blog/tags/english/index.html

   1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   2           "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
   3 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr">
   4   <head>
   5     <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Entries Tagged english</title>
   7     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/style.css" />
   8     <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/vim.css" />
   9     <link rel="alternate" title="RSS Feed" href="english.rss" type="application/rss+xml" />
  10   </head>
  11   <body>
  12     <div class="title">
  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">The life and death of a laptop battery</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         24th September 2015
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
  32 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
  33 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
  34 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
  35 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
  36 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
  37 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
  38
  39 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
  40
  41 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
  42 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
  43 by someone else.  I found
  44 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
  45 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
  46 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
  47 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
  48 from him.  Via
  49 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
  50 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
  51 discovered
  52 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
  53 available in Debian.</p>
  54
  55 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
  56 battery stats ever since. Now my
  57 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
  58 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
  59 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
  60 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
  61
  62 <pre>
  63 #!/bin/sh
  64 # Inspired by
  65 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
  66 # See also
  67 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
  68 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
  69
  70 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
  71     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
  72
  73 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
  74     (
  75         printf "timestamp,"
  76         for f in $files; do
  77             printf "%s," $f
  78         done
  79         echo
  80     ) > "$logfile"
  81 fi
  82
  83 log_battery() {
  84     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
  85     # when several log processes run in parallel.
  86     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
  87         for f in $files; do \
  88             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
  89         done)
  90     echo "$msg"
  91 }
  92
  93 cd /sys/class/power_supply
  94
  95 for bat in BAT*; do
  96     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
  97 done
  98 </pre>
  99
 100 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
 101 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
 102 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
 103 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
 104 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
 105 The code for the Debian package
 106 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
 107 available on github</a>.</p>
 108
 109 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
 110
 111 <pre>
 112 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
 113 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
 114 [...]
 115 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 116 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
 117 </pre>
 118
 119 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
 120 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
 121 battery.</p>
 122
 123 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
 124 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
 125 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
 126 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
 127 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
 128 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
 129 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
 130 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
 131 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
 132 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
 133 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
 134 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
 135 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
 136 Linux too.</p>
 137
 138 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
 139 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
 140 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
 141 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
 142 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
 143 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
 144 load).</p>
 145
 146 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
 147 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
 148 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
 149 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
 150 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
 151 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
 152 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
 153 those.</p>
 154
 155 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
 156 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
 157 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
 158 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
 159 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
 160 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
 161 specific.</p>
 162
 163       </div>
 164       <div class="tags">
 165
 166
 167         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 168
 169
 170       </div>
 171     </div>
 172     <div class="padding"></div>
 173
 174     <div class="entry">
 175       <div class="title">
 176         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html">Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</a>
 177       </div>
 178       <div class="date">
 179          3rd September 2015
 180       </div>
 181       <div class="body">
 182         <p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
 183 I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
 184 the
 185 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
 186 Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
 187 vector format for high resolution printing.  But my inkscape knowledge
 188 were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
 189
 190 <p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
 191 the cover yesterday evening.  I asked on the
 192 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
 193 on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
 194 to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
 195 version.  Not only did he create a
 196 <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
 197 the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
 198 an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
 199 video</a> explaining how he did it</a>.  But the instruction video is
 200 not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
 201 recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
 202 the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
 203 use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
 204 give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
 205 stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
 206
 207 <p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
 208 on the cover I was drawing.  I am happy with the end result, and the
 209 current english version look like this:</p>
 210
 211 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
 212
 213 <p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
 214 do.  I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
 215 hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers.  The
 216 Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
 217 replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
 218
 219 <p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
 220 to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
 221 final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
 222 before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
 223 English or Norwegian Bokmål.  I'm waiting to give the the productive
 224 proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
 225
 226       </div>
 227       <div class="tags">
 228
 229
 230         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>.
 231
 232
 233       </div>
 234     </div>
 235     <div class="padding"></div>
 236
 237     <div class="entry">
 238       <div class="title">
 239         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html">In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</a>
 240       </div>
 241       <div class="date">
 242         19th August 2015
 243       </div>
 244       <div class="body">
 245         <p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
 246 translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
 247 years arrived in the mail.  I had to fake a cover to get the interior
 248 printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
 249 irrelevant at this point.  I asked for a printed pocket book version
 250 to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
 251 good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
 252 pocket book version would look like.  After receiving the 500 page
 253 pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
 254 small for this book.  I believe the book is too thick, and several
 255 tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
 256 small page sizes.  I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
 257 instead.  A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
 258 URLs look in print.  They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
 259 The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper.  I need to
 260 change the color of links somehow to look better.  But there is a
 261 printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
 262
 263 <p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
 264 store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
 265 readers before the book is ready for proper printing.  Cover artists
 266 willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
 267 file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
 268 a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
 269
 270       </div>
 271       <div class="tags">
 272
 273
 274         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>.
