10637 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
10638 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
10639 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
10640 might be a good place to put it.</p>
10641
10642 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10643 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10644
10645       </div>
10646       <div class="tags">
10647
10648
10649         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>.
10650
10651
10652       </div>
10653     </div>
10654     <div class="padding"></div>
10655
10656     <div class="entry">
10657       <div class="title">
10658         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
10659       </div>
10660       <div class="date">
10661         11th July 2010
10662       </div>
10663       <div class="body">
10664         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
10665 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
10666 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
10667 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
10668
10669 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
10670 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
10671 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
10672 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
10673 LTSP clients.</p>
10674
10675 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
10676 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
10677 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
10678
10679 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
10680 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
10681 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
10682
10683 <blockquote><pre>
10684 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
10685 #
10686 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
10687 #
10688 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
10689 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
10690 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
10691 #
10692 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
10693 # existence of attribute names.
10694 #
10695 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
10696 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
10697 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
10698 #
10699 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
10700 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
10701 #
10702 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
10703 #     SUP top
10704 #     AUXILIARY
10705 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
10706
10707 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
10708 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
10709     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
10710     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
10711         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
10712         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
10713             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
10714             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
10715             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
10716             # bass value on to clients
10717             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
10718         done
10719     done
10720 fi
10721 </pre></blockquote>
10722
10723 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
10724 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
10725 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
10726 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
10727 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
10728
10729 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10730 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10731
10732 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
10733 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
10734 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
10735 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
10736 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
10737 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
10738
10739       </div>
10740       <div class="tags">
10741
10742
10743         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>.
10744
10745
10746       </div>
10747     </div>
10748     <div class="padding"></div>
10749
10750     <div class="entry">
10751       <div class="title">
10752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
10753       </div>
10754       <div class="date">
10755          9th July 2010
10756       </div>
10757       <div class="body">
10758         <p>Since
10759 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
10760 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
10761 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
10762 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
10763 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
10764 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
10765 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
10766 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
10767 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
10768 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
10769 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
10770 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
10771 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
10772
10773       </div>
10774       <div class="tags">
10775
10776
10777         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>.
10778
10779
10780       </div>
10781     </div>
10782     <div class="padding"></div>
10783
10784     <div class="entry">
10785       <div class="title">
10786         <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>
10787       </div>
10788       <div class="date">
10789          3rd July 2010
10790       </div>
10791       <div class="body">
10792         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
10793 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
10794 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
10795 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
10796 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
10797 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
10798 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
10799 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
10800
10801 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
10802 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
10803 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
10804 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10805 publish the difference.</p>
10806
10807 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10808
10809 <blockquote><p>
10810   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10811   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
10812   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10813   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10814   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10815   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10816   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10817   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10818 </p></blockquote>
10819
10820 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10821
10822 <blockquote><p>
10823   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10824   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10825   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
10826   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10827   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
10828   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
10829   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10830   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10831   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10832   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10833   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10834   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
10835   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10836   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
10837   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10838   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10839   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
10840   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10841   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10842   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10843 </p></blockquote>
10844
10845 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10846
10847 <blockquote><p>
10848   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10849   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10850   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10851   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10852   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10853   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10854   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10855   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10856   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10857   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10858   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10859   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10860   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10861   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10862   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10863   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10864   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10865   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10866   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10867   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10868   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10869 </p></blockquote>
10870
10871 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10872
10873 <blockquote><p>
10874   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10875   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10876   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10877 </p></blockquote>
10878
10879 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10880 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
10881 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10882 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10883 the difference somewhat.
10884
10885       </div>
10886       <div class="tags">
10887
10888
10889         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>.
10890
10891
10892       </div>
10893     </div>
10894     <div class="padding"></div>
10895
10896     <div class="entry">
10897       <div class="title">
10898         <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>
10899       </div>
10900       <div class="date">
10901          1st July 2010
10902       </div>
10903       <div class="body">
10904         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
10905 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
10906 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
10907 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
10908 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
10909 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
10910 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
10911 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
10912 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
10913
10914 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
10915
10916 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
10917 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
10918 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
10919 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
10920 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
10921 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
10922 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
10923 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
10924 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
10925 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
10926 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
10927 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
10928 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
10929 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
10930 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
10931
10932 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
10933
10934 <blockquote><pre>
10935 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
10936 </pre></blockquote>
10937
10938 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
10939 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
10940 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
10941 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
10942 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
10943 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
10944 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
10945 on how to get this working.</p>
10946
10947 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
10948 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
10949 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
10950 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
10951 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
10952 instructions I found in the
10953 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
10954 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
10955
10956 <blockquote><pre>
10957         debug-level             0
10958         reload-count            unlimited
10959         paranoia                no
10960
10961         enable-cache            passwd          yes
10962         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
10963         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
10964         suggested-size          passwd          211
10965         check-files             passwd          yes
10966         persistent              passwd          yes
10967         shared                  passwd          yes
10968         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
10969         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
10970
10971         enable-cache            group           yes
10972         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
10973         negative-time-to-live   group           20
10974         suggested-size          group           211
10975         check-files             group           yes
10976         persistent              group           yes
10977         shared                  group           yes
10978         max-db-size             group           33554432
10979         auto-propagate          group           yes
10980
10981         enable-cache            hosts           no
10982         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
10983         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
10984         suggested-size          hosts           211
10985         check-files             hosts           yes
10986         persistent              hosts           yes
10987         shared                  hosts           yes
10988         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
10989
10990         enable-cache            services        yes
10991         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
10992         negative-time-to-live   services        20
10993         suggested-size          services        211
10994         check-files             services        yes
10995         persistent              services        yes
10996         shared                  services        yes
10997         max-db-size             services        33554432
10998 </pre></blockquote>
10999
11000 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
11001 automatically like the one provided in
11002 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
11003 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
11004 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
11005 look like this:</p>
11006
11007 <blockquote><pre>
11008 passwd:         files ldap
11009 group:          files ldap
11010 shadow:         files ldap
11011 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
11012 networks:       files
11013 protocols:      files
11014 services:       files
11015 ethers:         files
11016 rpc:            files
11017 netgroup:       files ldap
11018 </pre></blockquote>
11019
11020 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
11021 shadow and netgroup.</p>
11022
11023 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
11024 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
11025 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
11026 attributes cached.
