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14 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen
</a>
21 <h3>Entries tagged "english".
</h3>
25 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian?
</a>
31 <p>The
<a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-
11
32 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive
</a>, is a
33 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
34 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
35 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing. With such
36 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
37 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
38 downloaded by the browser.
</p>
40 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
41 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
42 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there. The result
44 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
45 site
</a>. Using the collected information, it become possible to
46 answer the question in the title. Here are the
20 most supported MIME
47 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
48 The complete list is available from the link above.
</p>
50 <p><strong>Debian Stable:
</strong></p>
54 ----- -----------------------
71 14 image/x-portable-pixmap
72 14 image/x-portable-bitmap
77 <p><strong>Debian Testing:
</strong></p>
81 ----- -----------------------
104 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:
</strong></p>
108 ----- -----------------------
131 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
132 information mentioned in DEP-
11. I have not yet had time to look at
133 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
140 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
145 <div class=
"padding"></div>
149 <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>
155 <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
156 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
157 values provided by the Linux kernel
</a> following my hope for
158 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
159 dongle support in Debian
</a>. Using this knowledge, I have tested how
160 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
161 to hardware. This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
162 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
163 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
166 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
167 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
168 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
172 Package: package-name
173 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)
</p>
176 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
177 for a given modalias value using this file.
</p>
179 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
180 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class
0E01):
</p>
184 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)
</p>
187 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
188 CardBus bridge (bus class
0607) PCI device is present:
</p>
192 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
195 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
196 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs
04D8:F8DA:
</p>
199 Package: colorhug-client
200 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)
</p>
203 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
204 file in the Debian archive. Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
205 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.
</p>
207 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
208 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
209 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
210 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
211 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information. I've
212 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
213 is working as it should with my prototype. It even made it to Ubuntu
216 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
217 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
218 implementation of the lookup code. The idea is to create files for
219 each modalias and let the shell do the matching. Please check out and
221 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup
</a>
222 shell script. It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
223 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
224 repository where I currently work on my prototype.
</p>
226 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
227 install yubikey-personalization:
</p>
230 % ./hw-support-lookup
231 <br>yubikey-personalization
235 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
236 propose to install the pcmciautils package:
</p>
239 % ./hw-support-lookup
244 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
245 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
246 database
</a>, please tell me about it.
</p>
248 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
249 packages and hardware. One source would be to look at packages with
250 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
251 extract their modalias information. Another would be to look at
252 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
253 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
254 generate a modalias matching rule. I have not tested any of these to
257 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
258 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
259 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
260 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
266 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
271 <div class=
"padding"></div>
275 <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>
281 <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
282 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
283 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
284 to document the details. Here are my findings so far, also available
286 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
287 Debian Edu subversion repository
</a>:
289 <p><strong>Modalias decoded
</strong></p>
291 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
292 values stands for. It is in part based on information from
293 <URL:
<a href=
"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias
</a> >,
294 <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> >,
295 <URL:
<a href=
"http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c
</a> > and
296 <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> >.
298 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
299 this shell script:
</p>
302 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u
305 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
309 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
310 alias: serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
311 alias: serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
315 <p><strong>PCI subtype
</strong></p>
317 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this. This is an Intel Host
318 Bridge memory controller:
</p>
321 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
324 <p>This represent these values:
</p>
329 sv
00001028 (subvendor)
330 sd
000001AD (subdevice)
336 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
337 -n' as
8086:
2770. The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
338 0600. The
0600 class is a host bridge. Other useful bus values are
339 0300 (VGA compatible card) and
0200 (Ethernet controller).
</p>
341 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
344 <p><strong>USB subtype
</strong></p>
346 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this. This is an internal
347 USB hub in a laptop:
</p>
350 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
353 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:
</p>
356 v
1D6B (device vendor)
357 p
0001 (device product)
360 dsc
00 (device subclass)
361 dp
00 (device protocol)
362 ic
09 (interface class)
363 isc
00 (interface subclass)
364 ip
00 (interface protocol)
367 <p>The
0900 device class/subclass means hub. Some times the relevant
368 class is in the interface class section. For a simple USB web camera,
369 these alias entries show up:
</p>
372 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
373 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
374 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
375 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
378 <p>Interface class
0E01 is video control,
0E02 is video streaming (aka
379 camera),
0101 is audio control device and
0102 is audio streaming (aka
380 microphone). Thus this is a camera with microphone included.
</p>
382 <p><strong>ACPI subtype
</strong></p>
384 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff. This is an IR
385 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:
</p>
388 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
391 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.
</p>
393 <p><strong>DMI subtype
</strong></p>
395 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
396 and model. This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
397 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:
</p>
400 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(
1.66):bd06/
15/
2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
403 <p>The values present are
</p>
406 bvn IBM (BIOS vendor)
407 bvr
1UETB
6WW(
1.66) (BIOS version)
408 bd
06/
15/
2005 (BIOS date)
409 svn IBM (system vendor)
410 pn
2371H4G (product name)
411 pvr ThinkPadX40 (product version)
412 rvn IBM (board vendor)
413 rn
2371H4G (board name)
414 rvr NotAvailable (board version)
415 cvn IBM (chassis vendor)
417 cvr NotAvailable (chassis version)
420 <p>The chassis type
10 is Notebook. Other interesting values can be
421 found in the dmidecode source:
</p>
425 4 Low Profile Desktop
438 17 Main Server Chassis
441 20 Bus Expansion Chassis
442 21 Peripheral Chassis
444 23 Rack Mount Chassis
453 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
454 table. For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
455 claim it is a desktop.
</p>
457 <p><strong>SerIO subtype
</strong></p>
459 <p>This type is used for PS/
2 mouse plugs. One example is from my
463 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
466 <p>The values present are
</p>
475 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver. I am not sure what
476 the valid values are.
</p>
478 <p><strong>Other subtypes
</strong></p>
480 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
481 file2alias.c. There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
482 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
483 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
484 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro. I did not spend time documenting all of
485 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
486 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.
</p>
488 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values
</strong></p>
490 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
491 one can use the following shell script:
</p>
494 for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -
0 cat | sort -u); do \
496 /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/ /' ; \
500 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
501 list is very long on my test machine):
</p>
505 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
507 FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
509 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
510 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
511 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
512 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
513 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
514 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
515 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
516 insmod /lib/modules/
2.6.32-
5-
686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
520 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
521 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
522 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
523 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel
</a>.
</p>
525 <p><strong>Update
2013-
01-
15:
</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
526 "find ... -print0 | xargs -
0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
527 in /sys/ with space in them.
</p>
533 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
538 <div class=
"padding"></div>
542 <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>
548 <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
549 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
550 Launcher and updated the Debian package
551 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile
</a> to make
552 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in. I
553 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
554 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
555 plug in his rocket launcher. In the process I moved the source to a
556 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
557 contribute.
<a href=
"http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream
</a>
558 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
559 years of relative silence. The new git repository is not listed in
560 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
561 bit more before I upload the new version. If you want to check out
562 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
563 <a href=
"http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
564 view
</a> or use "
<tt>git clone
565 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git
</tt>".</p>
571 Tags: <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>.
576 <div class="padding
"></div>
580 <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>
586 <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
587 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
588 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
589 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
590 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
591 machine. Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
592 Linux distribution. When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
593 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
594 I need to talk to it. When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
595 yubikey-personalization package. The information required to do this
596 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
598 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
599 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
2010/
05/msg01206.html
">use
600 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>. The idea is fairly
605 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
606 starting when a user log in.</li>
608 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
609 hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
611 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
612 database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
615 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
616 package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
620 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
621 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
622 discover database to find packages and
623 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/
">PackageKit</a> to install
626 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
627 draft package is now checked into
628 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/
">the
629 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>. In the process, I updated the
630 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html
">discover-data</a>
631 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
632 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
633 2.2013.01.09 to unstable. I also discovered that the current
634 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html
">discover</a>
635 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
636 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present. I ported it to use
637 libusb as a fall back option to get it working. The fixed package
638 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
639 because of the freeze).</p>
641 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
642 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
645 <p align="center
"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/
2013-
01-
09-hw-autoinstall.png
"></p>
647 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
648 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
649 program(s)" button should to be implemented.
</p>
651 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
652 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
653 from hardware to Debian packages. Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
654 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
655 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
656 reportbug if it isn't. Or, if you know of a better way to provide
657 such mapping, please let me know.
</p>
659 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
660 should be considered before it is ready for production use. Is dbus
661 the correct way to detect new hardware? At the moment I look for HAL
662 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
663 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop. Are there better events to use?
664 How should the user be notified? Is the desktop notification
665 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
666 popup instead? How should packages be installed? When should they
667 not be installed?
</p>
669 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
670 please send me an email. :)
</p>
676 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
681 <div class=
"padding"></div>
685 <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>
691 <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
692 <a href=
"http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
693 NXT
</a>. My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
694 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
695 already in Debian Squeeze. If Debian support for LEGO is something
696 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
697 <a href=
"irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego
</a> (server
698 irc.debian.org). There is a lot that could be done to improve the
699 Debian support for LEGO designers. For example both CAD software
700 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)
</p>
702 <p>Update
2012-
01-
03: A
703 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page
</a>
704 including links to Lego related packages is now available.
</p>
710 Tags:
<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>.
715 <div class=
"padding"></div>
719 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
725 <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
726 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a>
727 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
728 Agency in Trondheim. NOK
1000,- showed up on our donation account
729 December
24th. I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
730 present. As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
731 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
732 gatherings, this donation was most welcome. One developer gathering
733 cost around NOK
15 000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
734 development pace we want. Thus, I hope their example this year is
735 followed by many others. :)
</p>
737 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
738 <a href=
"http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
739 donation page
</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
740 you want to donate to the project.
</p>
746 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
751 <div class=
"padding"></div>
755 <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>
761 <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
762 year! I hope next year will prove to be a good year.
</p>
764 <p><a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin
</a>, the digital
765 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
766 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
767 experiment. And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
768 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">Debian
</a> is about to improve a bit.
769 The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
770 package
</a> (version
0.7.2-
2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
771 in
<a href=
"http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue
</A>
772 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
775 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
776 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
777 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:
</p>
780 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
782 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=
1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
783 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
786 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well. The
787 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
788 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment. Note that the
789 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
790 around
5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment. Make sure your
791 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
792 all the blocks. The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
793 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
794 not be able to get all the features out of the client.
</p>
796 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
797 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
798 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
804 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>.
809 <div class=
"padding"></div>
813 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian
</a>
819 <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
820 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>, the decentralised
821 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
822 have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
823 state of
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
824 Debian
</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
825 is now maintained by a
826 <a href=
"https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
827 people
</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
828 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
829 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
830 Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
831 backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
832 it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
833 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
834 reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
836 <a href=
"https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
837 Ubuntu
</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
840 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
841 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
842 improve the package. It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
843 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
844 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
845 setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
846 <a href=
"http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
847 patch to backport
</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
848 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
849 new version to unstable.
851 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
852 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
853 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
854 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
855 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
856 transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
857 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
858 they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
859 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
860 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
861 pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
862 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
863 use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
864 quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
865 have not tested them.
</p>
868 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
869 with bitcoins
</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
870 I received
20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
872 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
873 on the blockexplorer service
</a>. Thank you everyone for your
874 donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
875 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
876 number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
877 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
878 the same address as last time,
879 <b><a href=
"bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a></b>.
</p>
885 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>.
890 <div class=
"padding"></div>
894 <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>
900 <p>A few days ago I came across
901 <a href=
"http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
902 Hess
</a> describing
<a href=
"http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger
</a> and
903 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting. I found it
904 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
905 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
906 the different web based systems we use. I find it hard to find what I
907 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
908 the systems. Ledger seem different. The accounting data is kept in
909 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
911 are at least
<a href=
"https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
912 different implementations
</a> able to read the format. An example
913 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
914 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:
</p>
917 2004-
05-
27 Book Store
918 Expenses:Books $
20.00
922 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
923 look for others using it. I found blog posts from
924 <a href=
"http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
926 <a href=
"http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
928 <a href=
"http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
930 <a href=
"http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
931 Ip
</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
932 <a href=
"https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
933 M. Kuhn
</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy. All seemed like good
934 recommendations fitting my need.
</p>
936 <p>The
<a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger
</a>
937 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
938 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger
</a>
939 package only is available in Debian Sid. As I use Squeeze, ledger
940 seemed the best choice to get started.
</p>
942 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
943 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper
</a> for
944 <a href=
"http://www.lodo.no/">LODO
</a>, the accounting system used by
945 the
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a> association, and started to
946 play with the data set. I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
947 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
948 using the "
<tt>ledger balance
</tt>" command. But I will have to
949 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
950 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
956 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">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>.
961 <div class="padding
"></div>
965 <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>
971 <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/
">University of
973 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/
">Cerebrum user
974 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
975 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
976 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC
">XML-RPC</a> API, but
977 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
978 always use the bofh command line client at work. Until today. I want
979 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
980 virtual machines. Here are a few notes on how to use it with
983 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
984 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/
">bofh
985 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server. I also
986 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
987 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html
">a
988 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
990 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
991 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
992 user currently logged in:</p>
995 #!/usr/bin/env python
998 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
999 username = getpass.getuser()
1000 password = getpass.getpass()
1001 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
1002 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
1003 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
1004 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
1005 result = server.logout(sessionid)
1009 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
1010 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.
</p>
1016 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>.
1021 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1025 <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>
1031 <p>While working on a
1032 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
1033 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
</a> (
76% done),
1034 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
1035 creativity, one idea occurred to me. The idea is to get the tax
1036 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
1037 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.
</p>
1039 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
1040 <a href=
"http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
1041 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
1042 by John Perry Barlow
</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
1043 in writing for a wider audience. The idea is not really based on the
1044 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
1045 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
1046 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
1047 controlled by the citizens in a country. I'm sharing the idea here to
1048 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
1051 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government. At least here in
1052 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
1053 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
1054 stocks and other valuables are all added together. If the tax value
1055 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
1056 taxes for these values. And copyrighted work have value. It have
1057 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
1058 work. But it is not included in the tax calculations? Why not?
</p>
1060 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
1061 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
1062 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
1063 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes. If such
1064 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
1065 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
1066 hard operation with todays copyright law. To ensure that copyright
1067 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
1068 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
1069 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
1070 correct right holder.
</p>
1072 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
1073 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
1074 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
1075 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
1076 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
1077 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
1078 work. Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
1079 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
1080 tax calculation. I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
1081 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
1082 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain. The
1083 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
1084 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
1085 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.
</p>
1087 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
1088 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
1089 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .
</p>
1091 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet? I am sure the tax office
1092 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.
</p>
1098 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>.
1103 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1107 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß
</a>
1113 <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the
<a
1114 href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
1115 community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
1116 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
1117 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
1118 the people behind the German
1119 "
<a href=
"http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule
</a>"
1120 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm
1121 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
1123 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1125 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
1126 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
1127 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
1129 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
1130 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
1131 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
1132 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
1133 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also
1134 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.
</p>
1136 <p>In
2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
1137 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides
1138 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
1139 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
1140 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
1141 relationship management and the communication processes in the
1144 <p>Since
2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
1145 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
1146 and a yoga teacher.
</p>
1148 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1149 project?
</strong></p>
1151 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).
</p>
1153 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
1154 Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
1155 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
1156 their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the
1157 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
1158 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
1159 teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for
1160 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
1161 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
1164 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
1165 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
1166 schools. One day before Christmas
2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
1167 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
1168 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
1169 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
1172 <p>For information about our school project you can read
1173 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
1174 interview with Mike Gabriel
</a>.
</p>
1176 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1179 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
1180 answer comes rather from a social point of view.
</p>
1182 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
1183 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
1184 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
1185 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
1186 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
1187 ;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big
1188 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
1189 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
1190 teachers, parents...
</p>
1192 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1195 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
1196 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
1198 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
1199 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
1200 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
1201 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
1202 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
1204 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
1205 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
1206 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
1207 and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the
1208 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
1209 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
1210 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.
</p>
1212 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1214 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu
10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
1215 on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
1216 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
1217 my N900 running with Maemo.
</p>
1219 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1220 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1222 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
1223 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
1224 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
1225 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
1226 strategy has three crucial pillars:
</p>
1230 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
1231 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
1232 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.
</li>
1234 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
1235 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
1236 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
1237 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
1238 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
1239 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
1240 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.
</li>
1242 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
1243 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
1244 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
1245 offer to become more and more independent from us.
</li>
1253 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
1258 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1262 <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>
1268 <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
1269 <a href=
"http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
1270 a report (PDF)
</a> about virtual currencies and
1271 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin
</a>. It is interesting to
1272 see how a member of the bitcoin community
1273 <a href=
"http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
1274 the report
</a>. As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
1275 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
1276 competition. My thoughts go to the
1277 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment
</a> with
1278 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
1279 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in
1933. A successful
1280 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
1281 powerful forces to work against it.
</p>
1283 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
1284 that the community already seem to have
1285 <a href=
"http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
1286 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme
</a>. Not very surprising, given
1287 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other. I guess
1288 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
1289 wealth is available.
</p>
1295 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>.
1300 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1304 <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>
1310 <p>I work at the
<a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a>
1311 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
1312 all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of
1313 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association
</a>, which in turn
1314 make me a member of
<a href=
"http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX
</a>. NUUG
1315 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
1316 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
1317 is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to
1318 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
1319 <a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:
</a> in the
1320 mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of
1323 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
1324 article by
<a href=
"http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick
</a> from
1325 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
1326 "
<a href=
"https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
1327 Takes Us Down
</a>" (longer version also
1328 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/
2012-
06-
30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf
">available
1329 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
1330 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
1331 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
1332 etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
1333 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
1334 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
1336 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
1337 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
1338 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
1339 assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the
1340 article: First the unplanned outage:
1343 Subject: Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
1344 Severity: Critical (Unplanned)
1345 Start: Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
1346 End: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
1347 Duration: 40 minutes
1348 Scope: Exchange 2003
1349 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
1352 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
1353 access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
1357 Next the planned outage:
1360 Subject: H Building Switch Upgrades
1361 Severity: Major (Planned)
1362 Start: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
1363 End: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
1366 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
1367 stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
1369 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
1370 this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
1375 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
1376 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
1377 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
1378 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
1379 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
1380 format listed above). There are also other issues with the format
1381 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
1383 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
1384 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
1385 university too. We do register
1386 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/
">planned
1387 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
1388 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
1389 report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something
1390 for other sites to consider too?</p>
1396 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>.
1401 <div class="padding
"></div>
1405 <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>
1411 <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
1412 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/
2012/
10/
22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/
">how
1413 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
1414 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>. If a real book store did
1415 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
1416 and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more
1417 background information is available in Norwegian from
1418 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon
">digi.no</a>.
1419 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
1420 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
1421 introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
1423 <a href="http://boingboing.net/
2009/
07/
20/amazons-orwellian-de.html
">
1424 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
1425 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
1426 customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even
1428 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/
07/
18/technology/companies/
18amazon.html
">Amazon
1429 would never do that again</a>. And here we are, three years
1432 <p>And thought this action is
1433 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/
904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende
">against
1434 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
1435 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
1436 Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
1437 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
1440 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
1441 unacceptable terms. For example
1442 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/
">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
1443 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/
">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
1444 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts
">The Internet
1445 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
1446 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
1448 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
1449 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
1450 restored the account of the user, as reported by
1451 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
904675/helomvending-fra-amazon
">digi.no</a>
1452 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/
1.8368487">NRK</a>.
1453 Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen
1454 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
1455 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the
1456 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend
1457 reading two opinions from
1458 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2012/
10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm
">Simon
1460 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm
">Glen
1461 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
1462 details about the original story.</p>
1468 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>.
1473 <div class="padding
"></div>
1477 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html
">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
1483 <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
1484 drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but
1485 time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came
1486 across a marvellous drawing by
1487 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html
">Clay Bennett</a>
1488 visualising some of what is going on.
1490 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html
">
1491 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg
"></a></p>
1494 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
1495 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
1498 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when
1499 you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you
1500 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I
1501 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
">the
1502 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
1503 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
1509 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>.
1514 <div class="padding
"></div>
1518 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html
">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
1524 <p>Thanks to a blog post by
1525 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/
2012/
10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html
">Eddy
1526 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
1527 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
1528 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
1529 <a href=
"http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
1530 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions
</a>, the producer
1531 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
1532 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
1533 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
1534 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
1535 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
1538 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
1539 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
1540 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
1541 health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
1542 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
1543 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
1544 to argue its side.
</p>
1546 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
1547 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
1548 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
1549 effect
</a> can make it rethink its strategy.
</p>
1551 <p>What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
1552 <a href=
"http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
1553 victims of detoxification
</a>.
</p>
1559 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>.
1564 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1568 <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>
1574 <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
1575 <a href=
"http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
1576 the computer science book collection available in his local
1577 library
</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
1578 computer books becoming obsolete so soon. That is part of the reason
1579 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
1580 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
1581 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
1582 computer classic from trash. And they need to know which one will
1583 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
1584 recently published books.
</p>
1586 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
1587 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
1588 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
1589 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess. Once, just
1590 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
1591 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
1592 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection. I
1593 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
1594 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
1595 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
1596 collection
</a>). I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
1597 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
1598 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
1599 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
1600 for the library that evening.
</p>
1602 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
1603 going to know that for example
1604 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
1605 Practice of Programming
</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
1606 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
1607 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
1608 the suggestions for books to get? I know they would love to hear from
1609 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
1610 book right away.
</p>
1616 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
1621 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1625 <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>
1631 <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian
<a
1632 href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
<a
1633 href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1634 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
1635 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
1636 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
1639 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
1640 for volunteers
</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
1641 and progress is a bit slow. Anyway, today I broken the
70 percent
1642 mark for the first rough translation. At the moment, less than
700
1643 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate. With
1644 my current progress of
10-
20 strings per day, it will take a while to
1645 complete the translation. This graph show the updated progress:
</p>
1647 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
1649 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
1650 commitments. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
1651 the project files currently available from
1652 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
1654 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1656 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
1658 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
1659 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
1660 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1661 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
1667 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>.
1672 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1676 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda
</a>
1682 <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
1683 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
1684 community, I finally found time to wrap up another. This time it is
1685 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
1686 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
1687 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
1688 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.