11027
11028 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
11029   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
11030
11031 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
11032 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
11033 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
11034 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
11035 discovered sssd.</p>
11036
11037 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
11038
11039 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
11040 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
11041 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
11042 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
11043 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
11044 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
11045 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
11046 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
11047 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
11048 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
11049 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
11050 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
11051 version 1.2 is now in testing.
11052
11053 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
11054 roaming setup I want</p>
11055
11056 <blockquote><pre>
11057 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
11058 </pre></blockquote>
11059
11060 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
11061 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
11062
11063 <blockquote><pre>
11064 [sssd]
11065 config_file_version = 2
11066 reconnection_retries = 3
11067 sbus_timeout = 30
11068 services = nss, pam
11069 domains = INTERN
11070
11071 [nss]
11072 filter_groups = root
11073 filter_users = root
11074 reconnection_retries = 3
11075
11076 [pam]
11077 reconnection_retries = 3
11078
11079 [domain/INTERN]
11080 enumerate = false
11081 cache_credentials = true
11082
11083 id_provider = ldap
11084 auth_provider = ldap
11085 chpass_provider = ldap
11086
11087 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
11088 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11089 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
11090 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
11091 </pre></blockquote>
11092
11093 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
11094 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
11095
11096 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
11097 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
11098 modify it manually.</p>
11099
11100 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11101 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11102
11103       </div>
11104       <div class="tags">
11105
11106
11107         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11108
11109
11110       </div>
11111     </div>
11112     <div class="padding"></div>
11113
11114     <div class="entry">
11115       <div class="title">
11116         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11117       </div>
11118       <div class="date">
11119         28th June 2010
11120       </div>
11121       <div class="body">
11122         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
11123 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
11124 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
11125 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
11126 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
11127 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
11128 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
11129 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
11130 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
11131 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
11132
11133 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
11134 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
11135 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
11136 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
11137 released.</p>
11138
11139 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
11140 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
11141 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
11142 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
11143
11144 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
11145 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11146
11147 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
11148 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
11149 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
11150 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
11151 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
11152
11153       </div>
11154       <div class="tags">
11155
11156
11157         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>.
11158
11159
11160       </div>
11161     </div>
11162     <div class="padding"></div>
11163
11164     <div class="entry">
11165       <div class="title">
11166         <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>
11167       </div>
11168       <div class="date">
11169         24th June 2010
11170       </div>
11171       <div class="body">
11172         <p>A while back, I
11173 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
11174 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
11175 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
11176 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
11177
11178 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
11179 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
11180 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
11181 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
11182
11183 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
11184 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
11185 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
11186 Debian Edu.</p>
11187
11188 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
11189 the
11190 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
11191 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
11192 available today from IETF.</p>
11193
11194 <pre>
11195 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
11196 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
11197 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
11198  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
11199         NAME 'dhcpHost'
11200         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
11201 -       SUP top
11202 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
11203         MUST cn
11204         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
11205         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
11206 </pre>
11207
11208 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
11209 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
11210 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
11211
11212 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11213 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11214
11215       </div>
11216       <div class="tags">
11217
11218
11219         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>.
11220
11221
11222       </div>
11223     </div>
11224     <div class="padding"></div>
11225
11226     <div class="entry">
11227       <div class="title">
11228         <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>
11229       </div>
11230       <div class="date">
11231         16th June 2010
11232       </div>
11233       <div class="body">
11234         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
11235 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
11236 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
11237 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
11238 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
11239 this:
11240
11241 <blockquote><pre>
11242 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11243 tasksel --new-install
11244 </pre></blockquote>
11245
11246 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
11247 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
11248 any output what so ever.
11249
11250 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
11251 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
11252 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
11253 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
11254 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
11255 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
11256 code like this:
11257
11258 <blockquote><pre>
11259 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11260 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
11261 $cmd
11262 </pre></blockquote>
11263
11264 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
11265 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
11266 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
11267 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
11268 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
11269 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
11270 installation.</p>
11271
11272 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
11273 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
11274 like this.</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/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/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
11290       </div>
11291       <div class="date">
11292         13th June 2010
11293       </div>
11294       <div class="body">
11295         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
11296 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
11297 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
11298 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
11299 pages.</p>
11300
11301 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
11302 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
11303 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
11304 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
11305 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
11306 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
11307 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
11308 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
11309 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
11310 see how the project is doing.</p>
11311
11312 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
11313 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
11314 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
11315 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
11316 Windows.  This is great.</p>
11317
11318       </div>
11319       <div class="tags">
11320
11321
11322         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>.
11323
11324
11325       </div>
11326     </div>
11327     <div class="padding"></div>
11328
11329     <div class="entry">
11330       <div class="title">
11331         <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>
11332       </div>
11333       <div class="date">
11334         13th June 2010
11335       </div>
11336       <div class="body">
11337         <p>My
11338 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
11339 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
11340 finally made the upgrade logs available from
11341 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
11342 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
11343 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
11344 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
11345
11346 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
11347 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
11348 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
11349 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
11350 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
11351 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
11352 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
11353 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
11354
11355 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
11356 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
11357 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
11358 too surprising.</p>
11359
11360 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11361 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
11362 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
11363 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11364 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11365 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
11366 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
11367 continue.</p>
11368
11369 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
11370 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11371   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11372   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11373   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11374   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11375   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11376   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11377   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11378   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11379   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11380   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11381   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11382   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11383   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11384   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11385   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11386   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11387   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11388   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11389   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11390   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11391   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11392   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11393   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11394   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11395   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11396   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11397   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11398   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
11399
11400 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
11401
11402 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11403   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11404   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11405   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11406   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11407   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11408   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11409   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11410   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11411   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11412   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11413   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11414   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11415   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11416   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11417   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11418   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11419   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11420   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11421   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11422   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11423   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11424   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11425   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11426   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11427   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11428   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11429   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11430   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11431   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11432   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11433   zip</p>
11434
11435 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
11436
11437 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11438   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11439   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11440   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11441   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11442   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11443   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11444   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11445   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11446   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11447   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11448   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11449   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11450   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11451   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11452   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11453   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11454   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11455   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11456   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11457   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11458   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11459   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11460   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11461   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11462   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11463   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11464   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
11465
11466 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
11467 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11468   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11469   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11470   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11471   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11472   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11473   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11474   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11475   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11476   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11477   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11478   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11479   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11480   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11481   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11482   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11483   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11484   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11485   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11486   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11487   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11488   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11489   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11490   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11491   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11492   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11493   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11494   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11495   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11496   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11497   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11498   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11499   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11500   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11501   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11502   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11503   xulrunner-1.9</p>
11504
11505
11506       </div>
11507       <div class="tags">
11508
11509
11510         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>.