</p>
1690 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
1692 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
1693 in secondary (
15-
18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
1694 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
1695 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
1696 IT.
3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
1697 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
1698 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
1699 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
1700 training is anyway very important
</p>
1702 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
1703 <a href=
"http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school
</a> (secondary) is a very
1704 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
1705 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
1706 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
1708 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
1709 project?
</strong></p>
1711 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
1712 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
1713 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
1714 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
1715 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
1718 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1721 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
1722 very generous for help and hints. Chat help is crucial, together with
1723 the mailing list. Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
1724 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
1725 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
1726 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
1727 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
1728 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
1731 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
1734 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
1735 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
1736 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
1737 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
1738 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
1739 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
1740 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
1741 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)
</p>
1743 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
1745 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
1746 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
1747 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
1748 <a href=
"http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus
</a>
1751 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
1752 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
1753 something breaks. Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
1754 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.
</p>
1756 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1757 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
1759 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
1760 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
1761 just because they are normally not open to change.
</p>
1763 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
1764 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
1767 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
1768 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
1769 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had
20
1770 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
1771 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
1772 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
1773 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.
</p>
1779 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
1784 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1788 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec
</a>
1795 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
1796 codec made
</a> it into
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> as
1797 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716</a>, I had a look
1798 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
1799 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
1800 area. A non-"working group" mailing list
1801 <a href=
"https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec
</a>
1803 <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
1804 formal working group should be formed.
</p>
1806 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out. There is already
1807 <a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
1808 email from someone
</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
1809 participate in the ISO group. Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
1810 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
1811 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
1812 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
1813 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.
</p>
1815 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
1816 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
1823 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>.
1828 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1832 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus
</a>
1838 <p>Yesterday,
<a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/">IETF
</a> announced the
1840 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC
6716, the Definition
1841 of the Opus Audio Codec
</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
1842 intended for both VoIP, film and music. This is the first time, as
1843 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec. In
1844 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC
3533</a>, IETF
1845 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
1846 royalty free container for audio, video and movies. I hope IETF will
1847 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
1848 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
1849 multimedia content on the Internet.
</p>
1851 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
1852 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
1853 free specifications. Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
1854 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.
</p>
1856 <p>Visit the
<a href=
"http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page
</a> if
1857 you want to learn more about the solution.
</p>
1863 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>.
1868 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1872 <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>
1879 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
1880 this summer
</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
1881 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
1882 <a href=
"https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
1883 repository for the project
</a>.
</p>
1885 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
1886 to the HTML version. To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
1887 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
1888 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.
</p>
1890 <p>Want to sing? You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
1891 PostScript formats at
1892 <a href=
"http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
1893 Science Songbook
</a>.
</p>
1899 Tags:
<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>.
1904 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1908 <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>
1914 <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
1915 <a href=
"http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
1916 have been forced to open Office
</a>, and it made me remember and
1917 revisit the great site
1918 <a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots
</a> which allow you
1919 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format. I
1920 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)
</p>
1926 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>.
1931 <div class=
"padding"></div>
1935 <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>
1941 <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
1942 <a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> version of the
2004 book
1943 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
1944 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
1945 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
1946 English book. It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
1947 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society. When the
1948 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
1949 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
1950 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law. This
1952 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
1953 for volunteers
</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
1954 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.
</p>
1956 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the
50% mark. Then more than
50% of
1957 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
1958 titles and index entries are also counted). All parts from the
1959 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated. So is
1960 chapters six, seven and the conclusion. I created a graph to show the
1963 <img width=
"80%" align=
"center" src=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
1965 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
1966 entries into the docbook. They were missing with the docbook version
1967 I initially started with. There are still quite a few index entries
1968 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done. I
1969 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
1970 english version of the docbook source.
</p>
1972 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
1973 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
1974 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
1975 translation and proof reading. And I would like the figures to be
1976 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them. Any SVG master
1977 around? I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
1978 me. If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
1979 project files currently available from
<a
1980 href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
1982 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1984 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF
</a>
1986 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB
</a>
1987 are published on github. The HTML version is published as well, but
1988 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1989 saw no point in linking to that version.
</p>
1995 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>.
2000 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2004 <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>
2010 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.docbook.org/">docbook
</a> one can specify
2011 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
2012 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
2013 also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
2014 this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
2015 with
<book
lang="de"
>, and the document will show up with the
2016 correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
2017 case for the language
2018 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
2019 am working with at the moment
</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.
</p>
2021 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
2022 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
2023 all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
2024 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
2025 of them do not handle it at all.
</p>
2027 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
2028 this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
2029 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
2030 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
2031 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
2032 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
2033 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
2034 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
2035 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
2038 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
2039 understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
2040 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#
684391</a>), but due to a bug
2041 (BTS
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#
682936</a>) the 'no'
2042 language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
2043 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
2044 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
2045 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
2046 at the same time. :(
</p>
2048 <p>The correct solution is to use
<book
lang="nb"
>, but it will
2049 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
2052 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/
</p>
2058 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>.
2063 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2067 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?
</a>
2073 <p>I tried to send this text to the
2074 <a href=
"https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
2075 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org
</a>, but it only accept messages
2076 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
2077 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
2078 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
2081 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
2082 learning curve at the moment.
</p>
2084 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
2085 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
2086 docbook to handle the process. The files to build the book are
2088 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
2089 The book got around
400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
2090 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
2091 software docbook processors. My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
2094 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
2095 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
2096 formats. I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
2101 <li>Using dblatex, the
<part
> handling is not the way I want to,
2102 as
</part
> do not really end the
<part
>. (See
2103 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #
683166</a>), the
2104 xetex backend (needed to process UTF-
8) give incorrect hyphens in
2105 index references spanning several pages (See
2106 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #
682901</a>), and
2107 I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
2108 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #
682936</a>).
</li>
2110 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
2111 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
2114 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
2115 show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
2116 footnote and text body, see
2117 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #
683197</a>), and
2118 fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
2119 refs listed are not right).
</li>
2121 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.
</li>
2123 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
2124 index problems the xmlto + fop processing.
</li>
2128 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
2129 of this book? Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
2130 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?
</p>
2132 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?
</p>
2138 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>.
2143 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2147 <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>
2153 <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
2154 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
2155 norwegian version
</a> of the book
2156 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2157 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
2158 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six. The source files as well as a
2159 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
2160 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
2162 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
2163 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
2164 completely translated. This completes
26 percent of the number of
2165 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus
74
2166 percent left to translate. A graph of the progress is present at the
2167 bottom of the github project page. There is still room for more
2168 contributors. Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
2169 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
2172 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
2173 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
2180 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>.
2185 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2189 <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>
2195 <p>I am currently working on a
2196 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
2197 to translate
</a> the book
2198 <a href=
"http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture
</a> by Lawrence Lessig
2199 to Norwegian. And the source we base our translation on is the
2200 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook
</a> version, to
2201 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
2202 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
2203 tagged. The source files of this project is available from
2204 <a href=
"https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github
</a>.
</p>
2206 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
2207 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert. Is there a
2208 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
2209 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
2210 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book? This will provide a
2211 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
2212 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version. If you can and want
2213 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
2214 send pull requests with fixes. :)
</p>
2220 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett
</a>.
2225 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2229 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg
</a>
2235 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2236 Skolelinux
</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
2237 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
2238 country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
2239 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
2240 to adjust and scale the just released
2241 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
2242 Wheezy
</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
2243 happy to share his answers with you here.
</p>
2245 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
2247 <p>I'm a
44 year old country guy that have been working
12 years at
2248 the same school as
50% IT-manager and
50% Teacher. My educational
2249 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
2250 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
2251 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
2252 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
2253 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
2254 perspective when working with IT.
</p>
2256 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2257 project?
</strong></p>
2259 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
2260 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
2261 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
2262 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
2263 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
2264 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
2266 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2269 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
2270 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
2271 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
2272 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
2273 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
2274 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
2275 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
2276 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
2277 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
2278 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
2279 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
2280 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
2281 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
2282 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
2283 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
2284 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
2285 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
2286 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
2287 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
2288 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
2289 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
2290 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
2293 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2296 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
2297 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
2298 year (
2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
2299 sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
2300 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
2301 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.
</p>
2303 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
2304 install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
2305 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
2306 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
2307 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
2308 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
2309 support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
2310 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
2311 need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
2312 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
2313 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
2314 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
2315 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
2316 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
2317 are done. This is important if you want to get a job.
</p>
2319 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
2320 magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
2321 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
2322 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
2323 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
2324 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
2325 edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
2326 there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.
</p>
2328 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
2329 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
2330 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
2331 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
2332 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
2333 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
2334 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
2335 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
2336 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
2337 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
2338 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
2339 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
2340 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
2343 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
2344 will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
2345 they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
2346 look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
2347 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
2348 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
2349 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
2350 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
2351 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.
</p>
2353 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
2355 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
2356 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
2357 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
2360 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2361 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
2363 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
2364 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
2365 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
2366 flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
2367 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
2368 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
2369 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
2370 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
2371 the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
2372 open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
2373 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
2374 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
2375 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
2376 desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
2377 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.
</p>
2379 <p>Update
2012-
07-
09 08:
30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
2380 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
2381 article
<a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
2382 management with Airtime
</a>,
2383 <a href=
"http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime
</a> which
2384 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
2385 <a href=
"http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell
</a> which claim to
2386 be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
2387 useful to the aspiring radio producer.
</p>
2393 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
2398 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2402 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?
</a>
2408 <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
2409 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
2410 in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
2411 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
2412 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
2413 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
2414 Steinberg in his blog post
2415 "
<a href=
"http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
2416 you recognize the million pound chair?
</a>". Read it and weep for the
2417 spending of your tax money.</p>
2419 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
2420 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
2421 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
2422 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
2423 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
2430 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
2435 <div class="padding
"></div>
2439 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html
">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
2445 <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu /
2446 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
2447 software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
2448 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
2449 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
2450 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
2451 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
2452 receive. The software is
2454 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/
">named FET</a>, and it provide a
2455 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
2456 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
2457 both teachers and students. It is available both for
2458 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html
">Linux, MacOSX and
2461 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html
">the
2462 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
2466 <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
2467 You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
2469 <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
2470 (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
2471 (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
2472 (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
2473 (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
2474 (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
2475 sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
2476 (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
2479 <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
2480 semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
2482 <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
2483 GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
2485 <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
2486 with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
2488 <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
2490 <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
2493 <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
2494 and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
2495 non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
2496 (as separate sets)</li>
2498 <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
2499 (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
2502 <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
2503 demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
2506 <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
2507 <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
2508 <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
2509 <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
2510 <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
2511 <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
2512 <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
2513 <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
2514 <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
2515 <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
2516 students sets for each activity. (it is possible
2517 also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
2519 <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
2520 <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
2523 <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
2525 <li>Break periods</li>
2528 <li>Not available periods</li>
2529 <li>Max/min days per week</li>
2530 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
2531 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
2532 <li>Min hours daily</li>
2533 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
2535 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
2538 <li>For students (sets):
2540 <li>Not available periods</li>
2541 <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
2542 <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
2543 <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
2544 <li>Min hours daily</li>
2545 <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
2547 <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
2550 <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
2552 <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
2553 <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
2554 <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
2555 <li>Min/max days between them</li>
2556 <li>End(s) students day</li>
2557 <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
2558 <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
2559 flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
2560 <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
2561 <li>Not overlapping</li>
2562 <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
2563 <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
2567 <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
2569 <li>Room not available periods</li>
2572 <li>Home room(s)</li>
2573 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
2574 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
2578 <li>For students (sets):
2580 <li>Home room(s)</li>
2581 <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
2582 <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
2585 <li>Preferred room(s):
2587 <li>For a subject</li>
2588 <li>For an activity tag</li>
2589 <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
2590 <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
2594 <li>For a set of activities:
2596 <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
2603 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
2604 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
2605 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
2606 manually, check it out.
2608 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
2609 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/
2012/
03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/
">a
2610 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
2611 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
2612 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos
">Debian Edu HowTo
2619 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
2624 <div class="padding
"></div>
2628 <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>
2634 <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a>
2635 project (Norwegian version of
2636 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> from
2637 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
2638 a problem with the municipalities using
2639 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/
">Zimbra</a>. When FiksGataMi send a
2640 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
2641 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
2642 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address. The intention is to make
2643 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
2644 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
2645 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
2646 Zimbra. Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
2647 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
2648 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
2649 the From: header.</p>
2651 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
2652 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
2653 problem. We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
2654 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
2655 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports. We have been in
2656 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
2657 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
2660 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
2661 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
2662 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
2663 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
2664 differently. Anyone know? Please let us know at
2665 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
2666 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
2672 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>.
2677 <div class="padding
"></div>
2681 <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>
2687 <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
2688 another interview with the people behind
2689 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
2690 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
2691 helpers from Spain. His effort was the reason we added support for
2692 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
2693 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
2694 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.html
">Debian Edu
2695 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
2697 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2699 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
2700 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
2703 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2704 project?</strong></p>
2706 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
2707 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
2708 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
2709 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
2711 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2714 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
2715 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
2716 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
2717 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
2719 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2722 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
2723 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
2724 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
2725 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
2726 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
2727 technologies in school.</p>
2729 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2731 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
2732 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/
">Geany</a> and
2733 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator
">Terminator</a>.</p>
2735 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2736 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2738 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
2739 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
2740 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
2741 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
2743 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
2744 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
2745 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
2747 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
2748 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
2749 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
2750 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
2751 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
2752 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
2753 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
2754 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
2761 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">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>.
2766 <div class="padding
"></div>
2770 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html
">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
2776 <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
2777 <a href="http://www.uit.no/
">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
2778 collecting computer related songs for use at parties. The original
2779 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
2780 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
2781 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format. I have
2782 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
2783 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
2784 help me extend and update the book. If anyone is volunteering to help
2785 me with this, send me an email. Also let me know if there are songs
2786 missing in my book.</p>
2788 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
2789 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
2790 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
2791 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/
">Debconf
2792 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going). Want to sing? Check
2793 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/
">Petter's
2794 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
2800 Tags: <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>.
2805 <div class="padding
"></div>
2809 <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>
2815 <p>During my work on
2816 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/
2012/
20120311.nb.html
">Debian Edu
2817 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
2818 addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
2819 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
2824 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
2825 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
2826 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
2827 system depend on tasksel tasks in
2828 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
2831 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
2832 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
2833 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
2834 at least try to enable it for these services:
2837 <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
2839 <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
2840 <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
2841 <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
2842 <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
2843 <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
2847 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
2848 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
2849 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
2850 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
2852 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
2853 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
2854 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
2856 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
2857 touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
2858 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
2859 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
2860 it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
2861 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
2863 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
2864 time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
2865 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
2868 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
2869 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
2870 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
2872 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
2873 change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
2874 paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
2875 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
2877 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
2878 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
2879 familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
2880 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
2882 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
2883 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
2884 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
2886 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
2887 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
2888 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
2890 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
2891 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
2892 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
588968">BTS report
2893 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
2894 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
2896 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
2899 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
2900 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
2901 <li>and probably more?</li>
2904 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
2905 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
2906 examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
2907 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
2908 some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
2909 could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
2910 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
2911 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
2914 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
2915 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
2916 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
2919 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
2920 interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
2921 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
2922 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
2923 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
2925 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
2926 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
2927 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
2928 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
2929 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
2930 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.
</li>
2932 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
2933 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
2934 There are at least three implementations,
2935 <a href=
"italc.sourceforge.net/">italc
</a>,
2936 <a href=
"http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula
</a> og
2937 <a href=
"http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes
</a> and we should pick one of
2938 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
2939 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
2940 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
2943 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
2944 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
2945 the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
2946 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
2947 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
2948 configuration and data with the central server. This should be
2953 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
2960 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
2965 <div class=
"padding"></div>
2969 <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>
2975 <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
2976 <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
2977 with face recognition
</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
2978 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
2979 recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who
2980 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
2981 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
2982 evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would
2983 be willing to pay for.
</p>
2985 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
2986 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
2987 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
2988 <a href=
"http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
2995 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>.
3000 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3004 <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>
3011 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
3012 reported how to get
</a> the support status out of Dell using an
3013 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
3014 <a href=
"http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
3015 by Daniel De Marco in february
</a>. Combined with my web scraping
3016 code for HP, Dell and IBM
3017 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
3018 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
3019 <a href=
"https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
3020 web service
</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
3021 support status and get a machine readable result back.
</p>
3023 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
3027 % 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>
3028 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": ""})
3032 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
3033 support for other vendors. The python source is available on
3034 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.
</p>
3040 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>.
3045 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3049 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel
</a>
3055 <p>Back in
2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
3056 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
3057 mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
3058 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
3059 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3060 Squeeze
</a> version.
</p>
3062 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3064 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am
38 years old and live near Kiel,
3065 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
3066 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
3069 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
3070 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
3071 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
3072 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
3073 becoming an osteopath.
</p>
3075 <p>Starting in
2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
3076 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
3077 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
3078 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
3079 skills with communication skills.
</p>
3081 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3082 project?
</strong></p>
3084 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
3085 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
3086 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
3087 people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
3088 distributions that target being used for school networks.
</p>
3090 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
3091 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
3092 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between
12/
2010 and
03/
2011 we
3093 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
3094 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
3095 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
3096 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
3097 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
3098 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.
</p>
3100 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
3101 people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
3102 protection experts, other IT professionals.
</p>
3104 <p>We came to two conclusions:
</p>
3106 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
3107 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
3108 by
100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
3109 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
3110 IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
3111 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
3112 possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
3113 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
3114 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
3115 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
3118 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
3119 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
3120 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
3121 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
3122 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
3123 tries to provide an approach for this.
</p>
3125 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
3126 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
3127 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
3128 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
3129 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
3132 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
3133 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
3134 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
3135 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
3136 non-existent until
2010/
2011.
</p>
3138 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
3139 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
3140 avoidance do exist.
</p>
3142 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
3143 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
3144 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
3145 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
3146 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
3147 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
3148 and probably a gain for all.
</p>
3150 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3153 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
3154 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
3155 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
3156 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
3157 project communication, honest communication within the group of
3158 developers, etc.
</p>
3160 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3163 <p>Every coin has two sides:
</p>
3165 <p>Technically:
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
3166 #
311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
3167 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
3168 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
3169 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
3170 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
3173 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
3174 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
3175 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
3176 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
3177 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
3178 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
3179 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
3180 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
3181 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
3182 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
3184 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3186 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.
</p>
3188 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
3189 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
3190 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.
</p>
3192 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In
2010 I started the
3193 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
3194 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
3195 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.
</p>
3197 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
3198 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
3199 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
3200 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
3203 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.
</p>
3205 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3206 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3208 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
3215 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3220 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3224 <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>
3230 <p>A few years ago I wrote
3231 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
3232 to extract support status
</a> for your Dell and HP servers. Recently
3233 I have learned from colleges here at the
3234 <a href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> that Dell have
3235 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service. Given
3236 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
3237 readable information about the support status. This perl code
3238 demonstrate how to do it:
</p>
3245 my $GUID = '
11111111-
1111-
1111-
1111-
111111111111';
3247 my $servicetag = $ARGV[
0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
3248 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
3250 -
> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
3251 -
> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
3252 -
> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
3254 my $a = $s-
>GetAssetInformation(
3255 SOAP::Data-
>name('guid')-
>value($GUID)-
>type(''),
3256 SOAP::Data-
>name('applicationName')-
>value($App)-
>type(''),
3257 SOAP::Data-
>name('serviceTags')-
>value($servicetag)-
>type(''),
3259 print Dumper($a -
> result) ;
3262 <p>The output can look like this:
</p>
3268 'EntitlementData' =
> [
3270 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
3271 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3273 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3277 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
3278 'EndDate' =
> '
2009-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3280 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3284 'EntitlementType' =
> 'Expired',
3285 'EndDate' =
> '
2007-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3287 'StartDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T00:
00:
00',
3292 'AssetHeaderData' =
> {
3293 'SystemModel' =
> 'GX620',
3294 'ServiceTag' =
> '
8DSGD2J',
3295 'SystemShipDate' =
> '
2006-
07-
29T19:
00:
00-
05:
00',
3297 'Region' =
> 'Europe',
3298 'SystemID' =
> 'PLX_GX620',
3299 'SystemType' =
> 'OptiPlex'
3305 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
3307 <a href=
"http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
3308 documentation
</a>, and according to
3309 <a href=
"http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
3310 comment
</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
3311 scraping HTML pages. :)
</p>
3313 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service. If
3314 you know of one, drop me an email. :)
</p>
3320 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>.
3325 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3329 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug
</a>
3335 <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
3336 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug
</a> arrived in the
3337 mail, and I've had a few days to test it. As all my machines are
3338 running Debian Squeeze, where
3339 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
3340 calibration software
</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
3341 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD. This worked
3342 just fine. So far I have only done the quick calibration. It was
3343 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
3346 <p>After calibration, I get a
3347 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
3348 profile
</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
3349 tools. KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
3350 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
3351 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
3352 monitor setups. But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
3353 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
3354 monitor. After searching a bit, I
3355 <a href=
"http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered
</a>
3356 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
3360 dispwin -d
1 profile.icc
3363 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor. The
3364 result was a bit more pink than I expected. I guess I picked the
3365 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
3372 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3377 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3381 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter
</a>
3387 <p>In
2003, a German teacher showed up on the
3388 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
3389 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
3390 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils. His name was Ralf
3391 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
3392 since then, helping to make sure the
3393 <a href=
"http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3394 Squeeze
</a> release became as good as it is..
</p>
3396 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3398 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
3399 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past
12
3400 years (since
2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
3401 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
3402 O- or A-level ("Abitur"). For quite as long, I've been taking care of
3403 our computer network.
</p>
3405 <p>Now, in my early
40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
3406 spare time together with my wife, our son (
3 years) and our daughter
3409 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3410 project?
</strong></p>
3412 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
3413 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
3414 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
3415 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
3416 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt,
2005 (IIRC). Few
3417 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
3418 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others. For more
3419 than
7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
3420 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
3421 approximately
50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
3422 locally installed Skolelinux image. As a consequence, I joined quite
3423 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
3424 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
3425 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.