11511
11512
11513       </div>
11514     </div>
11515     <div class="padding"></div>
11516
11517     <div class="entry">
11518       <div class="title">
11519         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
11520       </div>
11521       <div class="date">
11522         11th June 2010
11523       </div>
11524       <div class="body">
11525         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
11526 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
11527 have been discovered and reported in the process
11528 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
11529 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
11530 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
11531 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
11532 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
11533
11534 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
11535 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
11536 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
11537 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
11538 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
11539 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
11540
11541 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
11542 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
11543 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11544 is created.  The bug report
11545 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
11546 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
11547 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
11548 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
11549 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
11550 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
11551 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
11552 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
11553 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
11554 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
11555 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
11556 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
11557 Debian Squeeze.</p>
11558
11559 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
11560 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
11561 trick:</p>
11562
11563 <blockquote><pre>
11564 #!/bin/sh
11565 set -ex
11566
11567 if [ "$1" ] ; then
11568     desktop=$1
11569 else
11570     desktop=gnome
11571 fi
11572
11573 from=lenny
11574 to=squeeze
11575
11576 exec &lt; /dev/null
11577 unset LANG
11578 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
11579 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
11580 fuser -mv .
11581 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
11582 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11583 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
11584 #!/bin/sh
11585 exit 101
11586 EOF
11587 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
11588 exit_cleanup() {
11589     umount $tmpdir/proc
11590 }
11591 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
11592 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
11593 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
11594
11595 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
11596
11597 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
11598 # to return the correct answers.
11599 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
11600     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
11601
11602 # Include the desktop and laptop task
11603 for test in desktop laptop ; do
11604     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
11605 #!/bin/sh
11606 exit 2
11607 EOF
11608     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
11609 done
11610
11611 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11612 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
11613 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
11614 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
11615
11616 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
11617 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11618 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11619 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
11620 fuser -mv
11621 </pre></blockquote>
11622
11623 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
11624 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
11625 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
11626 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
11627 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
11628 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
11629
11630 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
11631 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
11632 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
11633 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
11634 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
11635 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
11636 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
11637
11638 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
11639 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
11640 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
11641 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
11642 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
11643 packages.</p>
11644
11645       </div>
11646       <div class="tags">
11647
11648
11649         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>.
11650
11651
11652       </div>
11653     </div>
11654     <div class="padding"></div>
11655
11656     <div class="entry">
11657       <div class="title">
11658         <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>
11659       </div>
11660       <div class="date">
11661          6th June 2010
11662       </div>
11663       <div class="body">
11664         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
11665 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
11666 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
11667 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
11668 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
11669 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
11670 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
11671
11672 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
11673 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
11674 COLUMNS):</p>
11675
11676 <blockquote><pre>
11677 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
11678 previous=N
11679 PREVLEVEL=
11680 RUNLEVEL=
11681 runlevel=S
11682 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
11683 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
11684 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
11685 </pre></blockquote>
11686
11687 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
11688 script.</p>
11689
11690 <blockquote><pre>
11691 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
11692 previous=N
11693 PREVLEVEL=N
11694 RUNLEVEL=S
11695 runlevel=S
11696 </pre></blockquote>
11697
11698 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
11699 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
11700 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
11701
11702 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
11703 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
11704 choice.</p>
11705
11706       </div>
11707       <div class="tags">
11708
11709
11710         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>.
11711
11712
11713       </div>
11714     </div>
11715     <div class="padding"></div>
11716
11717     <div class="entry">
11718       <div class="title">
11719         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
11720       </div>
11721       <div class="date">
11722          6th June 2010
11723       </div>
11724       <div class="body">
11725         <p>Via the
11726 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
11727 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
11728 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
11729 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
11730 following the standards wars of today.</p>
11731
11732       </div>
11733       <div class="tags">
11734
11735
11736         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>.
11737
11738
11739       </div>
11740     </div>
11741     <div class="padding"></div>
11742
11743     <div class="entry">
11744       <div class="title">
11745         <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>
11746       </div>
11747       <div class="date">
11748          3rd June 2010
11749       </div>
11750       <div class="body">
11751         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
11752 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
11753 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
11754 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
11755 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
11756
11757 <blockquote><pre>
11758 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
11759   vendor                    count
11760   Dell Computer Corporation     1
11761     PowerEdge 1750              1
11762   IBM                           1
11763     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
11764   Intel                         2
11765   [no-dmi-info]                 3
11766 maintainer:~#
11767 </pre></blockquote>
11768
11769 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
11770 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
11771 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
11772 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
11773 option to list the individual machines.</p>
11774
11775 <p>A larger list is
11776 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
11777 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
11778 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
11779 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
11780 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
11781 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
11782 collector.</p>
11783
11784       </div>
11785       <div class="tags">
11786
11787
11788         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>.