</p>
3427 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3430 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
3431 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
3432 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
3433 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
3434 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
3435 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
3436 labs). Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
3437 administration costs tend towards zero.
</p>
3439 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3442 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
3443 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
3444 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
3445 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
3446 office packages or desktop environments. These schools have the
3447 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
3448 capacity to do so. Another issue is that Debian release cycles
3449 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
3450 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
3451 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
3452 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
3453 i.e. harder to understand for novices.
</p>
3455 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3457 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
3458 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
3459 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)
</p>
3461 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3462 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3466 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
3467 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
3468 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
3471 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
3472 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
3473 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
3474 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
3475 share among German Skolelinux schools.
</li>
3477 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
3478 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
3479 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.
</li>
3481 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
3482 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
3483 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
3484 shared world wide (school books e.g.).
</li>
3486 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
3487 office suites is much above
20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
3488 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.
</li>
3490 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.
</li>
3492 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
3493 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
3494 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials. And
3495 keep sending documents in ODF formats.
</li>
3503 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3508 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3512 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML
</a>
3518 <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
3519 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
3520 government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his
3521 assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my
3522 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.
</p>
3524 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi. I just noted your
3525 <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>
3528 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
3529 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
3530 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard
" as claimed by the
3531 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
3532 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
3535 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is
3536 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around
2007,
3537 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
3538 at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
3539 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
3540 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
3541 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
3542 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
3543 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In
3544 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
3545 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
3546 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not
20 minutes
3547 of wasted effort.
</p>
3549 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
3550 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending
10
3551 minutes converting to ODF. :)
</p>
3554 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php
</a>
3556 <a href=
"http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php
</a>
3557 for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)
</p>
3564 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>.
3569 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3573 <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>
3580 <a href=
"http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
3581 the ColorHug
</a>, a USB dongle from
3582 <a href=
"http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski
</a> to calibrate
3583 the color on a computer screen. The software required is
3584 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
3585 in Debian
</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
3586 batch. Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
3587 opportunity to order. Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
3588 delivery. I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
3589 should go in the mail on monday. :)
</p>
3591 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
3592 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
3599 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3604 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3608 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner
</a>
3614 <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
3615 publish another interview with the people behind
3616 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>.
3617 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
3618 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
3619 details get right before release.
3621 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
3623 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm
49 years old and living in
3624 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany. I worked nearly
20 years as
3625 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
3626 international company for machinery and equipment. Since
2011 I'm a
3627 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
3628 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer. From April this year
3629 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
3630 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.
</p>
3632 <p>My first contact with linux was around
1993. Since that time I used
3633 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
3634 home since
2006.
</p>
3636 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3637 project?
</strong></p>
3639 <p>Once a day in the early year of
2001 when I wanted to fetch my
3640 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
3641 middle of
20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
3642 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
3643 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
3644 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".
</p>
3646 <p>Some weeks later every of the
10 classrooms had one computer
3647 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
3648 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
3649 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
3650 and with a lot of fun. About one year later the school was connected
3651 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
3652 building. That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
3653 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
3654 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
3655 costs for things like licence and software. So I searched for a
3656 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
3657 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
3658 prerelease
32 I first tried out for being used at the school. I
3659 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
3660 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
3661 Bielefeld in December of
2006.
</p>
3663 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3666 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
3667 for me as today.
</p>
3669 <p>In the past there were advantages like:
</p>
3673 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
3674 they had little money to spent for computers and software.
</li>
3676 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
3679 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
3680 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
3681 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
3682 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
3685 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
3690 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
3691 came up in this way:
</p>
3695 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
3698 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
3699 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
3700 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.
</li>
3702 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
3703 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
3704 interfaces used in the past.
</li>
3706 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
3707 different needs.
</li>
3709 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.
</li>
3711 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
3712 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
3713 is sharing knowledge and minds.
</li>
3715 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
3716 solved today by Debian Edu.
</li>
3720 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3725 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
3726 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
3727 whole municipality areas.
</li>
3729 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
3730 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
3733 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.
</li>
3737 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
3739 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
3740 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
3741 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
3742 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
3743 need from the KDE environment. On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
3744 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.
</p>
3746 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
3747 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
3748 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
3749 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
3750 and the whole family. I probably forgot something.
</p>
3752 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3753 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
3755 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
3756 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
3757 countries and areas all over the world.
</p>
3763 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
3768 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3772 <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>
3778 <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
3779 <img src=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
3781 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
3782 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
3783 But the last ones have not really been up to the task. My last
3784 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
3785 time, and cutting my head took forever. And the one before that did
3786 not work very well either. We have looked for something better for a
3787 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
3788 discovered that there are indeed better tools available. But these
3789 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers". The hair saloons
3790 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
3791 companies. The models they sell, are very different from the ones
3792 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal. The main difference is their
3793 efficiency. It would cut my hair in
5 minutes, instead of the
30-
40
3794 minutes required by my impotent Braun. The hairdresser I visited had
3795 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
3796 producer. But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.
</p>
3798 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it. This was not
3799 straight forward. The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
3800 did not want to sell anything to me. But searching for the model on
3801 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
3802 around NOK
4000,-. This was a bit much. We kept searching and
3803 finally found a Danish supplier
3804 <a href=
"http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
3805 it for around NOK
1800,-
</a>. We ordered one, and it arrived a few
3808 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for
8 hours when we started
3809 to use it, so we left it charging over night. Normally it will only
3810 need one hour to charge. The following evening we successfully tested
3811 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
3812 cutter. The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
3819 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
3824 <div class=
"padding"></div>
3828 <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>
3834 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
3835 article today
</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
3836 <a href=
"http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke
</a> reports
3837 that the video editor application included with
3838 <a href=
"http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
3839 X
</a> have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
3840 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
3843 "
<a href=
"http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
3844 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
3845 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.
</a>"
3848 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
3851 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
3852 commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately.
"
3855 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
3856 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
3857 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html
">discovered
3858 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>. The HTC One X specification specifies that
3859 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
3861 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues
">Adaptive
3862 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
3863 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
3864 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/
">VoiceAge</a>. MP4 is
3865 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H
.264/MPEG-
4_AVC#Patent_licensing
">MPEG4 with
3866 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
3867 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/
">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
3869 <p>I know why I prefer
3870 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and open
3871 standards</a> also for video.</p>
3877 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>.
3882 <div class="padding
"></div>
3886 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html
">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
3892 <p>Here in Norway, the
3893 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=
339"> Ministry of
3894 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
3895 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder
">directory of
3896 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
3897 government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
3898 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
3899 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
3900 to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
3901 on the same level.</p>
3903 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
3904 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing
">Reasonable
3905 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
3906 directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
3907 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
3908 implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
3909 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
3910 willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
3911 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
3912 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
3913 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
3914 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
3915 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
3916 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
3917 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
3918 to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
3919 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
3920 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
3922 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
3923 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
3924 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
3925 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
3926 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
3927 in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
3928 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
3929 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
3931 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
3933 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2010/
11/rand-not-so-reasonable/
">RAND:
3934 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
3936 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
3937 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/
2012/
04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm
">blog
3938 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
3939 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
3940 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
3941 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder
">the
3942 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
3943 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
3944 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
3950 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>.
3955 <div class="padding
"></div>
3959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html
">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
3965 <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu and
3966 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
3967 setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
3968 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
3969 years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
3970 up in the recently released
3971 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze
">Debian
3972 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
3974 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3976 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
3977 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
3978 Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
3979 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
3980 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
3981 information technology and science/technology.</p>
3983 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3984 project?</strong></p>
3986 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
3987 project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
3988 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
3991 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3994 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
3995 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
3998 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4001 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
4002 downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
4003 setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
4004 possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
4005 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
4006 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
4007 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
4009 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN
">Debian LAN</a>
4010 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
4012 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4014 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
4015 on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
4016 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
4017 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
4019 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4020 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4022 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
4023 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
4024 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
4025 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
4026 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
4027 free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
4028 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.
</p>
4030 <p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
4031 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
4032 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
4033 the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
4034 "Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
4035 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
4036 fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
4037 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.
</p>
4043 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4048 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4052 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye
</a>
4058 <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
4059 like
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>,
4060 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
4062 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
4063 Edu Squeeze release manual
</a>.
4065 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4067 <p>I'm a
44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
4068 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.
</p>
4070 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4071 project?
</strong></p>
4073 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
4074 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
4075 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
4076 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
4077 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
4080 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4083 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4086 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
4087 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
4088 education system.
</p>
4090 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
4091 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
4092 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
4093 money on the latest hardware.
</p>
4095 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4097 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
4098 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
4099 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).
</p>
4101 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4102 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4104 <p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
4105 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
4106 you would hardly need a strategy.
</p>
4112 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4117 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4121 <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>
4127 <p>Recently I have spent time with
4128 <a href=
"http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS
</a> on speeding
4129 up a
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
4130 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
4131 process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
4132 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
4133 due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
4134 the Multimedia menu would cause more than
20 000 IP packages to be
4135 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
4137 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
4138 ping times between the client and the server were in the range
2-
20
4139 ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
4140 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
4141 the source of these NFS calls are access(
2) system calls for
4142 non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(
2) calls to find
4143 one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
4144 around
230 access(
2) calls.
</p>
4146 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
4147 directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
4148 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
4149 and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
4150 mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
4151 requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
4152 <a href=
"https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
4153 from
2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.
</p>
4155 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
4156 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
4157 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
4158 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
4159 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
4160 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
4161 for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
4162 one icon from several hundred to less than
5, and make the KDE menu
4163 almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
4164 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.
</p>
4166 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
4167 and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
4168 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
4169 that is not really an option at the moment.
</p>
4171 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
4172 (at) lists.debian.org.
</p>
4178 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4183 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4187 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News
</a>
4193 <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
4194 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a> by
4195 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
4196 non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
4197 for schools. Check out his article
4198 <a href=
"https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
4199 distribution for education
</a> if you want to learn more.
</p>
4205 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4210 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4214 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer
</a>
4220 <p>Germany is a core area for the
4221 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux
</a>
4222 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
4223 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
4225 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4227 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
4228 Bochum, Germany. Since
1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
4229 "
<a href=
"http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
4230 Dortmund
</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
4231 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
4232 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
4233 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
4234 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
4236 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
4237 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
4238 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
4239 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
4240 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
4241 the end of April this year.</p>
4243 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4244 project?</strong></p>
4246 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
4247 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
4248 Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
4249 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
4250 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
4251 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
4252 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
4253 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
4254 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
4255 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
4258 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
4259 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
4260 clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
4261 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
4262 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
4263 the admin teachers.</p>
4265 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4268 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
4269 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
4270 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
4272 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
4273 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
4274 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
4275 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
4276 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
4278 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4283 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4285 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
4286 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
4287 Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
4290 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4291 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4293 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
4294 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
4295 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
4301 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">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>.
4306 <div class="padding
"></div>
4310 <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>
4316 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
4318 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
4319 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
4320 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
4321 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
4322 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
4323 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/
38601767">vimeo</a>
4325 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg
4326 Theora</a> file. Check it out below.</p>
4328 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie
" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
4329 <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
"' />
4330 <p>Download video as
4331 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/
2012-
03-
14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv
">Ogg</a>.</p>
4338 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
4343 <div class="padding
"></div>
4347 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html
">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
4353 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4354 users are spread all across the globe. The second inteview after
4355 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/
2012/
03/msg00001.html
">the
4356 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
4357 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
4359 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4361 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
4362 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
4363 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
4364 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
4365 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
4366 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
4367 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
4370 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4371 project?</strong></p>
4373 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
4374 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
4375 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
4376 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
4377 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
4378 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
4379 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
4380 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
4381 these things we decided to try it.</p>
4383 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4386 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
4387 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
4388 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
4389 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
4390 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
4391 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about
25
4392 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
4393 proprietary software everywhere.
</p>
4395 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4398 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
4399 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
4400 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
4401 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
4402 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!
</p>
4404 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4406 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
4407 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
4408 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
4409 use Ubuntu and an Android
4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
4412 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4413 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4415 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
4416 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
4417 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
4418 applications". However, schools today are experiencing budget
4419 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
4420 XP. At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
4421 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
4422 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
4423 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
4424 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
4425 first
10,
000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in
2 hours.
</p>
4427 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
4428 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
4429 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.
</p>
4435 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4440 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4444 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu
</a>
4450 <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
4451 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
4452 translated versions in sync. To do this we have come up with what we
4453 believe is a very efficient work flow.
</p>
4457 <li>The documentation is written in a
4458 <a href=
"http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki
</a> (see for example
4459 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
4460 Squeeze release manual
</a>) with support for exporting the content as
4463 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
4464 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
4465 with the translated text.
</li>
4467 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
4468 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed. They can
4469 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
4470 the translation. There is even a system in place to handle translated
4473 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
4474 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.
</li>
4476 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
4477 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.
</li>
4481 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues. The biggest
4482 issue is that
<a href=
"http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
4483 we use in moinmoin
</a> is not actively maintained. The docbook
4484 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
4485 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.
</p>
4487 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
4488 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
4495 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4500 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4504 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!
</a>
4510 <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
4511 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu
</a> based
4512 on Debian/Squeeze. The full announcement is
4513 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available
</a>
4514 from the project announcement list. Now is a good time to test if it
4515 you have not done so already.
</p>
4517 <p>I plan to present the new version at
4518 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
4519 meeting
</a> on tuesday. I look forward to seeing you there if you are
4520 in Oslo, Norway.
</p>
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>.
4531 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4535 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker
</a>
4541 <p>Inspired by
<a href=
"http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
4542 interview series
</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
4543 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4544 community. This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
4545 more international audience.
</p>
4547 <p>While
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
4548 Skolelinux
</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
4549 Europe, there are users all around the globe. One of those far away
4550 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
4551 and contributor. It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
4552 work out of the box in Japan. I got him to answer a few questions,
4553 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
4556 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?
</strong></p>
4558 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
4559 and we have three lovely children, aged
15,
14 and
4(!) I am the IT
4560 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
4561 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
4562 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
4563 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
4564 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
4565 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
4566 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
4567 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
4568 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.
</p>
4570 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4571 project?
</strong></p>
4573 <p>In around
2004 or
5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
4574 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
4575 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
4576 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
4577 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
4578 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
4579 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
4580 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
4581 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
4582 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
4583 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
4584 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
4585 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.
</p>
4587 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4590 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
4591 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
4592 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
4593 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
4594 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
4595 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
4598 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4601 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
4602 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
4603 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
4604 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
4605 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
4606 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
4607 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
4608 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
4609 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is. A
4610 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
4611 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
4612 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
4613 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
4614 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
4617 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?
</strong></p>
4619 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
4620 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
4621 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
4622 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
4623 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music. At school
4624 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
4625 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
4626 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
4627 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS. We also
4628 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
4629 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.
</p>
4631 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4632 get schools to use free software?
</strong></p>
4634 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
4635 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
4636 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
4637 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
4638 file formats and Word than they did
5 years ago. The Edu aspect is
4639 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
4640 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu? But of course the main attraction is
4641 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
4642 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
4643 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
4644 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
4645 doesn't play flash, for example.
</p>
4651 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4656 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4660 <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>
4666 <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
4668 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
4669 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
4670 Debian Edu Squeeze. The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
4671 also available from
<a href=
"http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo
</a> and
4673 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
4674 Theora
</a> file. Check it out below.
</p>
4676 <p><video id=
"gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width=
"256" height=
"184" preload controls
>
4677 <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"'
/>
4678 <p>Download video as
4679 <a href=
"http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
</a>.
</p>
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>.
4691 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4695 <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>
4701 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
4702 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4703 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement is
4704 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available
</a>
4705 from the project announcement list. Check it out if you
4706 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
4712 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4717 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4721 <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>
4727 <p>Many years ago, the
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
4728 / Debian Edu project
</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
4729 for making stop motion movies. The proposal came from a teacher
4730 needing such tool on Skolelinux. The project, called "stopmotion",
4731 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
4732 national aware with this great project. The project was initiated and
4733 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
4734 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad. They got in touch with people at Aardman
4735 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
4736 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
4737 animators around the globe. But as is usual after studying, both got
4738 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
4739 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now. Until last
4742 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
4743 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
4745 <a href=
"http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion
</a>.
4746 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
4747 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
4748 mean). I've been following
4749 <a href=
"https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
4750 mailing list
</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
4751 the future is encouraging. If you want to make stop motion movies.
4752 Check it out. :)
</p>
4758 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
4763 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4767 <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>
4773 <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
4774 candidate for
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4775 Skolelinux
</a> based on Squeeze. The full announcement did for some
4776 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
4777 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available
</a>
4778 from the Debian development announcement list. Check it out if you
4779 need a software solution for your school.
</p>
4785 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4790 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4794 <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>
4800 <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
4801 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
4802 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
4803 on Squeeze. The full announcement is
4804 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available
</a>
4805 on the project announcement list. Check it out if you need a software
4806 solution for your school.
</p>
4812 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4817 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4821 <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>
4827 <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems. Thanks to Linux
4828 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
4829 <a href=
"http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
4830 close
</a> this summer :). But once a disk is starting to behave
4831 funny, a practical problem present itself. How to get from the Linux
4832 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
4833 the disk when the computer is turned off? In my case I have SATA
4834 disks with a unique ID printed on the label. All I need is a way to
4835 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.
</p>
4837 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
4838 <a href=
"http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
4839 that hdparm -I
</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
4840 printed on the disk label. The following (almost) one-liner can be
4841 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:
</p>
4844 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
4846 printf "Failed disk $d: "
4847 hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
4851 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
4852 next time, and in case other find it useful.
</p>
4854 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(
</p>
4857 Failed disk sdd1: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
4858 Failed disk sdd2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1860823
4859 Failed disk sde2: Serial Number: WD-WCASJ1840589
4862 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
4863 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
4864 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
4865 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label. The vendor
4866 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
4867 mounted inside my box.
</p>
4869 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
4870 Software RAID in the
4871 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard
</a>
4872 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
4873 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail. At the moment
4874 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
4875 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
4876 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.
</p>
4882 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>.
4887 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4891 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>
4897 <p>New in the Squeeze version of
4898 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> is the
4899 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
4900 based on their environment. We want all systems on the client to use
4901 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from
<tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat
</tt>, to
4902 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
4903 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings. The schools can
4904 change the global proxy setting by editing
4905 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat
</tt> and the change propagate
4906 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.
</p>
4908 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
4909 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
4910 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):
</p>
4913 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
4915 if (!isResolvable(host) ||
4916 isPlainHostName(host) ||
4917 dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
4920 return "PROXY webcache:
3128; DIRECT";
4924 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:
</p>
4927 http_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
4928 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:
3128/
4931 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
4932 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
4934 <tt><a href=
"http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/
</a></tt>,
4935 and insert this extracted proxy URL in
<tt>/etc/environment
</tt> and
4936 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf
</tt>. The perl script wpad-extract work just
4937 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
4938 javascript code is
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
4939 able to build
</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
4940 library. I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
4941 is frozen. An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
4942 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
4943 known alternative is known at the moment.
</p>
4945 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
4946 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
4947 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
4948 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
4949 feature when it is connected to other networks. And if no proxy is
4950 announced, direct connections will be used instead.
</p>
4952 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
4953 or security problem. But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
4954 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
4955 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
4956 distinction to be academic. If you are afraid of using the wrong
4957 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
4958 first place. In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
4959 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
4960 the network setup changes.
</p>
4962 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
4963 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
4965 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
4966 page
</a> for those that want to learn more.
</p>
4972 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
4977 <div class=
"padding"></div>
4981 <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>
4987 <p>Since the Lenny version of
4988 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>, a
4989 feature to save power have been included. It is as simple as it is
4990 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
4991 in the morning. This is done using the
4992 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night
</a> Debian package.
</p>
4994 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
4995 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts. For Debian Edu, this is done in
4996 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
4997 every hour from
16:
00 until
06:
00 to see if the machine is unused, and
4998 shut it down if it is. If the hardware in question is supported by
5000 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup
</a>
5001 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around
07:
00 +-
5002 10 minutes. If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
5003 try to turn on the client. The wake-on-lan option is only documented
5004 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.
</p>
5006 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
5007 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
5008 the common setup for a classroom. The nvram-wakeup method only work
5009 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock. I've seen old
5010 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
5011 starting from
0 (or was it
1990?) every boot. If you have one of
5012 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.
</p>
5014 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
5015 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment. For those without a
5016 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
5017 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night
</tt> to enable it.
5018 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?
</p>
5024 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5029 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5033 <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>
5039 <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
5040 publish the third beta version of
5041 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
5042 on Squeeze. If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
5043 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
5044 installing new machines, check it out. If you need a software
5045 solution for your school, check it out too. The full announcement is
5046 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available
</a>
5047 on the project announcement list.
</p>
5049 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
5050 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):
</p>
5054 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
5055 10.0.0.0/
8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
5056 the installation.
</li>
5058 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
5059 Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.
</li>
5061 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
5062 disabled queues are restarted every hour. This should cut down on
5063 the amount of manual administration needed for printers.
</li>
5065 <li>The set of initial users have been changed. Now a personal user
5066 for the local system administrator is created during installation
5067 instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
5068 and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
5069 membership. This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
5070 up to date on the system.
</li>
5074 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
5075 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home. I will use it look
5076 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
5077 final Squeeze release is published.
</p>
5079 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
5080 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
5081 gathering
</a> in Oslo. We will continue the work on the Squeeze
5082 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version. Perhaps I
5083 will see you there?
</p>
5089 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5094 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5098 <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>
5104 <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
5105 This is the sad fact of todays computers. In the next version of
5106 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> based
5107 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
5108 firmware blobs easier to handle. The common use case I run into is a
5109 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
5110 work, but there are other use cases as well.
</p>
5112 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
5113 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
5114 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
5115 during installation. This take care firmware for network devices used
5116 by the installer when installing from from local media. But for
5117 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
5118 not taken care of by this.
</p>
5120 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
5121 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware
</tt> which
5122 search through the
<tt>dmesg
</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
5123 firmware. The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
5124 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
5125 the requested firmware file(s) is installed. I have proposed to do
5126 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
5127 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#
655507</a>), to allow PXE
5128 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better. Run the
5129 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
5130 firmware packages.