11789
11790
11791       </div>
11792     </div>
11793     <div class="padding"></div>
11794
11795     <div class="entry">
11796       <div class="title">
11797         <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>
11798       </div>
11799       <div class="date">
11800          1st June 2010
11801       </div>
11802       <div class="body">
11803         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
11804 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
11805 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
11806 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
11807 wait.</p>
11808
11809 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
11810 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
11811 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
11812 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
11813 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
11814 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
11815
11816 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
11817 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
11818 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
11819 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
11820 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
11821 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
11822 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
11823 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
11824
11825 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
11826
11827       </div>
11828       <div class="tags">
11829
11830
11831         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>.
11832
11833
11834       </div>
11835     </div>
11836     <div class="padding"></div>
11837
11838     <div class="entry">
11839       <div class="title">
11840         <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>
11841       </div>
11842       <div class="date">
11843         27th May 2010
11844       </div>
11845       <div class="body">
11846         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
11847 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
11848 issues are known and should be solved:
11849
11850 <p><ul>
11851
11852 <li>The wicd package seen to
11853 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
11854 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
11855 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
11856 seem to be on the case.</li>
11857
11858 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
11859 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
11860 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
11861 maintainer is on the case.</li>
11862
11863 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
11864 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
11865 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
11866 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
11867 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
11868 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
11869 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
11870 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
11871
11872 </ul></p>
11873
11874 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
11875 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
11876 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
11877 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
11878
11879 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11880 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11881 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11882 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
11883
11884 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
11885
11886       </div>
11887       <div class="tags">
11888
11889
11890         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>.
11891
11892
11893       </div>
11894     </div>
11895     <div class="padding"></div>
11896
11897     <div class="entry">
11898       <div class="title">
11899         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
11900       </div>
11901       <div class="date">
11902         22nd May 2010
11903       </div>
11904       <div class="body">
11905         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
11906 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
11907 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
11908 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
11909
11910 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
11911 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
11912 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
11913 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
11914 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
11915 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
11916 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
11917 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
11918 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
11919 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
11920 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
11921 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
11922 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
11923 going to work.</p>
11924
11925 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
11926 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
11927 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
11928 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
11929 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
11930 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
11931 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
11932 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
11933 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
11934 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
11935 Edu.</p>
11936
11937 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
11938 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
11939 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
11940 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
11941 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
11942 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
11943
11944 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
11945 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
11946
11947       </div>
11948       <div class="tags">
11949
11950
11951         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>.
11952
11953
11954       </div>
11955     </div>
11956     <div class="padding"></div>
11957
11958     <div class="entry">
11959       <div class="title">
11960         <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>
11961       </div>
11962       <div class="date">
11963         19th May 2010
11964       </div>
11965       <div class="body">
11966         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
11967 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
11968 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
11969 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
11970 into unstable.  The
11971 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
11972 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
11973 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
11974 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
11975 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
11976 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
11977 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
11978
11979 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
11980 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
11981 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
11982 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
11983 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
11984 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
11985 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
11986 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
11987
11988 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
11989 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
11990 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
11991 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
11992 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
11993 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
11994 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
11995
11996 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
11997 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
11998 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
11999 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
12000 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
12001 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
12002 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
12003 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
12004 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
12005 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
12006 on the home directory servers.</p>
12007
12008 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
12009 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
12010 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
12011 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
12012 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
12013 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
12014
12015 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12016 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12017
12018       </div>
12019       <div class="tags">
12020
12021
12022         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12023
12024
12025       </div>
12026     </div>
12027     <div class="padding"></div>
12028
12029     <div class="entry">
12030       <div class="title">
12031         <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>
12032       </div>
12033       <div class="date">
12034         14th May 2010
12035       </div>
12036       <div class="body">
12037         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
12038 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
12039 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
12040 expected, if I am to believe the
12041 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12042 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
12043 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
12044 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
12045 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
12046 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
12047 version.</p>
12048
12049 More information about
12050 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12051 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
12052 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
12053 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12054
12055 <blockquote><pre>
12056 CONCURRENCY=none
12057 </pre></blockquote>
12058
12059 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12060 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12061 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12062 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12063
12064       </div>
12065       <div class="tags">
12066
12067
12068         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>.
12069
12070
12071       </div>
12072     </div>
12073     <div class="padding"></div>
12074
12075     <div class="entry">
12076       <div class="title">
12077         <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>
12078       </div>
12079       <div class="date">
12080         14th May 2010
12081       </div>
12082       <div class="body">
12083         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
12084 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
12085 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
12086 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
12087 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
12088 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
12089 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
12090 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
12091
12092 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
12093 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
12094 this on the collector host:</p>
12095
12096 <blockquote><pre>
12097 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
12098 </pre></blockquote>
12099
12100 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
12101 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
12102
12103 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
12104 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
12105 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
12106 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
12107 written yet.</p>
12108
12109       </div>
12110       <div class="tags">
12111
12112
12113         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>.
12114
12115
12116       </div>
12117     </div>
12118     <div class="padding"></div>
12119
12120     <div class="entry">
12121       <div class="title">
12122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
12123       </div>
12124       <div class="date">
12125         13th May 2010
12126       </div>
12127       <div class="body">
12128         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
12129 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
12130 has been
12131 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
12132
12133 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
12134 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
12135 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
12136 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
12137 based boot system.  Tollef is
12138 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
12139 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
12140 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
12141 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
12142 at the moment do not.</p>
12143
12144 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
12145 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
12146 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
12147 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
12148 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
12149 way forward.</p>
12150
12151 <p>In the mean time, based on the
12152 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12153 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
12154 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
12155 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
12156 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
12157 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
12158 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
12159 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
12160
12161       </div>
12162       <div class="tags">
12163
12164
12165         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>.
12166
12167
12168       </div>
12169     </div>
12170     <div class="padding"></div>
12171
12172     <div class="entry">
12173       <div class="title">
12174         <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>
12175       </div>
12176       <div class="date">
12177          6th May 2010
12178       </div>
12179       <div class="body">
12180         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
12181 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
12182 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
12183 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
12184 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12185 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
12186 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12187
12188 <blockquote><pre>
12189 CONCURRENCY=makefile
12190 </pre></blockquote>
12191
12192 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
12193 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
12194 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
12195 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
12196 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
12197 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
12198 make this happen.</p>
12199
12200 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
12201 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
12202 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
12203 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
12204 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
12205
12206 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
12207 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
12208 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
12209 fix the remaining issues.</p>
12210
12211 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12212 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12213 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12214 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12215
12216       </div>
12217       <div class="tags">
12218
12219
12220         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>.
12221
12222
12223       </div>
12224     </div>
12225     <div class="padding"></div>
12226
12227     <div class="entry">
12228       <div class="title">
12229         <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>
12230       </div>
12231       <div class="date">
12232          2nd May 2010
12233       </div>
12234       <div class="body">
12235         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
12236 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
12237 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
12238
12239 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
12240 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
12241 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
12242 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
12243 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
12244
12245 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
12246 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
12247
12248 <blockquote><pre>
12249 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
12250 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
12251 Password expires                                        : never
12252 Password inactive                                       : never
12253 Account expires                                         : never
12254 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
12255 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
12256 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
12257 root@tjener:~#
12258 </pre></blockquote>
12259
12260 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
12261 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
12262 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
12263 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
12264 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
12265 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
12266
12267 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
12268 intended:</p>
12269
12270 <blockquote><pre>
12271 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
12272 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
12273 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
12274 Password expires                                        : never
12275 Password inactive                                       : never
12276 Account expires                                         : never
12277 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
12278 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
12279 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
12280 root@tjener:~#
12281 </pre></blockquote>
12282
12283 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
12284 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
12285 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
12286
12287 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
12288 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
12289
12290 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
12291 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12292
12293 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
12294 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
12295 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
12296 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
12297 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
12298 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
12299 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
12300
12301 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
12302 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
12303 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
12304 change.</p>
12305
12306       </div>
12307       <div class="tags">
12308
12309
12310         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12311
12312
12313       </div>
12314     </div>
12315     <div class="padding"></div>
12316
12317     <div class="entry">
12318       <div class="title">
12319         <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>
12320       </div>
12321       <div class="date">
12322         28th April 2010
12323       </div>
12324       <div class="body">
12325         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
12326 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
12327 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
12328 and go.</p>
12329
12330 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
12331 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
12332 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
12333 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
12334
12335 <ul>
12336
12337  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
12338    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
12339    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
12340    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
12341    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
12342    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
12343    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
12344    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
12345    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
12346    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
12347    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
12348    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
12349
12350  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
12351    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
12352    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
12353    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
12354    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
12355    or the Fedora developed
12356    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
12357    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
12358
12359  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
12360    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
12361    directory, using unison.</li>
12362
12363  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
12364    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
12365    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
12366    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
12367    implemented.</li>
12368
12369  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
12370    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
12371
12372  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
12373    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
12374    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
12375
12376 </ul>
12377
12378 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
12379 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
12380 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
12381 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
12382 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
12383 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
12384 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
12385 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
12386 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
12387
12388 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12389 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12390
12391       </div>
12392       <div class="tags">
12393
12394
12395         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12396
12397
12398       </div>
12399     </div>
12400     <div class="padding"></div>
12401
12402     <div class="entry">
12403       <div class="title">
12404         <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>
12405       </div>
12406       <div class="date">
12407         19th April 2010
12408       </div>
12409       <div class="body">
12410         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
12411 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
12412 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
12413 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
12414 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
12415 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
12416 restrictions on the web, for example from
12417 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
12418 epub-version from
12419 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
12420 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
12421 strongly recommend this book.</p>
12422
12423       </div>
12424       <div class="tags">
12425
12426
12427         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>.
12428
12429
12430       </div>
12431     </div>
12432     <div class="padding"></div>
12433
12434     <div class="entry">
12435       <div class="title">
12436         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
12437       </div>
12438       <div class="date">
12439         14th April 2010
12440       </div>
12441       <div class="body">
12442         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
12443 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
12444 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
12445 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
12446 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
12447 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
12448 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
12449 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
12450 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
12451
12452 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
12453 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
12454 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
12455 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
12456 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
12457
12458 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
12459 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
12460
12461 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
12462 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
12463 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
12464 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
12465 to work properly.</p>
12466
12467 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
12468 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
12469 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
12470 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
12471 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
12472 time.</p>
12473
12474 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
12475 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
12476 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
12477 up in a few days.</p>
12478
12479       </div>
12480       <div class="tags">
12481
12482
12483         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12484
12485
12486       </div>
12487     </div>
12488     <div class="padding"></div>
12489
12490     <div class="entry">
12491       <div class="title">
12492         <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>
12493       </div>
12494       <div class="date">
12495          6th March 2010
12496       </div>
12497       <div class="body">
12498         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
12499 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
12500 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
12501 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
12502 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
12503 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
12504
12505 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
12506 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
12507 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
12508 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
12509
12510 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
12511 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
12512 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
12513 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
12514 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
12515 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
12516
12517       </div>
12518       <div class="tags">
12519
12520
12521         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12522
12523
12524       </div>
12525     </div>
12526     <div class="padding"></div>
12527
12528     <div class="entry">
12529       <div class="title">
12530         <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>
12531       </div>
12532       <div class="date">
12533         11th February 2010
12534       </div>
12535       <div class="body">
12536         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
12537 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
12538 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
12539 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
12540 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
12541 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
12542 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
12543
12544 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
12545
12546 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
12547 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
12548 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
12549 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</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>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</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/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
12565       </div>
12566       <div class="date">
12567         27th January 2010
12568       </div>
12569       <div class="body">
12570         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
12571 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
12572 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
12573 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
12574 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
12575 further.</p>
12576
12577 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
12578 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
12579 configured to be a server for the
12580 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
12581 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
12582 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
12583 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
12584 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
12585 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
12586 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
12587 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
12588 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
12589 and Nagios configuration.</p>
12590
12591 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
12592 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
12593 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
12594 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
12595
12596 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
12597 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
12598 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
12599 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
12600 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
12601 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
12602 the machine.</p>
12603
12604 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
12605 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
12606 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
12607 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
12608
12609 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
12610 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
12611 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
12612 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
12613 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
12614 everything is taken care of.</p>
12615
12616       </div>
12617       <div class="tags">
12618
12619
12620         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12621
12622
12623       </div>
12624     </div>
12625     <div class="padding"></div>
12626
12627     <div class="entry">
12628       <div class="title">
12629         <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>
12630       </div>
12631       <div class="date">
12632         12th August 2009
12633       </div>
12634       <div class="body">
12635         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
12636 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
12637 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
12638 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
12639
12640 <table>
12641 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12642 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
12643 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
12644 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
12645 </table>
12646
12647 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
12648 got these numbers:</p>
12649
12650 <table>
12651 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12652 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
12653 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
12654 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
12655 </table>
12656
12657 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
12658
12659 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
12660 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
12661 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
12662 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
12663 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
12664
12665
12666 <table>
12667 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12668 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
12669 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
12670 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
12671 </table>
12672
12673 <p>And with 'site:no':
12674
12675 <table>
12676 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12677 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
12678 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
12679 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
12680 </table>
12681
12682 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
12683 numbers.</p>
12684
12685       </div>
12686       <div class="tags">
12687
12688
12689         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>.