</p>
5132 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
5133 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
5134 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
5135 included to be able to install at all. To fill the PXE installation
5136 initrd with extra firmware, the
5137 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware
</tt> script is
5138 provided. Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
5139 PXE initrd with firmware packages.
</p>
5141 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
5142 network cards working. For this,
5143 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware
</tt> is
5144 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs. It is used
5145 the same way as the other firmware related tools.
</p>
5147 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation. We
5148 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
5149 non-free software, and it is their choice.
</p>
5151 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend. You might want to give it a
5158 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5163 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5167 <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>
5173 <p>The next version of
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
5174 / Skolelinux
</a> will include a new tool
5175 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp
</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
5176 the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
5177 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.
</p>
5179 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
5180 central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
5181 as thin clients and wait
5 minutes after the last client booted to
5182 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
5183 this is done, log on to the central server and run
5184 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
</tt> in the
<tt>konsole
</tt> to use the
5185 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
5186 will look similar to this:
</p>
5188 <p><blockquote><pre>
5189 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
5190 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [
10.0.2.2] id ether-
00:
01:
02:
03:
04:
05.
5191 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.
5193 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
5195 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5196 enter password: *******
5198 </pre></blockquote></p>
5200 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
5201 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
5202 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
5203 automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
5204 then to log into
<a href=
"https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa
</a>,
5205 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
5206 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
5207 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
5208 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
5209 group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
5210 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
5213 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
5214 enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.
</p>
5216 <p>Update
2012-
01-
28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
5217 hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
5218 original text, and have added it to the text now.
</p>
5224 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5229 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5233 <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>
5239 <p>In the Squeeze version of
5240 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> soon
5241 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
5242 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
5243 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP. In
5244 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
5245 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
5248 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
5249 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
5250 default content. By changing this value to another URL, all users get
5251 to see the page behind this new URL.
</p>
5253 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool. It can be
5254 called as "
<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'
</tt>' to update LDAP with the
5257 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
5258 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
5259 from within Iceweasel instead.
</p>
5265 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
5270 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5274 <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>
5280 <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
5281 the second beta version of
5282 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a>. If
5283 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
5284 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
5285 machines, check it out. If you need a software solution for your
5286 school, check it out too. The full announcement is
5287 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available
</a>
5288 on the project announcement list.
</p>
5294 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5299 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5303 <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>
5309 <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
5310 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
</a> ready
5311 for release. The initial problem I looked at was particularly
5314 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
5315 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
5316 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
5317 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
5318 scratch. I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
5319 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
5320 wrap up its tasks.
</p>
5322 <p>Eventually the cause was found. The kernel was simply running out
5323 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
5324 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
5325 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
5326 because I was typing.
</P>
5328 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
5329 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
5330 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
5331 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
5332 generate some disk IO. Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
5333 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
5334 generate entropy.
</p>
5337 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
5338 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze
</a> version, and we
5339 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
5340 developers
</a>. We plan to release beta2 this weekend.
</p>
5346 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5351 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5355 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge
</a>
5361 <p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
5362 around
1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
5363 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5364 up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5365 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5366 firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5367 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5368 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5369 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5370 the tools to do so.
</p>
5372 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5373 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
5374 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5375 so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.
</P>
5377 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5378 <a href=
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file
</a>
5379 with firmware information for all
11th generation servers, listing
5380 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5381 site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5382 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5383 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5384 be activated on the first reboot.
</p>
5386 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5387 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5388 servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.
</p>
5394 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5396 # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5398 'XML::Simple' =
> 'perl-XML-Simple',
5400 for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5401 eval "use $module;";
5403 my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5404 system("yum install -y $pkg");
5405 eval "use $module;";
5409 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5415 sub run_firmware_script {
5416 my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5418 print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5421 print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5423 if (
0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5424 print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5426 print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5430 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5431 my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5432 # Run firmware packages
5433 for my $dir (@dirs) {
5434 print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5435 opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5436 while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5437 next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5438 run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5446 print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5447 system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5452 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5455 if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5457 # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5458 system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-
33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5460 my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5464 fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5465 system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5466 my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5467 # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5470 for my $url (@paths) {
5471 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5473 run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5475 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5476 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5480 print STDERR
"error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5481 print STDERR
"error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5487 my $url =
"ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5491 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5492 # firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
5493 # machines and
11th generation Dell servers.
5494 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5495 my $filename = shift;
5497 my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5499 my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5501 print STDERR
"Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5503 my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5505 for my $bundle (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5506 my $brand = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
5507 my $model = $bundle-
>{TargetSystems}-
>{Brand}-
>{Model}-
>{Display}-
>{content};
5509 if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}) {
5510 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}[
0]-
>{osCode};
5512 $oscode = $bundle-
>{TargetOSes}-
>{OperatingSystem}-
>{osCode};
5514 if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5516 @paths = map { $_-
>{path} } @{$bundle-
>{Contents}-
>{Package}};
5519 for my $component (@{$xml-
>{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5520 my $componenttype = $component-
>{ComponentType}-
>{value};
5522 # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5523 next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5525 my $cpath = $component-
>{path};
5526 for my $path (@paths) {
5527 if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5528 push(@paths, $cpath);
5536 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5537 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
5538 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
5539 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5546 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
5551 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5555 <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>
5561 <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
5562 publishing houses how to handle electronic books. Surprisingly, the
5563 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
5564 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
5565 publishing houses. Time limited renting (
2-
3 years) is one proposed
5566 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
5567 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
5570 <p>Anyway, while reading
<a href=
"http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
5571 this debate
</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
5572 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
5573 to a better model. The idea is simple:
</p>
5575 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
5576 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
5577 solution to hand out free e-books. As a start, the books distributed
5578 by
<a href=
"http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg
</a> (about
5579 36,
000 books),
<a href=
"http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg
</a>
5580 (
1149 books) and
<a href=
"http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
5581 Internet Archive
</a> (
3,
033,
748 books) could be included, but any book
5582 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
5585 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:
</p>
5589 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
5590 other relevant equipment.
</li>
5592 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.
</li>
5596 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
5597 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
5598 visiting the library. The site would be the distribution point for
5599 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
5600 books available.
</p>
5602 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this? I guess it would
5603 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
5610 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>.
5615 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5619 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage
</a>
5625 <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
5626 server. It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
5627 movie collection easily available. It also make it possible to let
5628 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
5629 down. I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
5630 subtitle options intact. It also ensure that the entire film is one
5631 file on the disk. As this is for personal use, the ripping is
5632 perfectly legal here in Norway.
</p>
5634 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:
</p>
5638 # apt-get install lsdvd
5639 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
5640 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=
1M
5643 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
5644 been looking for a better alternative. I have no idea why this I/O
5645 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
5646 something fishy with the DVDs in question. Or perhaps all three.
</p>
5648 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
5649 genisoimage. This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
5650 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
5655 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
5657 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
5658 title=$(lsdvd
2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $
3}')
5659 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
5660 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
5661 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
5664 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?
</p>
5666 <p>Update
2011-
09-
18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
5667 readom program from the wodim package. It is specially written to
5668 read optical media, and is called like this:
<tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
5669 f=image.iso
</tt>. It got
6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
5670 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.
</p>
5672 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
5673 <a href=
"http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
5674 program python-dvdvideo
</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
5675 for. Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
5676 creating a ISO image. The git source built and installed just fine in
5677 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.
</p>
5683 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>.
5688 <div class=
"padding"></div>
5692 <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>
5698 <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
5699 <a href=
"http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
5700 comments and opinions
</a> on my blog post on
5701 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
5702 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian
</a> and my blog post about
5703 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
5704 default KDE desktop in Debian
</a>. I only have time to address one
5705 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
5706 misunderstanding he bring forward:
</p>
5709 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
5710 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
5711 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
5714 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
5715 and booting into runlevel
1 is the same. I am not surprised he
5716 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
5717 thing to believe. But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
5718 runlevel
1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
5719 mode. I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
5720 hard to explain.
</p>
5722 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
5723 "
<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin
</tt>". This means the only thing that is
5724 executed in single user mode is sulogin. Single user mode is a boot
5725 state "between
" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
5726 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
5727 enters the single user state. When switching to runlevel 1, the state
5728 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
5729 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
5730 runs "init -t1 S
" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
5731 1. It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
5732 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
5735 <p>This summary might make it clearer. When booting for the first
5736 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
5737 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". When booting into
5738 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
5739 S; /etc/init.d/rc
1; /sbin/sulogin
</tt>". A problem show up when
5740 trying to continue after visiting single user mode. Not all services
5741 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
5742 unpredicatble state. This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
5743 after visiting single user mode.</p>
5745 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
5746 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/. When switching from say runlevel 2
5747 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
5748 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
5749 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
5750 2-5. I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
5751 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
5752 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
5754 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
5755 and discovered this problem a few years ago. I suspect it originates
5756 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
5762 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>.
5767 <div class="padding
"></div>
5771 <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>
5777 <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
5778 are started from /etc/rcS.d/. In fact, there is a bite more of them
5779 than make sense, and this causes a few problems. What kind of
5780 problems, you might ask. There are at least two problems. The first
5781 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
5782 runlevel 1. One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
5783 the expected state. The other is that single user boot will sometimes
5784 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
5785 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
5786 machine from a problem in that subsystem. A minor additional point is
5787 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
5788 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
5789 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
5791 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/. In short, only the
5792 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
5793 presented during a single user boot should go there. Everything else
5794 should go into the numeric runlevels. This means things like
5795 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
5796 the numeric runlevels. Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
5797 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
5798 out. Do your package have one of them? Please help us make single
5799 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
5801 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
5802 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
5803 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
5806 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound. To keep
5807 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
5808 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
5809 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
5810 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
5811 moved first. This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
5812 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
5813 the system state correct. This will require some coordination when it
5814 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
5815 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
5816 on them. Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
5817 package, while others are still left to do. I wish I had time to work
5818 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
5819 find time to push this forward.</p>
5825 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>.
5830 <div class="padding
"></div>
5834 <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>
5840 <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
5841 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
5842 desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
5843 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
5846 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
5847 implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
5848 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
5852 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
5853 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
5854 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
5855 tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
5856 through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
5857 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
5858 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
5861 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
5862 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
5863 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
5864 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
5865 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
5866 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
5867 Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
5868 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
5869 type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
5870 license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
5871 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
5872 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
5873 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
5875 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
5876 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
5877 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
5878 should search for a package that would add support for it. This
5879 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
5880 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
5881 plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
5882 gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
5883 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
5884 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
5886 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
5887 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
5888 start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
5889 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
5890 know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
5891 latter behaviour.</li>
5895 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
5896 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
5897 it do not matter much.</p>
5899 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
5900 Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
5901 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
5907 Tags: <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>.
5912 <div class="padding
"></div>
5916 <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>
5922 <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</A>
5923 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
5924 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
5925 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
5926 security support for a few years.</p>
5928 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
5929 that are missing in Debian at the moment. It would be great if these
5930 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
5931 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com
">FixMyStreet</a> clone
5932 in their own country using only Debian packages. The list of modules
5933 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
5934 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
5935 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
5936 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
5937 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
5938 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
5939 easier in the future.</p>
5941 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
5942 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
5943 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package. But this leave me
5944 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
5945 do not have time for.</p>
5951 Tags: <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>.
5956 <div class="padding
"></div>
5960 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html
">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
5967 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/
2011/
06/
20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/
">the
5968 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
5970 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA
">Autodesk</a>
5972 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/
2011/
06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html
">Microsoft
5973 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
5974 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs. Whenever I take
5975 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
5981 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>.
5986 <div class="padding
"></div>
5990 <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>
5996 <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
5997 <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
5998 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> started to
5999 work. It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
6000 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
6001 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
6002 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
6003 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
6004 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
6005 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
6007 <p>Where is it? Visit
6008 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/
">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
6009 to have a look. Please send feedback to the
6010 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami
">fiksgatami
6011 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
6017 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>.
6022 <div class="padding
"></div>
6026 <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>
6032 <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
6033 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/
">Open311 API</a> in the
6034 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
6035 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
6036 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
6037 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/
">New Zealand version</a> of
6038 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
6039 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
6040 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
6041 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
6042 FixMyStreet. The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
6043 to get a draft limping along. In the process, I have discovered a few
6044 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
6046 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
6047 handling in the specification. The specification seem to assume all
6048 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
6049 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there. To be
6050 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
6051 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
6052 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
6053 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
6054 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
6055 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
6056 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
6057 know which language to use when writing a problem report. I suspect
6058 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
6060 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
6061 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet. One issue I
6062 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
6063 each category. The specification do not state that the identifier
6064 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
6065 here. In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
6066 category. As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
6067 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
6070 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
6071 differ in a key part. FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
6072 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title. I'm not
6073 quite sure how to best handle this yet. When asking for a FixMyStreet
6074 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
6075 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
6076 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
6078 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
6079 near a geographic location. I believe this is important if one is to
6080 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units. The specification
6081 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
6082 and range= options.</p>
6084 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
6085 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
6086 to assume only one administration. For FixMyStreet, this mean a
6087 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
6088 available depend on the location of the problem. Not quite sure how
6089 to best handle this. I've noticed
6090 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/
">SeeClickFix</a> added
6091 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
6092 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
6093 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
6095 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
6096 up with the open311 developer group. I really wish they had a email
6097 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/
">Gmane</a> to use for
6098 discussions instead of only
6099 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss
">a forum<a/>. Oh,
6100 well. That will probably resolve itself, one way or another. I've
6101 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
6102 seem to reply to my questions there. This make me wonder if I just
6103 fail to understand how the open311 community work. It sure do not
6104 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
6110 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>.
6115 <div class="padding
"></div>
6119 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html
">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
6125 <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/
">The Gnash project</a> is still
6126 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
6127 A few days ago the project
6128 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/
2011-
04/msg00011.html
">announced</a>
6129 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code. I hope many
6130 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
6137 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>.
6142 <div class="padding
"></div>
6146 <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>
6152 <p>Here is a small update for my English readers. Most of my blog
6153 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6154 update in English.</p>
6156 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6157 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6158 of the British service
6159 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/
">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6160 and it has been running for a month now. The entire project has been
6161 organised by me and two others. Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6162 to fund the development work. In January I drafted a contract with
6163 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/
">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6164 and in February the development took place. Most of it involved
6165 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6166 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6167 running in any country by now. The Norwegian
6168 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/
">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6169 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/
">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6170 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6171 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6173 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6174 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th. The system is
6175 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6176 problem reports in a few weeks. Soon we hope to announce the Android
6177 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6178 public infrastructure.</p>
6180 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6187 Tags: <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>.
6192 <div class="padding
"></div>
6196 <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>
6202 <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6203 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo. My idea is that
6204 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6205 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6206 maintained/distributed software against this information. It should
6207 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten. The
6208 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6209 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6210 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6211 out which security holes were present in our free software
6214 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6215 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6216 consistent way across data sources. I considered several ways to do
6217 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6218 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6219 existing naming scheme. And it seem like I am not the first one to
6220 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6221 solution. Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html
">Common
6222 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6223 software, hardware and other platform components. The CPE ids are
6224 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/
">National
6225 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6226 issues for any CPE name. With this in place, all I need to do is to
6227 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6228 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6229 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6231 <p>To give you an example. The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6232 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip. If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6233 check out, one could look up
6234 <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
6235 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6236 The most recent one is
6237 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-
2010-
0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6238 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6239 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6241 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6242 for offline processing of issues. Using this dump, I've written a
6243 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6244 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs. One give it CPEs
6245 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6246 security issues out.</p>
6248 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6249 information need to be high. For that to happen, I believe as many as
6250 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database. I notice
6252 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt
">a
6253 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6254 information. I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6256 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6257 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6258 the CVE database in NVD. The result look fairly good, but there are
6259 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6260 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6261 Debian believe are affected by a CVE). Hope to find time to improve
6262 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6263 someone maintaining it. So far my three emails with questions and
6264 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6265 established soon.</p>
6267 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6268 mapping. It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6269 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6270 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6271 for their packages.</p>
6277 Tags: <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>.
6282 <div class="padding
"></div>
6286 <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>
6293 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data
">discover-data</a>
6294 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6295 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6296 information. One part of this script that I find very useful when
6297 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6298 to the PCI device it claims. It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6299 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with. To see
6300 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6301 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>. The relevant output on
6302 one of my machines like this:</p>
6306 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6309 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6318 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6319 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6322 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6323 echo loaded pci modules:
6325 cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6326 for address in * ; do
6327 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6328 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6329 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6330 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
6331 id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
3}'`
6341 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6345 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6346 echo loaded usb modules:
6348 cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6349 for address in * ; do
6350 if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6351 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6352 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6353 address=$(echo $address |sed s/
0000://)
6354 id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n
1 | awk '{print $
6}')
6366 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6373 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian
</a>,
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english
</a>.
6378 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6382 <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>
6388 <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
6389 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H
.264 and WebM. Most video sites
6390 seem to use H
.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough,
6391 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
6392 H
.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
6393 the Wikipedia article on
6394 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video
</a>,
6395 this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
6396 different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is
6397 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
6398 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
6399 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
6400 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
6401 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
6402 Firefox. H
.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
6403 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
6404 Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
6405 Safari can install plugins to get it.
</p>
6407 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
6408 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
6409 HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser
6410 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In
6411 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG
</a>, we provide first fallback to a
6412 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
6413 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
6414 Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an
<a
6415 href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
6416 from last week
</a>.
</p>
6418 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H
.264 is
6419 the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H
.264
6420 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
6421 are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H
.264
6422 was without royalties and license terms, check out
6423 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
6424 Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
6426 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
6428 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos
">the
6429 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look. I'm not aware of a
6430 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
6432 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
6433 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
6434 <video> tag support in browsers and not the video support
6435 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
6441 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>.
6446 <div class="padding
"></div>
6450 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html
">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video></a>
6456 <p>Today I discovered
6457 <a href="http://www.digi.no/
860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome
">via
6458 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
6459 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
">yesterday
6460 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 <video> in
6461 the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
6462 open" codec technology. If you believe H
.264 was free for everyone
6463 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
6464 "
<a href=
"http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H
.264 – Not The Kind Of
6465 Free That Matters
</a>". It is not free of cost for creators of video
6466 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
6467 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
6468 licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information
6469 on the Google announcement is available from
6470 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome
">OSnews</a>.
6473 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
6474 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
6475 the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open
6476 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
6477 for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two
6478 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some
6479 browsers support H.264, and others support
6480 <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg Theora</a> and
6481 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/
">WebM</a>
6482 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/
">Dirac</a> is not really an option
6483 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
6484 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
6485 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
6486 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video
">an
6487 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
6489 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
6490 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
6491 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/
2011/
01/simple_questions
">presents
6492 the mind set</a> of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions
6493 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
6494 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/
24245/
10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM
">presenting
6495 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
6497 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
6498 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This
6499 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
6500 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/
2011/
01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm
">todays
6501 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it
6502 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
6503 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
6505 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
6506 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
6507 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV
6508 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
6509 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
6510 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
6511 publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
6513 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the
6514 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
6515 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
6516 perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
6517 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
6518 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
6519 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
6520 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
6521 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
6522 video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be
6523 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
6524 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
6525 I guess time will tell.</p>
6527 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
6528 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/
2011/
01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html
">more
6529 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
6535 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>.
6540 <div class="padding
"></div>
6544 <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>
6551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html
">compare
6553 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">the Digistan
6554 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
6555 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
6556 this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
6557 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
6558 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
6559 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
6561 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
6562 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse
">the
6563 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
6564 to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
6565 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
6566 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
6567 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
6569 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
6570 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
6576 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>.
6581 <div class="padding
"></div>
6585 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html
">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
6591 <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
6592 "<a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
6593 Open Standard
</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
6594 the term has been decided by Digistan. The term "Open Standard
" has
6595 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
6596 about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
6597 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
6598 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
6600 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
6601 standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
6602 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
6603 complete survey. More definitions are available on the
6604 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
">wikipedia
6607 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
6608 Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
6609 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
6610 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
6611 their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
6612 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
6613 specification on equal terms.</p>
6617 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
6618 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
6623 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6624 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6625 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
6626 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
6628 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
6629 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
6630 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
6633 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
6634 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
6637 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
6642 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
6643 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/
">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
6644 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/
">this
6645 definition</a> in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
6646 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/
20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm
">their
6647 definition of a open standard</a>. Another from a different part of
6648 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
6652 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
6656 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
6659 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
6660 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
6662 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
6663 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.
</li>
6669 <p>Then there is
<a href=
"http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
6670 definition
</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.
</p>
6674 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is
</p>
6678 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
6679 manner equally available to all parties;
</li>
6681 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
6682 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
6683 Standard themselves;
</li>
6685 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
6686 any party or in any business model;
</li>
6688 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
6689 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
6692 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
6693 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
6700 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
6702 <a href=
"http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
6703 Standards Checklist
</a> with a fairly detailed description.
</p>
6706 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
6710 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
6715 <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
6716 participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
6717 imposed by the organization under which it is developed
6720 <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
6721 method, can be changed through input from all
6724 <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
6725 the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.
</li>
6727 <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
6728 and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.
</li>
6730 <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
6731 public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
6732 comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.
</li>
6740 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard
</p>
6743 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
6744 and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
6745 implementations to the interface described in the standard without
6746 undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
6747 protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.
</li>
6749 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
6750 a technical or economic barriers
</li>
6752 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
6753 interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
6754 program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
6755 programs and mutually to use the information which has been
6756 exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
6757 file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
6758 conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
6759 computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
6760 intended to function.
</li>
6762 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
6763 standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
6764 must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.
</li>
6766 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
6767 fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
6768 perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
6769 sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
6770 terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
6771 outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
6772 patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
6773 only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
6777 <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
6778 licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
6779 (also known as a reciprocity clause)
</li>
6781 <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
6782 or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
6783 essential to practice that standard (also known as a
6784 "defensive suspension" clause)
</li>
6786 <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
6792 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
6793 implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
6794 or restricted licensing terms
</li>
6800 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
6801 there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
6802 open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
6803 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
6804 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
6805 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
6806 competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
6807 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
6814 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>.
6819 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6823 <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>
6829 <p><a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
6830 Digistan definition
</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:
</p>
6834 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
6839 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
6840 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
6841 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.
</li>
6843 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6844 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6845 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
6848 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
6849 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
6850 distribute, and use it freely.