12690
12691
12692       </div>
12693     </div>
12694     <div class="padding"></div>
12695
12696     <div class="entry">
12697       <div class="title">
12698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
12699       </div>
12700       <div class="date">
12701          8th August 2009
12702       </div>
12703       <div class="body">
12704         <p>According to <a
12705 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
12706 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
12707 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
12708 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
12709 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
12710 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
12711 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
12712 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
12713 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
12714 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
12715
12716 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
12717 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
12718 seminar this autumn.</p>
12719
12720       </div>
12721       <div class="tags">
12722
12723
12724         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>.
12725
12726
12727       </div>
12728     </div>
12729     <div class="padding"></div>
12730
12731     <div class="entry">
12732       <div class="title">
12733         <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>
12734       </div>
12735       <div class="date">
12736         27th July 2009
12737       </div>
12738       <div class="body">
12739         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
12740 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
12741 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
12742 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
12743 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
12744 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
12745 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
12746
12747 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
12748 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
12749 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
12750
12751       </div>
12752       <div class="tags">
12753
12754
12755         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>.
12756
12757
12758       </div>
12759     </div>
12760     <div class="padding"></div>
12761
12762     <div class="entry">
12763       <div class="title">
12764         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
12765       </div>
12766       <div class="date">
12767         22nd July 2009
12768       </div>
12769       <div class="body">
12770         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
12771 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
12772 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
12773 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
12774 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
12775 the package up to date.</p>
12776
12777 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
12778 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
12779 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
12780 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
12781 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
12782 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
12783 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
12784 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
12785 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
12786 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
12787 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
12788 working on the future release.</p>
12789
12790 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
12791 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
12792
12793       </div>
12794       <div class="tags">
12795
12796
12797         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>.
12798
12799
12800       </div>
12801     </div>
12802     <div class="padding"></div>
12803
12804     <div class="entry">
12805       <div class="title">
12806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
12807       </div>
12808       <div class="date">
12809         24th June 2009
12810       </div>
12811       <div class="body">
12812         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
12813 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
12814 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
12815 funded
12816 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
12817 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
12818 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
12819 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
12820 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
12821 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
12822
12823 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
12824 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
12825 boot:</p>
12826
12827 <ul>
12828
12829 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
12830
12831 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
12832    clock is in UTC.</li>
12833
12834 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
12835    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12836    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
12837
12838 </ul>
12839
12840 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
12841 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
12842 Villegas</a>.
12843
12844 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
12845 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
12846 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
12847 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
12848 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
12849 using this.</p>
12850
12851 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
12852 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
12853 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
12854 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
12855 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
12856 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
12857 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
12858
12859       </div>
12860       <div class="tags">
12861
12862
12863         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>.
12864
12865
12866       </div>
12867     </div>
12868     <div class="padding"></div>
12869
12870     <div class="entry">
12871       <div class="title">
12872         <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>
12873       </div>
12874       <div class="date">
12875          2nd May 2009
12876       </div>
12877       <div class="body">
12878         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
12879 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
12880 do not yet know them.</p>
12881
12882 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
12883 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
12884 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
12885 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
12886 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
12887 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
12888 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
12889 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
12890 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
12891 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
12892 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
12893
12894 <p>The second one is
12895 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
12896 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
12897 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
12898 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
12899 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
12900 and the company behind it is running
12901 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
12902 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
12903 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
12904 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
12905 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
12906 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
12907 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
12908 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
12909
12910 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
12911 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
12912 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
12913 surrounded by today.</p>
12914
12915       </div>
12916       <div class="tags">
12917
12918
12919         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12920
12921
12922       </div>
12923     </div>
12924     <div class="padding"></div>
12925
12926     <div class="entry">
12927       <div class="title">
12928         <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>
12929       </div>
12930       <div class="date">
12931         28th April 2009
12932       </div>
12933       <div class="body">
12934         <p>Julien Blache
12935 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
12936 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
12937 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
12938 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
12939 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
12940 properties.</p>
12941
12942       </div>
12943       <div class="tags">
12944
12945
12946         Tags: <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>.
12947
12948
12949       </div>
12950     </div>
12951     <div class="padding"></div>
12952
12953     <div class="entry">
12954       <div class="title">
12955         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
12956       </div>
12957       <div class="date">
12958          5th April 2009
12959       </div>
12960       <div class="body">
12961         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
12962 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
12963 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
12964 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
12965 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
12966 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
12967 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
12968 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
12969
12970 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
12971 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
12972 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
12973   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
12974   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
12975
12976 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
12977 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
12978 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
12979 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
12980
12981 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
12982 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
12983 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
12984 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
12985
12986 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
12987 set -e
12988 URL="$1"
12989 SAVEFILE="$2"
12990 DURATION="$3"
12991 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
12992   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
12993   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
12994 pid=$!
12995 sleep $DURATION
12996 kill $pid
12997 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
12998
12999       </div>
13000       <div class="tags">
13001
13002
13003         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>.
13004
13005
13006       </div>
13007     </div>
13008     <div class="padding"></div>
13009
13010     <div class="entry">
13011       <div class="title">
13012         <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>
13013       </div>
13014       <div class="date">
13015         30th March 2009
13016       </div>
13017       <div class="body">
13018         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
13019 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
13020 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
13021 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
13022 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
13023 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
13024 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
13025 application.</p>
13026
13027 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
13028 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
13029 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
13030 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
13031 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
13032 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
13033 blocked from doing so.</p>
13034
13035 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
13036 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
13037 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
13038 requirements change.</p>
13039
13040 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
13041 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
13042 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
13043
13044       </div>
13045       <div class="tags">
13046
13047
13048         Tags: <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>.
13049
13050
13051       </div>
13052     </div>
13053     <div class="padding"></div>
13054
13055     <div class="entry">
13056       <div class="title">
13057         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
13058       </div>
13059       <div class="date">
13060         29th March 2009
13061       </div>
13062       <div class="body">
13063         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
13064 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
13065 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
13066 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
13067 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
13068 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
13069 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
13070 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
13071 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
13072 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
13073 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
13074 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
13075 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
13076 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
13077 now. :)</p>
13078
13079       </div>
13080       <div class="tags">
13081
13082
13083         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>.
13084
13085
13086       </div>
13087     </div>
13088     <div class="padding"></div>
13089
13090     <div class="entry">
13091       <div class="title">
13092         <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>
13093       </div>
13094       <div class="date">
13095         29th March 2009
13096       </div>
13097       <div class="body">
13098         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
13099 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
13100 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
13101 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
13102 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
13103 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
13104
13105 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
13106 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
13107 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
13108 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
13109 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
13110 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
13111 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
13112 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
13113 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
13114 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
13115 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
13116 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
13117 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
13118
13119 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
13120 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
13121 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
13122 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
13123
13124 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
13125 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
13126
13127 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
13128 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
13129 new IETF work group?</p>
13130
13131       </div>
13132       <div class="tags">
13133
13134
13135         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>.
13136
13137
13138       </div>
13139     </div>
13140     <div class="padding"></div>
13141
13142     <div class="entry">
13143       <div class="title">
13144         <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>
13145       </div>
13146       <div class="date">
13147         28th February 2009
13148       </div>
13149       <div class="body">
13150         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
13151 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
13152 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
13153 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
13154 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
13155 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
13156 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
13157 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
13158 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
13159 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
13160 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
13161 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
13162 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
13163 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
13164 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
13165 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
13166 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
13167 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
13168 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
13169 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
13170 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
13171 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
13172 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
13173 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
13174 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
13175 machine.</p>
13176
13177 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
13178 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
13179 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
13180 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
13181 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
13182 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
13183 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
13184
13185 <pre>
13186 use LWP::Simple;
13187 use POSIX;
13188 use WWW::Mechanize;
13189 use Date::Parse;
13190 [...]
13191 sub get_support_info {
13192     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
13193     my $str;
13194
13195     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
13196         # fetch website from Dell support
13197         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";
13198         my $webpage = get($url);
13199         return undef unless ($webpage);
13200
13201         my $daysleft = -1;
13202         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
13203         foreach my $line (@lines) {
13204             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
13205             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
13206             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
13207
13208             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
13209             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
13210             my $lastend = "";
13211             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
13212                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
13213
13214                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13215                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13216                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13217                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
13218                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
13219                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
13220                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
13221             }
13222             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13223             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13224                 if ($lastend lt $today);
13225         }
13226     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
13227         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
13228         my $url =
13229             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
13230         $mech->get($url);
13231         my $fields = {
13232             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
13233             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
13234             'country' => 'NO',
13235             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
13236             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
13237         };
13238         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
13239                             fields      => $fields );
13240         # Next step is screen scraping
13241         my $content = $mech->content();
13242
13243         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
13244         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13245         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13246         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13247
13248         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13249
13250         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
13251             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
13252                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
13253             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
13254             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13255                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13256             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13257                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
13258
13259             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
13260
13261             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13262                 if ($end lt $today);
13263         }
13264     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
13265         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
13266         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
13267         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
13268             my $content =
13269                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
13270             if ($content) {
13271                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
13272                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13273                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13274                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13275
13276                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
13277                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
13278
13279                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
13280
13281                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13282                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13283                     if ($end lt $today);
13284             }
13285         }
13286     }
13287     return $str;
13288 }
13289 </pre>
13290
13291 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
13292 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
13293 from dmidecode.</p>
13294
13295 <pre>
13296 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
13297                        "447707-B21");
13298 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
13299 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
13300                        "1234567");
13301 </pre>
13302
13303 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
13304 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
13305
13306 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
13307 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
13308 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
13309 do so.</p>
13310
13311       </div>
13312       <div class="tags">
13313
13314
13315         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>.
13316
13317
13318       </div>
13319     </div>
13320     <div class="padding"></div>
13321
13322     <div class="entry">
13323       <div class="title">
13324         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
13325       </div>
13326       <div class="date">
13327         20th February 2009
13328       </div>
13329       <div class="body">
13330         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
13331 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
13332 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
13333 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
13334 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
13335 the "missing" computer.</p>
13336
13337 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
13338 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
13339 code blocks as defined in the
13340 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
13341 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
13342 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
13343 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
13344 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
13345 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
13346 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
13347 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
13348 codes.</p>
13349
13350 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
13351 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
13352 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
13353 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
13354 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
13355 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
13356
13357 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
13358 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
13359 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
13360 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
13361 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
13362 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
13363 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
13364 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
13365 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
13366 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
13367
13368 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
13369 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
13370 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
13371
13372       </div>
13373       <div class="tags">
13374
13375
13376         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>.