</li>
6852 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
6853 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
</li>
6855 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
</li>
6859 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
6860 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
6861 products based on the standard.
</p>
6864 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
6865 and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
6866 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
6867 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
6868 <a href=
"http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
6869 July
2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
6870 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
6871 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.
</p>
6873 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?
</strong></p>
6875 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
6876 Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
6877 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation
</A> is such vendor, but
6878 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
6879 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
6880 obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
6881 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
6882 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I've
6883 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
6884 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
6885 where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
6886 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
6887 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
6888 specification. But it seem unlikely.
</p>
6890 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?
</strong></p>
6892 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
6893 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
6894 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
6895 documentation indicating this.
</p>
6898 <a href=
"http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report
</a>
6899 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
6900 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
6901 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
6902 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
6903 report is correct.
</p>
6905 <p><strong>Specification freely available?
</strong></p>
6907 <p>The specification for the
<a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
6908 container format
</a> and both the
6909 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis
</a> and
6910 <a href=
"http://theora.org/doc/">Theora
</a> codeces are available on
6911 the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
6915 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
6916 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
6917 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
6918 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
6919 specification compliance.
6923 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
6924 <a href=
"http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC
3533</a>, and
6925 this is the term:
<p>
6929 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
6930 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
6931 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
6932 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
6933 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
6934 included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
6935 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
6936 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
6937 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
6938 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
6939 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
6940 translate it into languages other than English.
</p>
6942 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
6943 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
</p>
6946 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
6947 this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
6948 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
6949 thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
6950 requirement for the Digistan definition.
</p>
6952 <p><strong>Royalty-free?
</strong></p>
6954 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
6956 <a href=
"http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA
</a>
6958 <a href=
"http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
6959 Jobs
</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
6960 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
6961 them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
6962 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
6963 without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
6964 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H
.264 codec
6965 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.
</p>
6967 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?
</strong></p>
6969 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.
</p>
6971 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
6973 <p>3 of
5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining
2
6974 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
6975 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
6976 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
6977 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
6980 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
6981 see if they are free and open standards.
</p>
6987 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>.
6992 <div class=
"padding"></div>
6996 <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>
7003 <a href=
"http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
7004 article
</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
7006 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
7007 Interoperability Framework
</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
7008 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
7009 Nothing very surprising there, given
7010 <a href=
"http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
7011 reports
</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
7012 this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
7013 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
7014 open standard from version
1</a> was very good, and something I
7015 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
7016 <a href=
"http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
7017 definition from Digistan
</A>. Version
2 have removed the open
7018 standard definition from its content.
</p>
7020 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
7021 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
7022 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
7023 in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
7024 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
7025 <a href=
"http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
7026 source
</a> to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
7027 background information about that story is available in
7028 <a href=
"http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article
</a> from
7029 Linux Journal in
2002.
</p>
7032 <p>Lima,
8th of April,
2002<br>
7033 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ
<br>
7034 General Manager of Microsoft Perú
</p>
7038 <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>
7040 <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>
7042 <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>
7044 <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>
7048 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen.
</li>
7049 <li>Permanence of public data.
</li>
7050 <li>Security of the State and citizens.
</li>
7054 <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>
7056 <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>
7058 <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>
7060 <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>
7062 <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>
7065 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:
<br>
7066 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software
</li>
7067 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software
</li>
7068 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use
</li>
7069 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought
</li>
7070 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.
</li>
7074 <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>
7076 <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>
7078 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:
</p>
7080 <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>
7082 <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>
7084 <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>
7086 <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>
7088 <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>
7090 <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>
7092 <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>
7094 <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>
7096 <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>
7098 <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>
7100 <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>
7102 <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>
7104 <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>
7106 <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>
7108 <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>
7110 <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>
7112 <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>
7114 <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>
7116 <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>
7118 <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>
7120 <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>
7124 <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>
7126 <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>
7128 <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>
7130 <p>In respect of the guarantee:
</p>
7132 <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>
7134 <p>On Intellectual Property:
</p>
7136 <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>
7138 <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>
7140 <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>
7142 <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>
7144 <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>
7146 <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>
7148 <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>
7150 <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>
7152 <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>
7154 <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>
7156 <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>
7158 <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>
7160 <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>
7162 <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>
7164 <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>
7166 <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>
7168 <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>
7170 <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>
7172 <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>
7174 <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>
7176 <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>
7178 <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>
7180 <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>
7182 <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>
7184 <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>
7186 <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>
7188 <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>
7190 <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>
7192 <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>
7195 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ
<br>
7196 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.
</p>
7203 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>.
7208 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7212 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong
</a>
7218 <p>Half a year ago I
7219 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
7220 a bit
</a> about
<a href=
"http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots
</a>,
7221 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
7222 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.
</p>
7224 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
7225 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
7226 different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
7227 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
7228 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
7229 for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
7230 got such a great test tool available.
</p>
7236 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>.
7241 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7245 <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>
7251 <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the
<a
7252 href=
"http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo
</a> testing if the new
7253 batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
7254 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
7255 computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
7256 five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
7257 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
7258 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
7261 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
7262 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
7263 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
7264 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
7265 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
7266 on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
7267 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
7268 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.
</p>
7270 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
7271 I perform on a new model.
</p>
7275 <li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
7276 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
7277 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.
</li>
7279 <li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
7280 installation, X.org is working.
</li>
7282 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
7283 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
7284 reported by the program.
</li>
7286 <li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
7287 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
7288 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
7289 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
7290 normally test this by playing
7291 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
7292 video
</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.
</li>
7294 <li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
7295 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
7297 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
7298 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.
</li>
7300 <li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
7301 picture from the v4l device show up.
</li>
7303 <li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
7304 any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
7307 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
7308 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
7311 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
7312 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
7315 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
7316 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
7317 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
7318 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
7321 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
7322 acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
7323 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
7328 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
7329 for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
7330 the test results later. For now I can report that HP
8100 Elite work
7331 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook
8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
7332 and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with
8440p. As you
7333 can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
7334 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
7335 RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.
</p>
7341 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>.
7346 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7350 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins
</a>
7356 <p>As I continue to explore
7357 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>, I've starting to wonder
7358 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
7359 and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.
</p>
7361 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
7362 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
7363 is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
7364 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
7365 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
7366 that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
7367 all transactions. There I can see that my address
7368 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</a>
7369 have received
16.06 Bitcoin, the
7370 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv
8MHqvwst
3</a>
7371 address of Simon Phipps have received
181.97 BitCoin and the address
7372 <a href=
"http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt
</A>
7373 of EFF have received
2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
7374 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
7375 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
7376 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
7377 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
7378 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
7379 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
7380 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.
</p>
7382 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
7383 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
7384 without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
7385 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
7386 If the Skolelinux foundation
7387 (
<a href=
"http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
7388 Debian Labs
</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
7389 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
7390 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
7391 not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
7392 should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
7393 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
7394 BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
</p>
7396 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
7397 accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
7398 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
7399 easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
7400 access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
7401 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
7402 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
7403 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
7404 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
7405 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
7406 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
7407 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
7408 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
7409 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
7412 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
7413 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
7414 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
7415 to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get
50
7416 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
7417 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
7418 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
7419 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the
50
7421 <a href=
"http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool
</a>
7422 if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
7423 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
7424 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
7427 <p>Update
2010-
12-
15: Found an
<a
7428 href=
"http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
7429 criticism
</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
7430 it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
7431 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.
</p>
7437 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>.
7442 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7446 <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>
7452 <p>With this weeks lawless
7453 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
7454 attacks
</a> on Wikileak and
7455 <a href=
"http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
7456 speech
</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
7457 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
7459 <a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
7460 Phipps on bitcoin
</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
7461 mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
7462 involved with
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin
</a>. I got
7463 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
7464 some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
7465 for helping me remember BitCoin.
</p>
7467 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
7468 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
7469 networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
7470 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
7471 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
7472 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets
2.9
7473 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
7474 line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
7475 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
7476 Debian
</a> soon.
</p>
7478 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
7479 There are
<a href=
"http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
7480 bitcoins
</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
7481 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
7482 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
7483 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
7485 <a href=
"https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free
</a> (
0.05
7486 bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
7487 <a href=
"http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch
</a> to keep an eye
7488 on the current exchange rates.
</p>
7490 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
7491 machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
7492 donations to the address
7493 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b
</b>. Thank you!
</p>
7499 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>.
7504 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7508 <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>
7514 <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
7515 student assosiation
<a href=
"http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
7516 Osloensis
</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
7517 get their own
3D printer. They wanted to learn from me based on my
7518 work in the area. After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
7519 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
7520 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon. I look
7521 forward to see how this goes. This monday their volunteer driver
7522 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
7523 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the
3D printer
7526 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
7527 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational. I really look
7528 forward to being able to print all the cool
3D designs published on
7529 <a href=
"http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse
</a>. I even got
7530 some
3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
7531 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
7532 very cool
3D scanner.
</p>
7538 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>.
7543 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7547 <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>
7553 <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7554 <a href=
"http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
7555 gathering
</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway. I
7556 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
7557 Squeeze release. The gathering is open for everyone interested in
7558 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.
</p>
7560 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
7561 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
7563 <a href=
"http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
7564 for
2010</a>. Membership is open for all, and currently there are
388
7565 people registered as members. Last year
32 members cast their vote in
7566 the memberdb based election system. I hope more people find time to
7573 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
7578 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7582 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?
</a>
7588 <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
7589 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
7590 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
7591 to play a video file or stream. Only if VLC fail will I drag out
7592 gmplayer to see if it can do better. The reason is mostly the failure
7593 model and trust. When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
7594 reporting the problem. When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
7595 just hangs. The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.
<p>
7597 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
7598 mplayer in
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7599 Edu/Skolelinux
</a>. The reason is simple. We need a good browser
7600 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
7601 not very good. For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
7602 is no way for the user to pause the video. Also, when I
7603 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
7604 tested the browser plugins
</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
7605 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked. If
7606 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
7607 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.
</P>
7609 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
7610 annoying. The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
7611 keyboard shortcuts. When the player is in full screen mode, its
7612 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
7613 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode. I
7614 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
7615 window mode. Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
7616 the current video. It is very nice when playing short videos from the
7617 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
7618 what is going on.
</p>
7624 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>.
7629 <div class=
"padding"></div>
7633 <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>
7639 <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
7640 upgrade testing of the
7641 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7642 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a> to do
<tt>apt-get autoremove
</tt> when using apt-get.
7643 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
7644 can now present the updated result from today:
</p>
7646 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
7648 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
7655 browser-plugin-gnash
7662 freedesktop-sound-theme
7664 gconf-defaults-service
7679 gnome-desktop-environment
7683 gnome-session-canberra
7688 gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7694 libapache2-mod-dnssd
7697 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
7700 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
7701 libboost-python1.42
.0
7702 libboost-thread1.42
.0
7704 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0
7706 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
7713 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
7728 libgnomepanel2.24-cil
7733 libgtksourceview2.0-common
7734 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
7735 libmono-addins0.2-cil
7736 libmono-cairo2.0-cil
7737 libmono-corlib2.0-cil
7738 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
7739 libmono-posix2.0-cil
7740 libmono-security2.0-cil
7741 libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
7742 libmono-system2.0-cil
7745 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
7746 libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
7756 libtelepathy-farsight0
7765 nautilus-sendto-empathy
7769 python-aptdaemon-gtk
7771 python-beautifulsoup
7786 python-gtksourceview2
7797 python-pkg-resources
7804 python-twisted-conch
7810 python-zope.interface
7815 rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
7822 system-config-printer-udev
7824 telepathy-mission-control-
5
7837 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
7845 fast-user-switch-applet
7864 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
7866 libsdl1.2debian-alsa
7872 system-config-printer
7879 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
7882 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
7885 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
7891 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
7893 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
7899 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
7906 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
7922 kdeartwork-emoticons
7924 kdeartwork-theme-icon
7928 kdebase-workspace-bin
7929 kdebase-workspace-data
7943 kscreensaver-xsavers
7958 plasma-dataengines-workspace
7960 plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
7961 plasma-runners-addons
7962 plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
7963 plasma-scriptengine-python
7964 plasma-scriptengine-qedje
7965 plasma-scriptengine-ruby
7966 plasma-scriptengine-webkit
7967 plasma-scriptengines
7968 plasma-wallpapers-addons
7969 plasma-widget-folderview
7970 plasma-widget-networkmanagement
7974 xscreensaver-data-extra
7976 xscreensaver-gl-extra
7977 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
7980 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
7984 google-gadgets-common
8002 libggadget-qt-
1.0-
0b
8007 libkonqsidebarplugin4a
8016 libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8018 libplasmagenericshell4
8032 libsmokeknewstuff2-
3
8033 libsmokeknewstuff3-
3
8035 libsmokektexteditor3
8043 libsmokeqtnetwork4-
3
8049 libsmokeqtuitools4-
3
8061 plasma-dataengines-addons
8062 plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8063 plasma-widget-lancelot
8064 plasma-widgets-addons
8065 plasma-widgets-workspace
8069 update-notifier-common
8072 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8073 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8074 differences. I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8075 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.
</p>
8081 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>.
8086 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8090 <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>
8096 <p>Most of the computers in use by the
8097 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project
</a>
8098 are virtual machines. And they have been Xen machines running on a
8099 fairly old IBM eserver xseries
345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8100 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge
2950 host machine. This was a
8101 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8102 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8103 know is not supported by KVM. So to migrate, we had to convert
8104 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.
</p>
8107 <a href=
"http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
8108 nice recipe
</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8109 migration. It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8110 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8111 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data. I NFS mounted the
8112 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.
</p>
8118 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/
35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8123 if [ -z "$
1" ] ; then
8124 echo "Usage: $
0 <hostname
>"
8130 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8131 echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
8135 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs. not sure why.
8136 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
8137 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $
4} END { print int(sum *
1.05) }')
8138 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8141 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=
1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8142 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8144 parted $img mklabel msdos
8145 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap
0 $disksize
8146 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8147 parted $img set
1 boot on
8150 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8151 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8153 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=
1M
8154 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8155 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8157 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8158 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8161 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
8162 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.
</p>
8164 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
8165 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-
686 and
8166 set up grub to boot from the disk image. After this, the KVM machines
8167 seem to work just fine.
</p>
8173 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>.
8178 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8182 <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>
8188 <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
8189 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8190 Gnome and KDE Desktop
</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
8191 status. Here is a short update based on a test I ran
20101118.
</p>
8193 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
8194 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
8195 can see if anything should be changed.
</p>
8197 <p>This is for Gnome:
</p>
8199 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8202 apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
8203 browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-
4.3 cups-pk-helper
8204 dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
8205 freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
8206 gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
8207 geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
8208 gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
8209 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
8210 gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
8211 gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
8212 gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8213 gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8214 gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
8215 libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
8216 libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-
0 libboost-date-time1.42
.0
8217 libboost-python1.42
.0 libboost-thread1.42
.0 libchamplain-
0.4-
0
8218 libchamplain-gtk-
0.4-
0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-
0.10-
0
8219 libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-
1.0-
2
8220 libepc-common libepc-ui-
1.0-
2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8221 libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
8222 libgdl-
1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-
0 libgif4
8223 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8224 libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
8225 libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
8226 libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
8227 libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8228 libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8229 libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
8230 libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8231 libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-
6
8232 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6
.8
8233 libpolkit-gtk-
1-
0 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8234 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6
.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
8235 libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-
4
8236 libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-
0.99-
0
8237 libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
8238 mono-
2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
8239 nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
8240 openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-
4suite-xml
8241 python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
8242 python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
8243 python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
8244 python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
8245 python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
8246 python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
8247 python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
8248 python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
8249 python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
8250 python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
8251 python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
8252 python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
8253 python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
8254 remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8255 rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
8256 software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
8257 telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-
5 telepathy-salut tomboy
8258 totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
8259 transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
8263 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
8266 arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
8267 epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
8268 fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
8269 gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
8270 gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
8271 gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
8272 guile-
1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
8273 libavahi-ui0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7
8274 libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
8275 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1
8276 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3 libfaad0 libgadu3
8277 libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8278 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
8279 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
8280 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-
1.0-
0
8281 libgtkhtml2-
0 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgtksourceview2.0-
0
8282 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8283 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
8284 libmagick++
10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
8285 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
8286 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9
8287 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8
8288 libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
8289 libspeexdsp1 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libsvga1
8290 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
8291 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
8292 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
8293 sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
8294 totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
8297 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8300 gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8303 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8309 <p>This is for KDE:
</p>
8311 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
8314 autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-
4.3 dcoprss
8315 edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8316 ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
8317 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
8318 kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
8319 kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
8320 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8321 kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
8322 kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
8323 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8324 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
8325 kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
8326 killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
8327 kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
8328 ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42
.0
8329 libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
8330 libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
8331 libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
8332 libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
8333 libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
8334 libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
8335 libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
8336 libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
8337 libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
8338 lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
8339 openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
8340 parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
8341 pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
8342 speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
8346 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
8349 amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
8350 dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
8351 kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
8352 kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
8353 keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
8354 kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
8355 kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
8356 klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
8357 kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
8358 kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
8359 kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
8360 ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
8361 ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
8362 kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
8363 kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8364 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8365 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-
0 libbind9-
50 libbluetooth2
8366 libboost-python1.34
.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
8367 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8368 libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-
0 libicu38
8369 libiec61883-
0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8370 libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
8371 libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8372 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8373 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
8374 libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
8375 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
8376 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-
8 librss1 libsensors3
8377 libsmbios2 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90
8378 libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
8379 mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
8380 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
8381 ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
8384 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
8387 dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
8388 kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
8389 kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
8390 kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
8391 netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8392 xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
8393 xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8396 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
8399 kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
8406 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>.
8411 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8415 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd
</a>
8422 <a href=
"http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
8423 call from the Gnash project
</a> for
8424 <a href=
"http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot
</a> slaves to test the
8425 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
8426 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
8427 Debian/Squeeze. I hope this can help the developers in getting new
8428 releases out more often.
</p>
8430 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
8431 I have considered setting up a
<a
8432 href=
"http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd
</a>
8433 machine as well. I have also considered using the kfreebsd
8434 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the
5
8435 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video. Because of this, I
8436 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
8437 kfreebsd. Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
8438 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
8439 screen at random locations). Have not gotten very far with the
8440 testing. Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
8441 fatal problem. Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
8442 useful as a file server for NUUG. Will try to find time to set up a
8443 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.
</p>
8449 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>.
8454 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8458 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in
3D
</a>
8464 <p><img src=
"http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
8466 <p>3D printing is just great. I just came across this Debian logo in
8468 <a href=
"http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
8469 thingiverse blog
</a>.
</p>
8475 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>.
8480 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8484 <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>
8490 <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
8491 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> DVD, which is
8492 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
8493 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard. Even
8494 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
8495 working using this DVD.
</p>
8497 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
8498 installing recommended packages by default. We want the same set of
8499 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
8500 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD. I created
8501 a patch for debian-cd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
8502 report #
601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
8503 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.
</p>
8505 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
8506 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
8507 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
8510 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
8511 were using most space. A few large packages are well know;
8512 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont. But I also
8513 discovered that lilypond used
106 MiB and fglrx-driver used
53 MiB.
8514 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
8515 when looking a bit closer I discovered that
99 MiB of the
106 MiB were
8516 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
8517 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
8518 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
8519 documentation. Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
8520 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
8521 free X driver should work.
</p>
8523 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
8524 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
8525 DVD more useful again.
</p>
8531 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8536 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8540 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates
2010-
10-
24</a>
8546 <p>Some updates.
</p>
8548 <p>My
<a href=
"http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge
</a> to
8549 raise money for the project is going well. The lower limit of
10
8550 signers was reached in
24 hours, and so far
13 people have signed it.
8551 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
8552 how far we can get before the time limit of December
24 is reached.
8555 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
8556 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
8557 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
8559 <a href=
"http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov
</a>,
8560 and can be used using
<tt>kcov
<directory
> <binary
></tt>.
8561 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
8562 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
8563 libglib2.0-dev. Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
8564 solvable. I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.
</p>
8566 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for
<a
8567 href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
8568 new alpha release of Debian Edu
</a>, and just published the second
8569 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
8570 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a>
8571 release. Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
8572 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
8573 client servers and diskless workstations. A nice touch added
8574 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
8575 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.
</p>
8581 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>.
8586 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8590 <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>
8596 <p><a href=
"http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project
</a> is the
8597 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
8598 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
8599 funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
8600 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
8601 AVM2 flash files.
</p>
8603 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
8604 <a href=
"http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge
</a> with the
8609 <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
8610 only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
8612 <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer
</p>
8614 <p>Deadline to sign up by:
24th December
2010</p>
8616 <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
8617 format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
8618 web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
8619 format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
8620 days. The project web page is available from
8621 http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
8622 of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
8623 the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.
</p>
8625 <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
8626 time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
8627 to get this to happen.
</p>
8629 <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
8630 <a href=
"http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/
32</a> .
</p>
8634 <p>I hope you will support this effort too. I hope more than
10
8635 people will participate to make this happen. The more money the
8636 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
8643 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>.
8648 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8652 <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>
8658 <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
8659 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
8660 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
8661 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
8662 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
8663 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
8666 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
8667 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them. There are
8668 a few less important features too.
</p>
8670 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
8671 but I never got around to releasing the current source. I decided
8672 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
8673 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.
</p>
8675 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
8676 published the source and deb. If you got a spykee robot, grab the
8677 source or binary package:
</p>
8680 <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>
8681 <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>
8682 <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>
8685 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
8686 please let me know.
</p>
8692 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>.
8697 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8701 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for
2010-
10-
03</a>
8709 <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
8710 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly
</a></li>
8712 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
8713 <a href=
"http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
8714 already been misused at Heathrow
</a>.
</li>
8716 <li><a href=
"http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
8717 Webcasting
</a> - interesting alternative for
8718 <ahref=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch
</a> with
8727 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>.
8732 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8736 <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>
8742 <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
8743 camera, a Canon IXUS
130. It was instructive and very disturbing to
8744 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
8745 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
8746 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
8747 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the
8748 problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-
4, H
.264 and the
8749 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
8750 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
8752 <p>On page
27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
8756 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-
4 standard
8757 and may be used for encoding MPEG-
4 compliant video and/or decoding
8758 MPEG-
4 compliant video that was encoded only (
1) for a personal and
8759 non-commercial purpose or (
2) by a video provider licensed under the
8760 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-
4 compliant video.
</p>
8762 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-
4
8766 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
8767 (MPEG-
4/H
.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
8768 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
8769 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.
</p>
8771 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
8773 "
<a href=
"http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
8774 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
8775 MPEG-LA
</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
8776 "<a href=
"http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H
.264 Is Not
8777 The Sort Of Free That Matters
</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
8778 the issue. The solution is to support the
8779 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition
">free and
8780 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/
">Ogg
8781 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
8787 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>.
8792 <div class="padding
"></div>
8796 <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>
8802 <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote
">Debian
8803 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
8804 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian. The sixth
8805 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla. This is a clear indication that
8806 working flash is important for Debian users. Around 10 percent of the
8807 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
8810 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
8811 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf
">Skolelinux
8812 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
8813 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
8814 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/
">Debian
8815 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash. A lot of educational
8816 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
8817 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
8818 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
8820 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
8821 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
8822 everything you told him but could work fairly well. This was a
8823 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
8824 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
8825 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
8826 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
8827 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
8828 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
8829 pages they want to visit.</p>
8831 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
8832 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
8833 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
8834 Video to working out of the box. For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
8835 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
8836 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
8837 unstable. The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
8838 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
8839 release team have not had time to reply to it yet. I hope they agree
8840 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
8841 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
8847 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>.
8852 <div class="padding
"></div>
8856 <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>
8862 <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application. The last few
8863 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
8864 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
8865 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
8866 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
8867 allow me to drive the robot around. I picked PerlQt as I have had
8868 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
8869 browsing the web for examples. Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
8870 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
8871 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
8872 libqt-perl. Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
8875 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
8876 controlling the robot. Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
8880 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
8881 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
8882 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
8883 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
8895 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
8896 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
8897 implement the protocol used by the robot. I've implemented several of
8898 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
8899 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote. First I
8900 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
8901 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
8902 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
8903 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
8906 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
8907 where to make it available first. I will add a link to
8908 <a href=
"http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki
</a> for
8909 those that want to check back later to find it.
</p>
8915 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>.
8920 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8924 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs
</a>
8930 <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
8931 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
8932 post about sshfs
</a>. He reported another problem with sshfs. It
8933 fail to handle hard links properly. A simple way to spot this is to
8934 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree. These should have
8935 a link count
>1, but on sshfs the count is
1. I just tested to see
8936 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:
</p>
8940 ln: creating hard link `bar' =
> `foo': Function not implemented
8944 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
8945 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
8946 avoid surprised unix programs. Not as useful as working file locking
8947 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
8948 nevertheless. :)
</p>
8950 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
8952 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a></p>
8958 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
8963 <div class=
"padding"></div>
8967 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs
</a>
8973 <p>My file system sematics program
8974 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
8975 a few days ago
</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
8976 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit. I'm
8977 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
8978 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs. My friend
8979 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
8980 Edu, but stopped because of problems. I asked today what the problems
8981 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
8982 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
8986 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
8988 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
8991 struct stat statbuf;
8992 if (-
1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
8993 retval = statbuf.st_mode &
0x1ff;
9000 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
9001 int test_umask(void) {
9002 printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
9004 mode_t orig_umask = umask(
000);
9006 if (
0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
9007 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
000\n",
9011 if (
0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar",
0666))) {
9012 printf(" error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode
666 and umask
007\n",
9020 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9027 <p>Sure enough. On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:
</p>
9030 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9031 info: testing symlink creation
9032 info: testing subdirectory creation
9033 info: testing fcntl locking
9034 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9035 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9036 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
9037 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9038 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9039 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
9040 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9043 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
9047 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9048 info: testing symlink creation
9049 info: testing subdirectory creation
9050 info: testing fcntl locking
9051 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9052 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9053 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
9054 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9055 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9056 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
9057 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9058 error: Wrong file mode
644 when creating using mode
666 and umask
000
9059 error: Wrong file mode
640 when creating using mode
666 and umask
007
9062 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
9063 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
9066 <p>Update
2010-
08-
26: Reported the issue in
9067 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #
594498</a></p>
9069 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9070 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9071 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
9077 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9082 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9086 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent
</a>
9092 <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
9093 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
9094 to crush dissent
</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
9095 well. Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
9096 should go down. In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
9103 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>.
9108 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9112 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients
</a>
9118 <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
9119 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
9120 configuration settings on the clients. I believe the work to be
9121 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
9122 generated configuration.
</p>
9124 <p>What is the point, you might ask? The point is to allow a Debian
9125 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
9126 without any manual configuration.
</p>
9128 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
9129 the University of Oslo using PXE. With the PXE installation, I am
9130 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
9131 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
9132 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
9133 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret). After answering
9134 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
9135 after around
50 minutes it is done. I press enter to finish the
9136 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE. When the machine is
9137 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
9138 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
9139 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
9140 same username and password to the KDE
4.4 desktop. At no point during
9141 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
9142 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
9143 fetched via DHCP and DNS. The roaming workstation is now ready for
9146 <p>How was this done, you might wonder? First of all, here is the
9147 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
9148 working properly out of the box:
</p>
9151 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.
</li>
9152 <li>Web proxy URL.
</li>
9153 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).
</li>
9154 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.
</li>
9155 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)
</li>
9156 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)
</li>
9157 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)
</li>
9160 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything? Let me knew if I did.)
</p>
9162 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
9163 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
9164 administrators to track their machines. Since yesterday, everything
9165 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
9166 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.
</p>
9168 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
9169 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
9170 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
9171 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
9172 /etc/apt/apt.conf. I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
9173 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
9174 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
9175 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.
</p>
9177 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
9178 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot. First the
9179 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain. If
9180 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead. If an
9181 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
9182 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
9183 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS. If there are several
9184 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
9185 LDAP subtree is used as the base. If defaultNamingContext is missing,
9186 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
9187 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
9188 such an object is used as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
9189 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
9190 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record. I've been unable to find a way to
9191 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
9192 current DNS domain is used.
</p>
9194 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
9195 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
9196 found. This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
9197 Oslo. A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
9198 server, but have not been implemented yet. I decided to fetch and
9199 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
9200 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
9201 log in nor the passwords required to log in. Usernames and passwords
9202 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
9203 network, and will not change as the laptop move around. For a
9204 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
9205 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much. Perhaps we
9206 should switch those to use sssd too?
</p>
9208 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
9209 located when the user logs in for the first time. The LDAP server is
9210 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
9211 attribute is used if found. If it isn't found, the home directory
9212 path fetched from NSS is used instead. Assuming the path is of the
9213 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
9214 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
9215 smb://server.domain/username. This algorithm works for both Debian
9216 edu and the University of Oslo. Perhaps there are better attributes
9217 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
9220 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
9221 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
9222 more flexible than before. I suspect it will also work for thin
9223 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
9224 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
9227 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9228 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9230 <p>Update
2010-
08-
09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
9231 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
9232 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name. Will have to
9233 implement it for Debian Edu. :)
</p>
9239 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9244 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9248 <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>
9254 <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
9255 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
9256 Edu/Skolelinux machines. This was thought to be no problem, as the
9257 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
9258 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
9259 mount home directories without any problems. But, after months of
9260 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.
</p>
9262 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
9263 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
9264 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
9265 underlying file system is a unix file system. When using a Windows
9266 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
9267 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
9268 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.
</p>
9270 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
9271 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
9272 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
9273 it should. If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
9274 help you find your way out again. This is the fs-test.c source:
</p>
9278 * Some tests to check the file system sematics. Used to verify that
9279 * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
9281 * License: GPL v2 or later
9283 * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
9284 * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
9287 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS
64
9288 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE
1
9289 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
1
9291 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
9293 #include
<errno.h
>
9294 #include
<fcntl.h
>
9295 #include
<stdio.h
>
9296 #include
<string.h
>
9297 #include
<stdlib.h
>
9298 #include
<sys/file.h
>
9299 #include
<sys/stat.h
>
9300 #include
<sys/types.h
>
9301 #include
<unistd.h
>
9305 * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
9306 * package and linking with -lsqlite3. A more low level test is
9308 * See also
<URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5
>.
9310 #include
<sqlite3.h
>
9311 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS \
9312 "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
9313 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
9315 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
9318 int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
9320 printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
9326 rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,
0, &zErrMsg);
9327 if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
9328 printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
9332 printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
9336 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9339 * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3. This
9340 * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows
2003. This is
9341 * done in the sqlite3 library.
9343 *
<URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/
2001-
08/msg00854.html
> and the
9344 * POSIX specification
9345 *
<URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/
009695399/functions/fcntl.html
>.
9347 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
9349 char *name = "testsqlite.db";
9351 int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE,
0644);
9352 printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
9354 fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
9355 fl.l_pid = getpid();
9356 printf(" Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
9357 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
9359 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
9360 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9362 printf(" Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
9363 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
9365 fl.l_type = F_RDLCK;
9366 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9368 printf(" Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824");
9369 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
9371 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
9372 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9374 printf(" Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824");
9375 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
9377 fl.l_type = F_WRLCK;
9378 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9380 printf(" Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826");
9381 fl.l_start =
1073741826;
9383 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9385 printf(" Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824");
9386 fl.l_start =
1073741824;
9388 fl.l_type = F_UNLCK;
9389 if (
0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9396 * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
9397 * below them. This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
9398 * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
9399 * slowing down file operations.
9401 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
9403 char *path = strdup("test");
9406 printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
9407 for (level =
0; level
< LEVELS; level++) {
9408 char *newpath = NULL;
9409 if (-
1 == mkdir(path,
0777)) {
9410 printf(" error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
9411 path, strerror(errno));
9414 asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
9422 * Test if symlinks can be created. This was a problem detected with
9425 int test_symlinks(void) {
9426 printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
9428 if (-
1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
9429 printf(" error: Unable to create symlink\n");
9433 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9434 printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
9436 test_subdirectory_creation();
9439 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9440 test_gcompris_locking();
9445 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
9449 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9450 info: testing symlink creation
9451 info: testing subdirectory creation
9453 info: testing fcntl locking
9454 Read-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9455 Read-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9456 Unlocking
1 byte from
1073741824
9457 Write-locking
1 byte from
1073741824
9458 Write-locking
510 byte from
1073741826
9459 Unlocking
2 byte from
1073741824
9462 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
9463 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
9464 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
9465 the read-only lock (while Windows do not). Another was a bug in the
9466 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
9467 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
9468 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
9469 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.
</p>
9471 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
9474 <p>Update
2010-
08-
27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9475 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9476 <a href=
"http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test
</a>.
</p>
9482 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9487 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9491 <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>
9497 <p>A few days ago, I
9498 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
9499 to install
</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
9500 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
9501 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
9502 university infrastructure. It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
9503 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
9504 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
9505 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
9506 around it. Now I am a huge step further along that road.
</p>
9508 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
9509 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
9510 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
9511 servers for Kerberos authentication. All this without any
9512 configuration at all during installation. My users home directory got
9513 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
9514 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured. In addition to
9515 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
9516 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
9517 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf. Iceweasel and KDE is
9518 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
9519 a proxy when at the university network. If the machine is moved to a
9520 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
9521 gave it a IP address.
</p>
9523 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
9524 entry ldap.$domain. If this do not exist, it look for the
9525 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
9526 server. Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
9527 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
9528 pick the first one as the LDAP base. For Kerberos, a similar
9529 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
9530 uppercase version of $domain.
</p>
9532 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask. SMB mounting my home
9533 directory do not work. No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
9534 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
9535 the cause. These are not properly configured during installation, and
9536 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
9537 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(
</p>
9539 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
9540 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
9541 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
9542 authentication. It should also work out of the box in a Active
9543 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
9544 with UID and GID values.
</p>
9546 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9547 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9553 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9558 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9562 <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>
9568 <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
9569 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
9570 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
9571 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
9572 infrastructure. In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
9573 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
9576 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
9577 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
9578 /etc/mklocaluser.d/
20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
9579 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
9580 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
9581 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
9582 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
9585 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
9586 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
9587 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
9588 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
9589 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
9590 university servers.
</p>
9592 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
9593 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
9594 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
9595 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
9596 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
9603 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9608 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9612 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery
</a>
9618 <p>I discovered this while doing
9619 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
9620 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze
</a>. A few packages
9621 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9622 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9623 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.
</p>
9625 <p>An example is from todays
9626 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
9627 of KDE using aptitude
</a>. In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9628 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade. The cause is simple. If a
9629 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9630 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9631 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9632 because its dependencies are unavailable.
</p>
9634 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:
</p>
9637 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9638 perl-modules depends on perl (
>=
5.10.1-
1); however:
9639 Version of perl on system is
5.10.0-
19lenny
2.
9640 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9641 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9644 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9645 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug
</a>, and will
9646 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9647 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9648 failures. Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9649 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9650 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9651 of dependency loops.
</p>
9654 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
9655 tireless effort by Bill Allombert
</a>, the number of circular
9657 <a href=
"http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
9658 is dropping
</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)
</p>
9660 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
9661 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier
</a> and
9662 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour
</a> between
9663 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
9664 dependency. Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
9671 Tags:
<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>.
9676 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9680 <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>
9686 <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
9687 with the next Debian Edu release. Not nearly done, but one major step
9691 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
9692 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
9693 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
9694 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
9695 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
9696 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
9697 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
9698 language of choice, please let us know too.
</p>
9700 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
9701 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
9702 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.
</p>
9704 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
9705 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
9708 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version
</p>
9711 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
9713 <li>Desktop environment KDE
4.4 =
> the new KDE desktop in
9714 combination with some new artwork
9715 <li>Web browser Iceweasel
3.5
9716 <li>OpenOffice.org
3.2
9717 <li>Educational toolbox GCompris
9.3
9718 <li>Music creator Rosegarden
10.04.2
9719 <li>Image editor Gimp
2.6.10
9720 <li>Virtual universe Celestia
1.6.0
9721 <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium
0.10.4
9722 <li>3D modeler Blender
2.49.2 (new application)
9723 <li>Video editor Kdenlive
0.7.7 (new application)
9725 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
9731 <li>SMTP (sender verification)
9734 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.
</li>
9735 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
9736 fetched from LDAP.
</li>
9737 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.
</li>
9738 <li>General cleanup (not finished)
</li>
9740 <p>The following features are not working as they should
</p>
9743 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
9744 scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
9746 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
9747 and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
9748 clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.
</li>
9749 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.
</li>
9750 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.
</li>
9751 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.
</li>
9752 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
9753 netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.
</li>
9754 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
9755 some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
9756 jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.
</li>
9757 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
9758 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
9759 and help out with translations.
</li>
9762 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use
</p>
9765 <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>
9766 <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>
9767 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
9769 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use
</p>
9772 <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>
9773 <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>
9774 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
9777 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
9778 get closer to the final release.
</p>
9780 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are
</p>
9783 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
9784 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
9787 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are
</p>
9789 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso
</li>
9790 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-
6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso
</li>
9792 <p>How to report bugs:
9793 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla
</p>
9795 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org
</p>
9802 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9807 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9811 <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>
9817 <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
9818 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
9819 Edu/Skolelinux into shape. This future version will use Kerberos for
9820 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
9821 getting rid of password questions one at the time.
</p>
9823 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
9824 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
9825 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
9826 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server. This
9827 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
9828 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
9829 package. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.
</p>
9831 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
9832 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
9833 password when mounting the SMB volume. A simple click on the shortcut
9834 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
9837 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
9838 Debian Edu. We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
9839 also Samba. Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.
</p>
9841 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
9842 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
9843 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
9844 the release. It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
9845 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
9846 time for a alpha0 release today. As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
9847 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
9848 release another day.
</p>
9850 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
9851 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
9857 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
9862 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9866 <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>
9873 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
9874 opengeodata blog entry
</a>, I just discovered that the
9875 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
9876 <a href=
"http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
9877 for calculating routes
</a>. The support is still experimental and
9878 only available from the development server, until more experience is
9879 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.
</p>
9881 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
9882 was provided by
<a href=
"http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade
</a>,
9883 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
9884 the issue. I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
9885 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
9886 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
9887 www.openstreetmap.org front page.
</p>
9893 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>.
9898 <div class=
"padding"></div>
9902 <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>
9909 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup
</a>
9911 <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
9913 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
9914 all
</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.
</p>
9916 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
9917 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
9918 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server. The two
9919 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.
</p>
9921 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
9922 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
9923 on a Debian Edu main-server. Here is a summary.
9925 <p><strong>powerdns
</strong></p>
9927 <a href=
"http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
9928 on how to
</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
9931 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
9932 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
9933 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
9934 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
9935 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
9936 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
</p>
9938 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
9939 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
9940 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
9941 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
9942 "dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
9943 "(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry. For
9944 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
9945 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
9946 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
9947 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
9948 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
9949 spfrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entries it is looking for
9950 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
9951 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
9952 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. The equivalent
9953 ldapsearch commands could look like this:
</p>
9956 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9957 -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9958 -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
9959 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
9960 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
9961 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
9962 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
9964 ldapsearch -h ldap \
9965 -b dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
9966 -s base -x '(associateddomain=
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
9967 dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
9968 hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
9969 srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
9972 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
9973 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
9974 example LDAP objects used there. In addition to these objects, the
9975 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9979 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9981 objectclass: dnsdomain
9982 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9985 associateddomain: tjener.intern
9987 dn: dc=
2,dc=
2,dc=
0,dc=
10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
9989 objectclass: dnsdomain2
9990 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
9992 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
9993 associateddomain:
2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
9996 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently. When looking for
9997 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
9998 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
9999 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
10000 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
10001 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
10002 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp. For reverse entires it also do a
10003 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=
10.0.2.2)"
10004 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
10005 modifytimestamp. In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
10006 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
10009 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
10013 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10014 '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10015 cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10016 rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10017 nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10018 rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10020 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10021 '(arecord=
10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
10022 </pre></blockquote>
10024 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
10025 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
10026 reverse lookups.
</p>
10028 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
10029 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
10030 need to generate a DNS reply. This make it able to work with any
10031 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.
</p>
10033 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC
1274) and
10034 dnsdomain2 schemas. The latter is used for reverse entries like
10035 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.
</p>
10037 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
10038 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
10039 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain). The use
10040 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
10041 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.
</p>
10043 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
10044 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
10045 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
10046 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
10047 (zonename and relativedomainname).
</p>
10049 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
10050 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
10051 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
10052 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
10053 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
10054 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):
</p>
10057 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
10060 MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
10061 DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
10062 TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
10063 NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
10064 A6Record $ DNAMERecord
10066 </pre></blockquote>
10068 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
10069 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
10070 all the attributes PowerDNS wants. I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
10071 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
10072 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
10073 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.
</p>
10075 <p><strong>ISC dhcp
</strong></p>
10077 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
10078 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want. This
10079 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
10080 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
10081 what is needed without having to read the source code.
</p>
10083 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
10084 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
10085 stored. These are the relevant entries from
10086 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:
</p>
10089 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
10090 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
10091 </pre></blockquote>
10093 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
10094 configuration it need. The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
10095 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))". The
10096 search result is this entry:
</p>
10099 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10102 objectClass: dhcpServer
10103 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10104 </pre></blockquote>
10106 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
10107 subtree with DHCP configuration. The DHCP configuration subtree base
10108 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
10109 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
10110 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
10111 The search result is this entry:
</p>
10114 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10117 objectClass: dhcpService
10118 objectClass: dhcpOptions
10119 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10120 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
10121 dhcpStatements: authoritative
10122 dhcpOption: smtp-server code
69 = array of ip-address
10123 dhcpOption: www-server code
72 = array of ip-address
10124 dhcpOption: wpad-url code
252 = text
10125 </pre></blockquote>
10127 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time. When
10128 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
10129 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
10130 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
10131 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost. These provide options
10132 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc. Leaving out the
10133 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
10134 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
10135 related computer objects.
</p>
10137 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
10138 of the client (
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00 in this example), using a subtree
10139 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
10140 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
10141 00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00))" as the filter. This is what a host object look
10145 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10148 objectClass: dhcpHost
10149 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10150 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
10151 </pre></blockquote>
10153 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
10154 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
10155 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure. On the
10156 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
10157 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries. The latter should make
10158 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
10159 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
10160 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
10161 structural object class.
10163 <p><strong>Conclusion
</strong></p>
10165 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
10166 to which LDAP schemas to use. While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
10167 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
10168 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
10169 in the configuration.
</p>
10171 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
10172 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
10173 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
10174 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
10175 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
10178 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
10179 this might work for Debian Edu:
</p>
10183 cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
10184 cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
10185 cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10186 cn=
10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10187 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10188 cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10189 cn=
192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10190 cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10191 ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
10192 cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
10193 </pre></blockquote>
10195 <P>This is not tested yet. If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
10196 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
10197 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
10198 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.
</p>
10200 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
10204 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10207 objectClass: dhcpHost
10208 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10209 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
10210 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10211 arecord:
10.11.12.13
10212 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10213 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
10214 </pre></blockquote>
10216 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
10217 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
10218 auxiliary object class.
</p>
10224 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>.
10229 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10231 <div class=
"entry">
10232 <div class=
"title">
10233 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects
</a>
10239 <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
10240 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
10241 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
10242 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
10243 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.
</p>
10245 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
10246 information finally found a solution that seem to work.
</p>
10248 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
10249 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry. If
10250 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
10251 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
10252 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
10253 to a slave DNS server.
</p>
10255 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
10256 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
10257 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
10258 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
10259 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup. It
10262 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
10263 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
10264 an earlier email. The combined LDAP object will look something like
10268 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10270 objectClass: dhcphost
10271 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10272 objectclass: dnsdomainaux
10273 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10274 arecord:
10.11.12.13
10275 dhcphwaddress: ethernet
00:
00:
00:
00:
00:
00
10276 dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
10278 </pre></blockquote>
10280 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
10281 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
10282 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress. LTSP will use
10283 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.
</p>
10285 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
10286 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
10287 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
10288 that. If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
10289 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
10290 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
10291 content. I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
10292 might be a good place to put it.