13377
13378
13379       </div>
13380     </div>
13381     <div class="padding"></div>
13382
13383     <div class="entry">
13384       <div class="title">
13385         <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>
13386       </div>
13387       <div class="date">
13388         17th January 2009
13389       </div>
13390       <div class="body">
13391         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
13392 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
13393 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
13394 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
13395 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
13396 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
13397 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
13398 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
13399 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
13400 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
13401 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
13402 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
13403 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
13404 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
13405
13406 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
13407 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
13408 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
13409 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
13410 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
13411 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
13412 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
13413 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
13414 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
13415 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
13416 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
13417 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
13418 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
13419 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
13420 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
13421 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
13422 playing when the download is done.</p>
13423
13424 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
13425 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
13426 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
13427 too.</p>
13428
13429 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
13430 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
13431 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
13432 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
13433
13434       </div>
13435       <div class="tags">
13436
13437
13438         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>.
13439
13440
13441       </div>
13442     </div>
13443     <div class="padding"></div>
13444
13445     <div class="entry">
13446       <div class="title">
13447         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
13448       </div>
13449       <div class="date">
13450         28th December 2008
13451       </div>
13452       <div class="body">
13453         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
13454 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
13455 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
13456 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
13457 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
13458 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
13459 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
13460 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
13461 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
13462 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
13463 source, sink and mixer applications and
13464 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
13465 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
13466 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
13467 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
13468 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
13469 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
13470 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
13471 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
13472 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
13473
13474 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
13475 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
13476 larger stick as well.</p>
13477
13478       </div>
13479       <div class="tags">
13480
13481
13482         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>.
13483
13484
13485       </div>
13486     </div>
13487     <div class="padding"></div>
13488
13489     <div class="entry">
13490       <div class="title">
13491         <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>
13492       </div>
13493       <div class="date">
13494          7th December 2008
13495       </div>
13496       <div class="body">
13497         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13498 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13499 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13500 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
13501 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13502 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
13503 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13504 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
13505
13506 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13507 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13508 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13509 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
13510 of these cards.</p>
13511
13512       </div>
13513       <div class="tags">
13514
13515
13516         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>.
13517
13518
13519       </div>
13520     </div>
13521     <div class="padding"></div>
13522
13523     <div class="entry">
13524       <div class="title">
13525         <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>
13526       </div>
13527       <div class="date">
13528         25th November 2008
13529       </div>
13530       <div class="body">
13531         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
13532 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
13533 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
13534 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
13535 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
13536 notes are available on
13537 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
13538 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
13539 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
13540 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
13541 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
13542 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
13543 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
13544 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
13545 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
13546
13547 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
13548 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
13549
13550       </div>
13551       <div class="tags">
13552
13553
13554         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>.
13555
13556
13557       </div>
13558     </div>
13559     <div class="padding"></div>
13560
13561     <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>
13562     <div id="sidebar">
13563
13564
13565
13566 <h2>Archive</h2>
13567 <ul>
13568
13569 <li>2013
13570 <ul>
13571
13572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
13573
13574 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (2)</a></li>
13575
13576 </ul></li>
13577
13578 <li>2012
13579 <ul>
13580
13581 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13582
13583 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
13584
13585 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
13586
13587 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
13588
13589 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
13590
13591 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
13592
13593 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
13594
13595 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13596
13597 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
13598
13599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
13600
13601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
13602
13603 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13604
13605 </ul></li>
13606
13607 <li>2011
13608 <ul>
13609
13610 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
13611
13612 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13613
13614 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
13615
13616 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13617
13618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13619
13620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13621
13622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13623
13624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13625
13626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
13627
13628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13629
13630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13631
13632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
13633
13634 </ul></li>
13635
13636 <li>2010
13637 <ul>
13638
13639 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13640
13641 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
13642
13643 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13644
13645 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13646
13647 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13648
13649 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
13650
13651 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
13652
13653 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
13654
13655 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
13656
13657 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13658
13659 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
13660
13661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
13662
13663 </ul></li>
13664
13665 <li>2009
13666 <ul>
13667
13668 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
13669
13670 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
13671
13672 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
13673
13674 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
13675
13676 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13677
13678 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
13679
13680 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
13681
13682 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13683
13684 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
13685
13686 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13687
13688 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13689
13690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13691
13692 </ul></li>
13693
13694 <li>2008
13695 <ul>
13696
13697 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
13698
13699 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13700
13701 </ul></li>
13702
13703 </ul>
13704
13705
13706
13707 <h2>Tags</h2>
13708 <ul>
13709
13710  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
13711
13712  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
13713
13714  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
13715
13716  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
13717
13718  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (6)</a></li>
13719
13720  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
13721
13722  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
13723
13724  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (70)</a></li>
13725
13726  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (118)</a></li>
13727
13728  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
13729
13730  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
13731
13732  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
13733
13734  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (176)</a></li>
13735
13736  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
13737
13738  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
13739
13740  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (10)</a></li>
13741
13742  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (9)</a></li>
13743
13744  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (32)</a></li>
13745
13746  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (5)</a></li>
13747
13748  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
13749
13750  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
13751
13752  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
13753
13754  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
13755
13756  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
13757
13758  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (220)</a></li>
13759
13760  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (148)</a></li>
13761
13762  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
13763
13764  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
13765
13766  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (41)</a></li>
13767
13768  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (62)</a></li>
13769
13770  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
13771
13772  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
13773
13774  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
13775
13776  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (6)</a></li>
13777
13778  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
13779
13780  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
13781
13782  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
13783
13784  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (28)</a></li>
13785
13786  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
13787
13788  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
13789
13790  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (39)</a></li>
13791
13792  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
13793
13794  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
13795
13796  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (13)</a></li>
13797
13798  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
13799
13800  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
13801
13802  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
13803
13804  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
13805
13806  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
13807
13808 </ul>
13809
13810
13811     </div>
13812     <p style="text-align: right">
13813  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
13814 </p>
13815
13816   </body>
13817 </html>