</p>
10294 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10295 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10301 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>.
10306 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10308 <div class=
"entry">
10309 <div class=
"title">
10310 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP
</a>
10316 <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
10317 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
10318 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
10319 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.
</p>
10321 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
10322 to get configuration from LDAP. The idea is to look up the MAC
10323 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
10324 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
10327 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
10328 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
10329 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.
</p>
10331 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
10332 this approach. A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
10333 need to be written. Comments, suggestions, etc?
</p>
10336 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
10338 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
10340 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
10341 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
10342 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
10344 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
10345 # existence of attribute names.
10347 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
10348 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
10349 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
10351 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
10352 # configuration settings. Something like this should work:
10354 # objectclass (
1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
10357 # MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
10359 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
10360 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
10361 LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
10362 for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $
5}'|sort -u) ; do
10363 filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
10364 ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
10365 grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
10366 # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
10367 attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
10368 # bass value on to clients
10369 eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
10373 </pre></blockquote>
10375 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
10376 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
10377 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
10378 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
10379 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)
</p>
10381 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10382 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10384 <p>Update
2010-
07-
17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
10385 configuration in LDAP that was created around year
2000 by
10386 <a href=
"http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
10387 Xperience, Inc.,
2000</a>. I found its
10388 <a href=
"http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files
</a> on a
10389 personal home page over at redhat.com.
</p>
10395 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>.
10400 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10402 <div class=
"entry">
10403 <div class=
"title">
10404 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
10411 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
10412 last post
</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
10413 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma. The java application
10414 <a href=
"http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer
</a> is claimed to be capable of
10415 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
10416 authenticate using Kerberos. I have only tested the Kerberos
10417 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
10418 LDAP with my test user yet. It is
10419 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
10420 Debian
</a> testing and unstable at the moment. The only problem I
10421 have with it is how it handle errors. If something go wrong, its
10422 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
10423 and remove the failing query. Nothing big, but very annoying.
</p>
10429 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>.
10434 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10436 <div class=
"entry">
10437 <div class=
"title">
10438 <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>
10444 <p>Here is a short update on my
<a
10445 href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
10446 Debian Lenny-
>Squeeze upgrade testing
</a>. Here is a summary of the
10447 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude. I'm
10448 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
10449 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
10450 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#
584861</a> and
10451 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#
585716</a>).
</p>
10453 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
10454 complete list of the installed packages. Based on this I see these
10455 differences when I did a test run today. As usual, I do not really
10456 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10457 publish the difference.
</p>
10459 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude
</p>
10462 at-spi cpp-
4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10463 libatspi1.0-
0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-
1-common
10464 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10465 libgtksourceview-common libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10466 libpt-
1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10467 libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10468 python-
4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10469 python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10472 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
</p>
10475 bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10476 gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10477 libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-
50
10478 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-
11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10479 libdirectfb-
1.0-
0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-
6 libedataserver1.2-
9
10480 libeel2-
2.20 libepc-
1.0-
1 libepc-ui-
1.0-
1 libexchange-storage1.2-
3
10481 libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-
3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10482 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-
0 libgksuui1.0-
1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-
2
10483 libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-
1 libgnomeprint2.2-
0
10484 libgnomeprintui2.2-
0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-
0
10485 libgtksourceview1.0-
0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10486 libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++
10
10487 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10488 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-
2.2 libosp5
10489 libparted1.8-
10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10490 libpt-
1.10.10 libraw1394-
8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-
8
10491 libssh2-
1 libsuitesparse-
3.1.0 libswfdec-
0.6-
90 libtalloc1
10492 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10493 libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10494 mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10497 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get
</p>
10500 gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10501 python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10502 xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10503 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10504 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10505 xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10506 xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10507 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10508 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10509 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10510 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10511 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10512 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10513 xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10514 xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10515 xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10516 xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10517 xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10518 xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10519 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10520 xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10523 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get
</p>
10526 deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10527 xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10528 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10531 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10532 <a href=
"http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
10533 in git
</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10534 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10535 the difference somewhat.
10541 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>.
10546 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10548 <div class=
"entry">
10549 <div class=
"title">
10550 <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>
10556 <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
10557 a bit troubling. Laptops are typically used also when not connected
10558 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
10559 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
10560 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
10561 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
10562 in Debian. Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
10563 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
10564 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.
</p>
10566 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
10568 This is the traditional method with a twist. The password caching is
10569 provided by libpam-ccreds (version
10-
4 or later is needed on
10570 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd. The directory
10571 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP. If one want to use
10572 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
10573 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal. If one is happy having a
10574 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
10575 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
10576 using libpam-mklocaluser. A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
10577 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
10578 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #
568577</a> is in the
10579 archive. Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
10580 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
10581 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/. This
10582 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.
</p>
10584 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured
</p>
10587 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
10588 </pre></blockquote>
10590 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
10591 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site. Make sure the
10592 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
10593 sent in clear text to the LDAP server. I've been unable to get TLS
10594 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
10595 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
10596 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
10597 on how to get this working.
</p>
10599 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
10600 caching until
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #
485282</a>
10601 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
10602 currently in /etc/nscd.conf. The changes are in the fields
10603 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
10604 instructions I found in the
10605 <a href=
"http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops
</a>
10606 instructions by Flyn Computing.
</p>
10610 reload-count unlimited
10613 enable-cache passwd yes
10614 positive-time-to-live passwd
2592000
10615 negative-time-to-live passwd
20
10616 suggested-size passwd
211
10617 check-files passwd yes
10618 persistent passwd yes
10620 max-db-size passwd
33554432
10621 auto-propagate passwd yes
10623 enable-cache group yes
10624 positive-time-to-live group
2592000
10625 negative-time-to-live group
20
10626 suggested-size group
211
10627 check-files group yes
10628 persistent group yes
10630 max-db-size group
33554432
10631 auto-propagate group yes
10633 enable-cache hosts no
10634 positive-time-to-live hosts
2592000
10635 negative-time-to-live hosts
20
10636 suggested-size hosts
211
10637 check-files hosts yes
10638 persistent hosts yes
10640 max-db-size hosts
33554432
10642 enable-cache services yes
10643 positive-time-to-live services
2592000
10644 negative-time-to-live services
20
10645 suggested-size services
211
10646 check-files services yes
10647 persistent services yes
10648 shared services yes
10649 max-db-size services
33554432
10650 </pre></blockquote>
10652 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
10653 automatically like the one provided in
10654 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #
496915</a>, the file
10655 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
10656 directory service on the machine. /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
10657 look like this:
</p>
10663 hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
10669 netgroup: files ldap
10670 </pre></blockquote>
10672 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
10673 shadow and netgroup.
</p>
10675 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
10676 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
10677 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
10680 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
10681 libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir
</h2>
10683 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
10684 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
10685 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
10686 LDAP database is available. I have not tested such setup, because I
10687 discovered sssd.
</p>
10689 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser
</h2>
10691 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
10692 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
10693 <a href=
"https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd
</a> package from Redhat.
10694 It is part of the
<a href=
"http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA
</A> project
10695 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
10696 machines. The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
10697 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
10698 libpam-ccreds. It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS. Version
10699 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
10700 in version
1.5 expected to show up later in
2010. Because the
10701 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package
</a>
10702 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
10703 version
1.2 is now in testing.
10705 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
10706 roaming setup I want
</p>
10709 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
10710 </pre></blockquote>
10712 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
10713 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf
</tt>.
10717 config_file_version =
2
10718 reconnection_retries =
3
10720 services = nss, pam
10724 filter_groups = root
10725 filter_users = root
10726 reconnection_retries =
3
10729 reconnection_retries =
3
10733 cache_credentials = true
10736 auth_provider = ldap
10737 chpass_provider = ldap
10739 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
10740 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10741 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
10742 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
10743 </pre></blockquote>
10745 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking. Had to set
10746 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.
</p>
10748 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
10749 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
10750 modify it manually.
</p>
10752 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10753 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10759 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
10764 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10766 <div class=
"entry">
10767 <div class=
"title">
10768 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI
</a>
10774 <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
10775 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
10776 tool to browse the LDAP tree. The only one I was able to find in
10777 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
10778 <a href=
"http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA
</a>, which has proved to
10779 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
10780 populated by default in Skolelinux. Thanks to it, I have been able to
10781 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
10782 objects. It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze. If you
10783 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)
</p>
10785 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
10786 the BTS yet. There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
10787 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
10788 Debian submenu in KDE. I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
10791 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet. I would
10792 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
10793 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet. So in the mean time, I use
10794 <a href=
"http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi
</a> for that.
</p>
10796 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
10797 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10799 <p>Update
2010-
06-
29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
10800 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq
</a> package as a
10801 useful GUI alternative. It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
10802 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze. Unless that
10803 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.
</p>
10809 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>.
10814 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10816 <div class=
"entry">
10817 <div class=
"title">
10818 <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>
10825 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
10826 about the fact
</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
10827 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
10828 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.
</p>
10830 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
10831 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
10832 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
10833 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.
</p>
10835 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
10836 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
10837 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
10840 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
10842 <a href=
"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
10843 schema
</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
10844 available today from IETF.
</p>
10847 --- dhcp.schema (revision
65192)
10848 +++ dhcp.schema (working copy)
10849 @@ -
376,
7 +
376,
7 @@
10850 objectclass (
2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
10852 DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
10854 + SUP top AUXILIARY
10856 MAY (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
10857 X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
10860 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
10861 Edu/Squeeze. We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
10862 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.
</p>
10864 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10865 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
10871 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>.
10876 <div class=
"padding"></div>
10878 <div class=
"entry">
10879 <div class=
"title">
10880 <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>
10886 <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
10887 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run. Until now,
10888 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
10889 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
10890 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
10894 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10895 tasksel --new-install
10896 </pre></blockquote>
10898 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
10899 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
10900 any output what so ever.
10902 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
10903 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
10904 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
10905 happen. Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
10906 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
10907 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run. I ended up using
10911 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
10912 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
10914 </pre></blockquote>
10916 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "
<tt>aptitude -q
10917 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
10918 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
10919 ~pimportant
</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
10920 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
10921 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
10924 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
10925 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
10932 Tags: <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>.
10937 <div class="padding
"></div>
10939 <div class="entry
">
10940 <div class="title
">
10941 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html
">Officeshots taking shape</a>
10947 <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
10948 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/
">OfficeShots</a>
10949 is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
10950 <a href="http://browsershots.org/
">BrowserShots</a> is for web
10953 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
10954 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
10955 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
10956 interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
10957 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
10958 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
10959 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
10960 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
10961 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
10962 see how the project is doing.</p>
10964 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
10965 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
10966 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
10967 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
10968 Windows. This is great.</p>
10974 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>.
10979 <div class="padding
"></div>
10981 <div class="entry
">
10982 <div class="title
">
10983 <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>
10990 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">testing
10991 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
10992 finally made the upgrade logs available from
10993 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/
">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
10994 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
10995 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting. This time
10996 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
10998 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
10999 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze. The
11000 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
11001 xserver-xorg-video* drivers. Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
11002 sure why. When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
11003 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
11004 longer needed. Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
11005 I do not know. Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
11007 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
11008 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
11009 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
11010 too surprising.</p>
11012 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11013 and avoided, and perhaps others as well. Here are the complete list
11014 of planned removals. The complete logs is available from the URL
11015 above. Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11016 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11017 conffile questions. No idea why. I worked around it by using
11018 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
11021 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
11022 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11023 gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11024 iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11025 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11026 nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11027 serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11028 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11029 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11030 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11031 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11032 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11033 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11034 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11035 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11036 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11037 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11038 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11039 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11040 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11041 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11042 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11043 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11044 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11045 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11046 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11047 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11048 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11049 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11050 xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
11052 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
11054 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11055 djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11056 gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11057 gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11058 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11059 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11060 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11061 libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11062 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11063 libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11064 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11065 libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11066 libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11067 libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11068 libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11069 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11070 libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11071 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11072 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11073 libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11074 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11075 libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11076 libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11077 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11078 openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11079 python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11080 python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11081 python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11082 swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11083 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11084 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11087 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
11089 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11090 kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11091 kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11092 kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11093 kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11094 libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11095 xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11096 xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11097 xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11098 xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11099 xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11100 xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11101 xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11102 xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11103 xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11104 xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11105 xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11106 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11107 xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11108 xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11109 xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11110 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11111 xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11112 xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11113 xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11114 xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11115 xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11116 xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
11118 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
11119 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11120 djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11121 ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11122 kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11123 kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11124 kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11125 kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11126 kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11127 kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11128 kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11129 kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11130 klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11131 kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11132 krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11133 ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11134 kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11135 kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11136 libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11137 libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11138 libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11139 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11140 libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11141 libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11142 libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11143 libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11144 libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11145 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11146 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11147 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11148 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11149 libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11150 openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11151 superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11152 texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11153 xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11154 xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11162 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>.
11167 <div class="padding
"></div>
11169 <div class="entry
">
11170 <div class="title
">
11171 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html
">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
11177 <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
11178 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly. A few bugs
11179 have been discovered and reported in the process
11180 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
11181 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
11182 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
584861">#584861</a> in
11183 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
11184 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
11186 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
11187 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
11188 it. To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
11189 script is inserted. To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
11190 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
11191 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
11193 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
11194 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
11195 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11196 is created. The bug report
11197 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/
566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
11198 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
11199 to make sure the upgrade go well. Testing on virtual and real
11200 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
11201 do the trick in such settings anyway. This is a
11202 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-
26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-
804130/
">known
11203 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
11204 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
11205 working with old kernels or something like that. I really wish the
11206 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
11207 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
11208 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
11209 Debian Squeeze.</p>
11211 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades. This test
11212 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
11228 exec
< /dev/null
11230 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
11231 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
11233 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
11234 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11235 cat
> $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
<<EOF
11239 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
11241 umount $tmpdir/proc
11243 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
11244 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
11245 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
11247 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
11249 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger. It need the test scripts
11250 # to return the correct answers.
11251 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
11252 chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
11254 # Include the desktop and laptop task
11255 for test in desktop laptop ; do
11256 echo
> $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
<<EOF
11260 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
11263 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11264 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
11265 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
11266 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
11268 echo deb $mirror $to main
> $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
11269 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11270 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11271 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
11273 </pre></blockquote>
11275 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
11276 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
11277 differently so far. I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
11278 regularly and post the result on the web. The Gnome upgrade currently
11279 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
11280 kdebase-workspace-data
</p>
11282 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
11283 (KDE
167 KiB, Gnome
516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
11284 post, so I will refrain from trying. I can report that for Gnome,
11285 aptitude report
760 packages upgraded,
448 newly installed,
129 to
11286 remove and
1 not upgraded and
1024MB need to be downloaded while for
11287 KDE the same numbers are
702 packages upgraded,
507 newly installed,
11288 193 to remove and
0 not upgraded and
1117MB need to be downloaded
</p>
11290 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
11291 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
11292 booting without a hitch. Was unsure if there were still bugs with
11293 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
11294 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
11301 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>.
11306 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11308 <div class=
"entry">
11309 <div class=
"title">
11310 <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>
11316 <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
11317 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
11318 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd. The packages with such
11319 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
11320 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart. Because of
11321 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
11322 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.
</p>
11324 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
11325 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
11334 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
11336 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
11337 </pre></blockquote>
11339 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
11343 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-
2.88
11348 </pre></blockquote>
11350 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
11351 sysvinit are not set by upstart. Not sure if it is intentional or not
11352 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.
</p>
11354 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
11355 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
11362 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>.
11367 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11369 <div class=
"entry">
11370 <div class=
"title">
11371 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...
</a>
11378 <a href=
"http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
11379 of Rob Weir
</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
11380 <a href=
"http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
11381 Standards Wars
</a> (PDF
25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
11382 following the standards wars of today.
</p>
11388 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>.
11393 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11395 <div class=
"entry">
11396 <div class=
"title">
11397 <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>
11403 <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
11404 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
11405 information extracted from each machine. The script to do so is
11406 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
11407 the Skolelinux build servers:
</p>
11410 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
11412 Dell Computer Corporation
1
11415 eserver xSeries
345 -[
8670M1X]-
1
11419 </pre></blockquote>
11421 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
11422 provided in each machine. Here there are Intel machines without model
11423 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
11424 machines listed as [no-dmi-info]. One can add -l as a command line
11425 option to list the individual machines.
</p>
11427 <p>A larger list is
11428 <a href=
"http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
11429 city of Narvik
</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
11430 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly. In their report there
11431 are ~
1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
11432 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
11433 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
11440 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>.
11445 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11447 <div class=
"entry">
11448 <div class=
"title">
11449 <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>
11455 <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
11456 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled. The
11457 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
11458 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
11461 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
11462 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#
583312</a> initially filed
11463 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
11464 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
11465 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#
524751</a> initially filed against
11466 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.
</p>
11468 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
11469 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
11470 distribution work out of the box for these users. The nvidia driver
11471 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
11472 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
11473 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
11474 distribution that work for them. I have no idea what the solution is,
11475 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.
</p>
11477 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.
</p>
11483 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>.
11488 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11490 <div class=
"entry">
11491 <div class=
"title">
11492 <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>
11498 <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
11499 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
11500 issues are known and should be solved:
11504 <li>The wicd package seen to
11505 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting
</a> and
11506 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup
</a> when
11507 parallel booting is enabled. No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
11508 seem to be on the case.
</li>
11510 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
11511 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition
</a>
11512 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect. The
11513 maintainer is on the case.
</li>
11515 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
11516 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
11517 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back
</a> to
11518 sysv-rc. One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
11519 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
11520 sysv-rc more robust. Will investigate some more and probably upload a
11521 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
11522 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.
</li>
11526 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
11527 solvable before Squeeze is released. In addition to these there are
11528 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
11529 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.
</p>
11531 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11532 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11533 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11534 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
11536 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.
</p>
11542 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>.
11547 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11549 <div class=
"entry">
11550 <div class=
"title">
11551 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer
</a>
11557 <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
11558 found time today to return to the project. Having to spend less time
11559 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
11560 definitely helped freeing some time.
</p>
11562 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu. We
11563 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
11564 get disk and network controllers working. Without having these
11565 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
11566 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
11567 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
11568 an external medium is a support pain. Initially, I expected it to be
11569 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
11570 debian-installer to find and use them. This proved to be wrong.
11571 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
11572 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
11573 /cdrom/firmware/). This also proved to not work, and at this point I
11574 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
11577 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
11578 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
11579 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
11580 packages. It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
11581 "external" media devices. Today I changed it to also look in the
11582 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
11583 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu. I also changed it to
11584 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
11585 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
11586 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
11589 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
11590 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
11591 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
11592 run these before activating the firmware during installation. The
11593 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
11594 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.
</p>
11596 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
11597 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11603 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>.
11608 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11610 <div class=
"entry">
11611 <div class=
"title">
11612 <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>
11618 <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
11619 Edu finally entered the Debian archive. Today, the new
11620 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser
</a>
11621 package was accepted. Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
11623 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python
</a>
11624 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
11625 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd
</a> package
11626 passed NEW on Monday. In addition, the
11627 <a href=
"http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
11628 package we need is in experimental (version
10-
4) since Saturday, and
11629 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.
</p>
11631 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
11632 roaming laptops. The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
11633 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
11634 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
11635 for nscd in
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
11636 #
485282</a> is implemented. The alternative setup is to use sssd with
11637 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
11638 care of the caching of passwords and group information.
</p>
11640 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
11641 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
11642 problem with the server certificate. I plan to update the Debian
11643 package to version
1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
11644 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
11645 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches. Upstream is friendly and responsive,
11646 and I am sure we will find a good solution.
</p>
11648 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
11649 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
11650 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
11651 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
11652 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information. The
11653 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
11654 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
11655 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used. To avoid confusion
11656 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
11657 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
11658 on the home directory servers.
</p>
11660 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
11661 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
11662 is created. Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
11663 message. The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
11664 a bug in gdm. Have not investigated if there is some other message
11665 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.
</p>
11667 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11668 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11674 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11679 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11681 <div class=
"entry">
11682 <div class=
"title">
11683 <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>
11689 <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
11690 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
11691 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
11692 expected, if I am to believe the
11693 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11694 on debian-devel@
</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
11695 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
11696 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen. If serious problems are
11697 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
11698 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
11701 More information about
11702 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11703 based boot sequencing
</a> is available from the Debian wiki. It is
11704 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
11705 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
11709 </pre></blockquote>
11711 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11712 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11713 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11714 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
11720 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>.
11725 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11727 <div class=
"entry">
11728 <div class=
"title">
11729 <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>
11735 <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
11736 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
11737 system
</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
11738 network. Each machine will automatically report its status to the
11739 central server after boot and once per night. The network setup is
11740 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
11741 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines. This is useful
11742 to update the DHCP configuration.
</p>
11744 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
11745 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary. Run
11746 this on the collector host:
</p>
11749 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
11750 </pre></blockquote>
11752 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
11753 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.
</p>
11755 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
11756 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
11757 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
11758 tables in LDAP using this information. Such tool is unfortunately not
11765 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>.
11770 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11772 <div class=
"entry">
11773 <div class=
"title">
11774 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart
</a>
11780 <p>The last few days a new boot system called
11781 <a href=
"http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd
</a>
11783 <a href=
"http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced
</a>
11785 to the free software world. I have not yet had time to play around
11786 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
11787 <a href=
"http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart
</a>, and might prove to be
11788 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
11789 based boot system. Tollef is
11790 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process
</a> of getting
11791 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work. I
11792 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
11793 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
11794 at the moment do not.
</p>
11796 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
11797 platform support. It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
11798 some new kernel features enabled to function properly. This means
11799 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
11800 system. Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
11803 <p>In the mean time, based on the
11804 <a href=
"http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11805 on debian-devel@
</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
11806 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
11807 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
11808 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies. A
11809 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
11810 already in experimental. If all go well, Squeeze will be released
11811 with parallel booting enabled by default.
</p>
11817 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>.
11822 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11824 <div class=
"entry">
11825 <div class=
"title">
11826 <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>
11832 <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
11833 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
11834 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies. If you want
11835 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
11836 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11837 based boot sequencing
</a> is enabled, and add this line to
11838 /etc/default/rcS:
</p>
11841 CONCURRENCY=makefile
11842 </pre></blockquote>
11844 <p>That is it. It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
11845 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
11846 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
11847 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts. Startpar is configured
11848 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
11849 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
11850 make this happen.
</p>
11852 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result. If some services
11853 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
11854 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
11855 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies). Report bugs and get
11856 the package maintainers to fix it. :)
</p>
11858 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
11859 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct. I
11860 expect we will get there in Squeeze+
1, if we get manage to test and
11861 fix the remaining issues.
</p>
11863 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11864 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11865 <a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11866 list of usertagged bugs related to this
</a>.
</p>
11872 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>.
11877 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11879 <div class=
"entry">
11880 <div class=
"title">
11881 <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>
11887 <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
11888 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
11889 change the password on the first login attempt.
</p>
11891 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
11892 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account. The account
11893 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
11894 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
11895 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.
</p>
11897 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
11898 settings in /etc/shadow:
</p>
11901 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
11902 Last password change : May
02,
2010
11903 Password expires : never
11904 Password inactive : never
11905 Account expires : never
11906 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
11907 Maximum number of days between password change :
99999
11908 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
11910 </pre></blockquote>
11912 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
11913 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
11914 lowest value possible (January
1th
1970), and the maximum password age
11915 to the difference in days between that date and today. To make it
11916 simple, I went for
30 years (
30 *
365 =
10950) and January
2th (to
11917 avoid testing if
0 is a valid value).
</p>
11919 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
11923 root@tjener:~# chage -d
1 test; chage -M
10950 test
11924 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
11925 Last password change : Jan
02,
1970
11926 Password expires : never
11927 Password inactive : never
11928 Account expires : never
11929 Minimum number of days between password change :
0
11930 Maximum number of days between password change :
10950
11931 Number of days of warning before password expires :
7
11933 </pre></blockquote>
11935 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
11936 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
11937 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).
</p>
11939 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
11940 sure only the user itself have the account password?
</p>
11942 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
11943 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
11945 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02 17:
20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
11946 shadow(
8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
11947 last password change to zero (
0) will force the password to be changed
11948 on the first login. This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
11949 I did not notice this in my initial testing. I have tested it on
11950 Squeeze, and '
<tt>chage -d
0 username
</tt>' do work there. I have not
11951 tested it on Lenny yet.
</p>
11953 <p>Update
2010-
05-
02-
19:
05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
11954 equivalent command to expire a password is '
<tt>passwd -e
11955 username
</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
11962 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
11967 <div class=
"padding"></div>
11969 <div class=
"entry">
11970 <div class=
"title">
11971 <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>
11977 <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
11978 Debian Edu. The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
11979 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
11982 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
11983 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
11984 example called Roaming Workstations. Here are my thought on this.
11985 The setup would consist of the following:
</p>
11989 <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
11990 the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
11991 the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
11992 server. This allow the user to work also when offline. The
11993 central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
11994 request, for example mounted via CIFS. It could be mounted
11995 automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
11996 and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
11997 hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
11998 request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
11999 can be used to access it when needed. Perhaps it is enough to use
12000 the fish protocol in KDE?
</li>
12002 <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
12003 authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
12004 to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
12005 to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server. This can be done using
12006 <a href=
"http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds
</a>
12007 or the Fedora developed
12008 <a href=
"https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
12009 Security Services Daemon
</a> packages.
</li>
12011 <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
12012 using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
12013 directory, using unison.
</li>
12015 <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
12016 their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
12017 the box with CUPS. For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
12018 system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
12021 <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
12022 sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.
</li>
12024 <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
12025 cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
12026 local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.
</li>
12030 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
12031 the moment. If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
12032 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze. Some of the pieces need
12033 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
12034 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#
566718</a>) and nslcd (or
12035 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
12036 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
12037 when disconnected from the net. If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
12038 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.
</p>
12040 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12041 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.
</p>
12047 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12052 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12054 <div class=
"entry">
12055 <div class=
"title">
12056 <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>
12062 <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
12063 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
12064 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
12065 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
12066 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
12067 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
12068 restrictions on the web, for example from
12069 <a href=
"http://craphound.com/content/">his own site
</a>. I read the
12071 <a href=
"http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks
</a> using
12072 <a href=
"http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader
</a> and my N810. I
12073 strongly recommend this book.
</p>
12079 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>.
12084 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12086 <div class=
"entry">
12087 <div class=
"title">
12088 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?
</a>
12094 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
12095 NUUG presentation
</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
12096 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux. Setting up a
12097 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
12098 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
12099 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
12100 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
12101 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
12102 users and cryptographic keys instead.
</p>
12104 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration. Is there a
12105 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
12106 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups? With it, the
12107 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
12108 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.
</p>
12110 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
12111 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together. Anyone know?
</p>
12113 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
12114 Nagios. I have no idea how much work that will be to implement. We
12115 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
12116 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
12117 to work properly.
</p>
12119 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
12120 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
12121 configuration and integration. A natural starting point would be
12122 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
12123 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
12126 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
12127 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
12128 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home. The video show show
12129 up in a few days.
</p>
12135 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12140 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12142 <div class=
"entry">
12143 <div class=
"title">
12144 <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>
12150 <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
12151 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
12152 when the user log out. A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
12153 package in
2004 (
<a href=
"http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#
230422</a>),
12154 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
12155 Today, this finally paid off.
</p>
12157 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
12158 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
12159 been updated to use this framework. Next on my agenda is to make sure
12160 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.
</p>
12162 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
12163 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
12164 after a user. With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
12165 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
12166 framework. My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
12167 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.
<p>
12173 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12178 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12180 <div class=
"entry">
12181 <div class=
"title">
12182 <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>
12188 <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
12189 <a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
</a> was finally
12190 shipped. This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
12191 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up. Work on the first
12192 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
12193 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
12194 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.
</p>
12196 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?
</p>
12198 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
12199 next major release, based on Squeeze. We will try to get as many of
12200 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
12201 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.
</p>
12207 Tags:
<a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">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>.
12212 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12214 <div class=
"entry">
12215 <div class=
"title">
12216 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration
</a>
12222 <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
12223 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
12224 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
12225 Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
12226 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
12229 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
12230 configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
12231 configured to be a server for the
12232 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
12233 system
</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
12234 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
12235 work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
12236 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
12237 computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
12238 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
12239 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
12240 packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
12241 and Nagios configuration.
</p>
12243 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
12244 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
12245 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
12246 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
</p>
12248 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
12249 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
12250 services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
12251 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
12252 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
12253 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
12256 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
12257 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
12258 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
12259 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
</p>
12261 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
12262 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
12263 administrator need to run "
<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
12264 nagiosadmin
</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
12265 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
12266 everything is taken care of.</p>
12272 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu
">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>.
12277 <div class="padding
"></div>
12279 <div class="entry
">
12280 <div class="title
">
12281 <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>
12287 <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
12288 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
12289 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage. I searched using
12290 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
12293 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12294 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
12295 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
12296 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
12299 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
12300 got these numbers:</p>
12303 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12304 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
12305 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299 </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
12306 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187 </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
12309 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
12311 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
12312 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
12313 they are conduced in another country. Because of this, I did the same
12314 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
12315 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
12319 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12320 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
12321 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
12322 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500 </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
12325 <p>And with 'site:no':
12328 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12329 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
12330 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
12331 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186 </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
12334 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
12341 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>.
12346 <div class="padding
"></div>
12348 <div class="entry
">
12349 <div class="title
">
12350 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html
">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
12357 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/
2009/
08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html
">a
12358 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
12359 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages. His interesting point is that the
12360 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
12361 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
12362 can be fixed in ISO. Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
12363 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
12364 close to solving the problems. I was part of the Norwegian committee
12365 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
12366 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
12368 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
12369 with the future ahead of it. We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
12370 seminar this autumn.</p>
12376 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>.
12381 <div class="padding
"></div>
12383 <div class="entry
">
12384 <div class="title
">
12385 <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>
12391 <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
12392 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
12393 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing. This
12394 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
12395 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
12396 installation. Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
12397 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
12399 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
12400 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
12401 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
12407 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>.
12412 <div class="padding
"></div>
12414 <div class="entry
">
12415 <div class="title
">
12416 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html
">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
12422 <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
12423 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
12424 take over the package and become the new upstream. The number of
12425 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
12426 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
12427 the package up to date.</p>
12429 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
12430 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman. About 10 days ago, I made
12431 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
12432 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
12433 distributions. We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
12434 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge. Since the
12435 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
12436 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/
">Savannah</a>, and continue
12437 development there. The project is registered and currently waiting
12438 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
12439 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
12440 working on the future release.</p>
12442 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
12443 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
12449 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>.
12454 <div class="padding
"></div>
12456 <div class="entry
">
12457 <div class="title
">
12458 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html
">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
12464 <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
12465 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
12466 could find more ways to speed up the boot system. This was an Ubuntu
12468 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint
">developer
12469 gathering</a>. It was quite productive. We also discussed the future
12470 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
12471 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
12472 asynchronous and event base. The Ubuntu approach using udev and
12473 upstart might be a good way forward. Time will show.</p>
12475 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
12476 process in Debian. All of these should be applied to get a quick
12481 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
12483 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
12484 clock is in UTC.</li>
12486 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
12487 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot
">dependency
12488 based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
12492 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
12493 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/
">Carlos
12496 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
12497 unstable yesterday. When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
12498 from the boot sequence. It depend on very correct dependency
12499 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
12500 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
12503 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
12504 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
12505 startup speed as well. Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
12506 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
12507 possible to run a of them in the same process. A quick way to test
12508 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
12509 insserv'. Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
12515 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>.
12520 <div class="padding
"></div>
12522 <div class="entry
">
12523 <div class="title
">
12524 <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>
12530 <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
12531 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
12532 do not yet know them.</p>
12534 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/
">valgrind</a>, a
12535 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
12536 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
12537 and it will report any problems on stdout. It is even better if the
12538 program include debug information. With debug information, it is able
12539 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
12540 occurs. It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
12541 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
12542 'using uninitialised value in control logic'. This tool has made it
12543 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
12544 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
12546 <p>The second one is
12547 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity
">Coverity</a> which is
12548 a source code checker. It is able to process the source of a program
12549 and find problems in the logic without running the program. It
12550 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
12551 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel. It is now a commercial tool
12552 and the company behind it is running
12553 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/
">a community service</a> for the
12554 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
12555 their source checked for free. Several thousand defects have been
12556 found and fixed so far. It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
12557 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
12558 Y lines O to P can never be executed'. The projects included in the
12559 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
12560 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
12562 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
12563 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
12564 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
12565 surrounded by today.</p>
12571 Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian
">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english
">english</a>.
12576 <div class="padding
"></div>
12578 <div class="entry
">
12579 <div class="title
">
12580 <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>
12587 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/
2009/
04/
12/
214">claim that no
12588 patch is better than a useless patch</a>. I completely disagree, as a
12589 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
12590 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
12591 time on fixing it. No patch do not provide any of these positive
12598 Tags: <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>.
12603 <div class="padding
"></div>
12605 <div class="entry
">
12606 <div class="title
">
12607 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html
">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
12613 <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
12614 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net. The
12615 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
12616 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
12617 vlc. I finally found a way to do it today. I spent an hour or so
12618 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation. The
12619 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
12620 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
12622 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
12624 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
12625 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
12626 --intf=dummy
</pre></blockquote>
12628 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
12629 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
12630 dummy interface. The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
12631 sure no X interface is needed.
</p>
12633 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
12634 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
12635 the vlc process with SIGTERM. Here is a complete script
12636 <tt>vlc-record
</tt> to use from
<tt>at
</tt> or
<tt>cron
</tt>:
</p>
12638 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
12643 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
12644 --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
12645 --intf=dummy < /dev/null
> /dev/null
2>&
1 &
12649 wait $pid
</pre></blockquote>
12655 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>.
12660 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12662 <div class=
"entry">
12663 <div class=
"title">
12664 <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>
12670 <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
12671 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
12672 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
12673 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
12674 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
12675 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
12676 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
12679 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
12680 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
12681 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
12682 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
12683 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
12684 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
12685 blocked from doing so.
</p>
12687 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
12688 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
12689 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
12690 requirements change.
</p>
12692 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
12693 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
12694 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.
</p>
12700 Tags:
<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>.
12705 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12707 <div class=
"entry">
12708 <div class=
"title">
12709 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering
</a>
12715 <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
12716 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering. I got a bit done tuning the
12717 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
12718 implementation avahi. It look like it could be useful for us. Almost
12719 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
12720 get to know the Skolelinux system. Walter Bender, involved in the
12721 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
12722 also helped me improve my OLPC installation. He also showed me that
12723 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
12724 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian. As a
12725 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu. We also
12726 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
12727 proved to be too hard for us. The application seem to need more work
12728 before it is ready for me. I look forward to getting home and relax
12735 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>.
12740 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12742 <div class=
"entry">
12743 <div class=
"title">
12744 <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>
12750 <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
12751 optimal. There is RFC
2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
12752 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC
2307bis, with
12753 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory. The RFC
12754 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
12755 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.
</p>
12757 <p>In
<a href=
"http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux
</a>,
12758 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
12759 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
12760 and LTSP configuration in LDAP. These objects have a lot in common,
12761 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
12762 object per entity. For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
12763 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
12764 DNS information and another with DHCP information. The schemas
12765 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
12766 object. In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
12767 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
12768 It just do not scale. I believe it is time for a few RFC
12769 specifications to cleam up this mess.
</p>
12771 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
12772 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
12773 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
12774 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.
</p>
12776 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
12777 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.
</p>
12779 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
12780 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up. Time to start a
12781 new IETF work group?
</p>
12787 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>.
12792 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12794 <div class=
"entry">
12795 <div class=
"title">
12796 <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>
12802 <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
12803 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
12804 contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service)
12805 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
12806 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
12807 each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract
12808 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
12809 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
12810 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
12811 machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import
12812 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
12813 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
12814 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
12815 for the relevant machines. This make the support status information
12816 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
12817 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
12818 The result of this work documented that
27% of the machines in the
12819 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
12820 them.
27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
12821 using machines a bit longer than the
3 years a normal support contract
12822 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
12823 services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
12824 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
12825 them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
12826 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
12829 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
12830 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
12831 Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
12832 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
12833 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML
12834 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
12835 introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:
</p>
12840 use WWW::Mechanize;
12843 sub get_support_info {
12844 my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
12847 if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
12848 # fetch website from Dell support
12849 my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no
&cs=nodhs1
&l=no
&s=dhs
&ServiceTag=$serial";
12850 my $webpage = get($url);
12851 return undef unless ($webpage);
12854 my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
12855 foreach my $line (@lines) {
12856 next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
12857 $line =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
12858 $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$
1/;
12860 my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
12861 @f = @f[
13 .. $#f];
12863 while ($f[
3] eq "DELL") {
12864 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[
0,
5,
7,
10];
12866 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
12867 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
12868 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
12869 localtime(str2time($endstr)));
12870 $str .= "$type $start -
> $end ";
12871 @f = @f[
14 .. $#f];
12872 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
12874 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
12875 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12876 if ($lastend lt $today);
12878 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
12879 my $mech = WWW::Mechanize-
>new();
12881 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
12884 'BODServiceID' =
> 'NA',
12885 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' =
> '',
12887 'productNumber' =
> $productnumber,
12888 'serialNumber1' =
> $serial,
12890 $mech-
>submit_form( form_number =
> 2,
12891 fields =
> $fields );
12892 # Next step is screen scraping
12893 my $content = $mech-
>content();
12895 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
12896 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
12897 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
12898 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
12900 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
12902 while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
12903 my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
12904 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
12905 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
12906 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
12907 localtime(str2time($startstr)));
12908 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
12909 localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
12911 $str .= "$type ($status) $start -
> $end ";
12913 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12914 if ($end lt $today);
12916 } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
12917 # This code ignore extended support contracts.
12918 my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{
4}).+\]-/;
12919 if ($producttype
&& $serial) {
12921 get("http://www-
947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty
&brandind=
5000008&Submit=Submit
&type=$producttype
&serial=$serial");
12923 $content =~ s/
<[^
>]+
?>/;/gm;
12924 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
12925 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
12926 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
12928 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
12929 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
12931 $str .= "($status) -
> $end ";
12933 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
12934 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
12935 if ($end lt $today);
12943 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
12944 serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched
12945 from dmidecode.
</p>
12948 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "
1234567890"
12950 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge
2950", "
1234567");
12951 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries
345 -[
867061X]-",
12955 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
12956 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)
</p>
12958 <p>Update
2009-
03-
06: The IBM page do not include extended support
12959 contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do
12960 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
12967 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>.
12972 <div class=
"padding"></div>
12974 <div class=
"entry">
12975 <div class=
"title">
12976 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center
</a>
12982 <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
12983 in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the
12984 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
12985 removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a
12986 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
12987 the "missing" computer.
</p>
12989 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
12990 <a href=
"http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx
</a> to write and read bar
12991 code blocks as defined in the
12992 <a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
12993 Standard
</a>. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
12994 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
12995 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard
12996 allow up to
2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project
12997 with
<a href=
"http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
12998 writer written in postscript
</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
12999 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
13002 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
13003 machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are
13004 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
13005 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
13006 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
13007 locations, and can detect movements and removals.
</p>
13009 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
13010 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I
13011 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
13012 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked
13013 fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
13014 side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space
13015 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
13016 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
13017 about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
13018 to
60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.
</p>
13020 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
13021 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
13022 easier automatic tracking of computers.
</p>
13028 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>.
13033 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13035 <div class=
"entry">
13036 <div class=
"title">
13037 <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>
13043 <p>As part of the work we do in
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no">NUUG
</a>
13044 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
13045 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording. Putting a
13046 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
13047 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy. I hope this
13048 will become easier when the
<video
> tag is implemented in all
13049 browsers, but I am not sure. We provide the recordings in several
13050 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H
.264 and Quicktime, and want the
13051 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
13052 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
13053 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
13054 <video
> tag, the
<object
> tag, the
<embed
> tag and
13055 the
<applet
> tag. All of these take a lot of options, and
13056 finding the best options is a major challenge.
</p>
13058 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from
<a
13059 href=
"http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com
</a>, to see how it handled
13060 a
<video
> tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
13061 I was not very impressed. The browser start by fetching a picture
13062 from the video stream. Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
13063 definitely very early in the recording. So far, so good. Next,
13064 instead of streaming the
76 MiB video file, it start to download all
13065 of it, but do not start to play the video. This mean I have to wait
13066 for several minutes for the downloading to finish. When the download
13067 is done, the playing of the video do not start! Waiting for the
13068 download, but I do not get to see the video? Some testing later, I
13069 discover that I have to add the
controls="true" attribute to be able
13070 to get a play button to pres to start the video. Adding
13071 autoplay="true" did not help. I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
13072 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
13073 <video
> tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
13074 playing when the download is done.
</p>
13076 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
13077 <a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
13078 from the nuug site
</a>. Will have to test it with the new Firefox
13081 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature. I was unable
13082 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
13083 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video. I
13084 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)
</p>
13090 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>.
13095 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13097 <div class=
"entry">
13098 <div class=
"title">
13099 <a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick
</a>
13105 <p>The
<a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group
</a> is
13106 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
13107 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
13108 directly with the video stream. For this, we use the
13109 <a href=
"http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch
</a> package from
13110 the Debian video team. As this require quite one computer per video
13111 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
13112 borrow laptops. And to avoid having to install extra software on
13113 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
13114 bootable USB stick. The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
13115 source, sink and mixer applications and
13116 <a href=
"http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab
</a>. To allow this setup to
13117 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
13118 <a href=
"http://www.avahi.org/">avahi
</a> to connect the various parts
13119 together. And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
13120 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
13121 with USB sources. We have not yet tested this setup in a production
13122 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
13123 video mixer in a very short time frame. We will need it for
13124 <a href=
"http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open
2009</a>.
</p>
13126 <p><a href=
"http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
13127 USB image
</a> is for a
1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
13128 larger stick as well.
</p>
13134 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>.
13139 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13141 <div class=
"entry">
13142 <div class=
"title">
13143 <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>
13149 <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13150 Oslo. Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13151 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13152 LTSP installation. LTSP now work out of the box on the
10-network.
13153 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13154 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box. Was working on getting the
13155 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13156 finish it before the weekend was up.
</p>
13158 <p>Did not find time to look at the
4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13159 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13160 development gathering. Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13161 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
13162 of these cards.
</p>
13168 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>.
13173 <div class=
"padding"></div>
13175 <div class=
"entry">
13176 <div class=
"title">
13177 <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>
13183 <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
13184 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
13185 default in Debian Edu. We need an embedded video playing plugin with
13186 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
13187 all the multimedia content available on the web. The test results and
13188 notes are available on
13189 <a href=
"http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
13190 Debian wiki
</a>. I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
13191 fill this need. My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
13192 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages. A lot of the MIME
13193 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
13194 video/ogg), just do not work. And simple formats like the
13195 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
13196 totem and vlc plugins. I hope the situation will improve soon. No
13197 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.
</p>
13199 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin. It seem to
13200 be the only one fitting our needs. :/
</p>
13206 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>.
13211 <div class=
"padding"></div>
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"text-align: right;"><a href=
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt=
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</a></li>
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3)
</a></li>
13340 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (
3)
</a></li>
13347 <li><a href=
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5)
</a></li>
13349 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (
7)
</a></li>
13360 <li><a href=
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13)
</a></li>
13362 <li><a href=
"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (
1)
</a></li>
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1)
</a></li>
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4)
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5)
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</a></li>
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65)
</a></li>
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118)
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9)
</a></li>
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7)
</a></li>
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8)
</a></li>
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6)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (
1)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (
25)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (
219)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (
148)
</a></li>
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6)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (
2)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (
41)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (
61)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (
1)
</a></li>
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11)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (
2)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (
6)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (
1)
</a></li>
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4)
</a></li>
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2)
</a></li>
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4)
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4)
</a></li>
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39)
</a></li>
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3)
</a></li>
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5)
</a></li>
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12)
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1)
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7)
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35)
</a></li>
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4)
</a></li>
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"http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (
26)
</a></li>
13460 <p style=
"text-align: right">
13461 Created by
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