 275
 276
 277       </div>
 278     </div>
 279     <div class="padding"></div>
 280
 281     <div class="entry">
 282       <div class="title">
 283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html">First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</a>
 284       </div>
 285       <div class="date">
 286          9th August 2015
 287       </div>
 288       <div class="body">
 289         <p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped.  As the translation is
 290 mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
 291 on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
 292 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
 293 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
 294 Lessig.  I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
 295 give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
 296 its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
 297 helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
 298
 299 <p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
 300 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
 301 and I ordered a text version of the book on paper.  It is lacking a
 302 proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
 303 should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
 304
 305 <p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
 306 <a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
 307 using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
 308 to lack pocket book with extended distribution).  I looked for a
 309 similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far.  Please
 310 let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
 311
 312 <p>But I still struggle to decide the book size.  Should I go for
 313 pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
 314 (5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
 315 15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages?  Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
 316 smaller book is easier to carry around.  The test book I ordered was
 317 pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
 318 but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
 319 bring the prize down further.</p>
 320
 321 <p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art.  My
 322 inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
 323 cover in SVG format.  I also need to figure out what to write about
 324 the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
 325 description on web based book stores).  I would love help with this,
 326 if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
 327 the same CC license as the book.  My artistic skills are not really up
 328 to the task.</p>
 329
 330 <p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
 331 paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format.  The current
 332 status can as usual be found on
 333 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
 334 in the archive/ directory.  So far I have spent all time on making the
 335 PDF version look good.  Someone should probably do the same with the
 336 dbtoepub generated e-book.  Help is definitely needed here, as I
 337 expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
 338 formatting.</p>
 339
 340 <p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
 341 discover translations that should be improved.  The final proof
 342 reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
 343 result in a few months.</p>
 344
 345       </div>
 346       <div class="tags">
 347
 348
 349         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>.
 350
 351
 352       </div>
 353     </div>
 354     <div class="padding"></div>
 355
 356     <div class="entry">
 357       <div class="title">
 358         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html">Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</a>
 359       </div>
 360       <div class="date">
 361         16th July 2015
 362       </div>
 363       <div class="body">
 364         <p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
 365 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
 366 Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
 367 One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
 368 original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
 369 chapter.  Based on the
 370 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
 371 maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
 372 would like to share with you.  The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
 373 class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
 374 practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
 375 file variable.  So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
 376 parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
 377 the generated LaTeX File.</p>
 378
 379 <p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
 380 and add this text there:</p>
 381
 382 <pre>
 383 &lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
 384 </pre>
 385
 386 <p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
 387 code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
 388 generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
 389
 390 <pre>
 391 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
 392 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
 393   &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
 394     &lt;xsl:text&gt;
 395 \usepackage{endnotes}
 396 \let\footnote=\endnote
 397 \def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
 398 \begin{document}
 399     &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
 400   &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
 401 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
 402 </pre>
 403
 404 <p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
 405 this:</p>
 406
 407 <pre>
 408 dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
 409 </pre>
 410
 411 <p>The end result can be seen on github, where
 412 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
 413 book project</a> is located.</p>
 414
 415       </div>
 416       <div class="tags">
 417
 418
 419         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>.
 420
 421
 422       </div>
 423     </div>
 424     <div class="padding"></div>
 425
 426     <div class="entry">
 427       <div class="title">
 428         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html">MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</a>
 429       </div>
 430       <div class="date">
 431          7th July 2015
 432       </div>
 433       <div class="body">
 434         <p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
 435 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
 436 they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
 437 the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused.  So I asked MPEG LA
 438 if their understanding matched that of NRK.  As far as I can tell, it
 439 does not.</p>
 440
 441 <p>I started by asking for more information about the various
 442 licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
 443 Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
 444 did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
 445
 446 <p><blockquote>
 447
 448 <p>According to
 449 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
 450 MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
 451 using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
 452 Video".  I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
 453 Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me.  What
 454 exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
 455
 456 <p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
 457 PDF named
 458 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
 459 Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
 460 fees:</p>
 461
 462 <ul>
 463  <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
 464   <ul>
 465    <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
 466      subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
 467      $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
 468      1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
 469
 470    <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
 471      length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
 472   </ul></li>
 473
 474  <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
 475   <ul>
 476    <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
 477      (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
 478      maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
 479
 480    <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
 481      – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
 482   </ul></li>
 483 </ul>
 484
 485 <p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
 486 categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
 487 Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
 488 one of the other three categories?  Can you point me to a good source
 489 explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
 490 the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
 491
 492 <p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
 493 "video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
 494 subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
 495 get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
 496 Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
 497 Portfolio license?  Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
 498 access to personalized services?</p>
 499
 500 <p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
 501 Internet.</p>
 502 </blockquote></p>
 503
 504 <p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
 505 with the MPEG LA:</p>
 506
 507 <p><blockquote>
 508 <p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA.  We
 509 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
 510
 511 <p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
 512 which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
 513 the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10).  Specifically, coverage is
 514 provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
 515 technology.  Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
 516 video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
 517 paying the applicable royalties.</p>
 518
 519 <p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
 520 defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
 521 the Internet free-of-charge.  Therefore, if a party offers a service
 522 which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
 523 AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
 524 receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
 525 Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
 526 License.  This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
 527 free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
 528 AVC Video content.  In other words, as long as the End User is given
 529 access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
 530 no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
 531
 532 <p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
 533 specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
 534 video would constitute Subscription AVC Video.  In cases where AVC
 535 Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
 536 content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video.  If a party offers
 537 Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
 538 be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
 539
 540 <p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
 541 through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
 542 such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
 543 subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
 544
 545 <p>For your reference, I have attached
 546 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
 547 .pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
 548 sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
 549 2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
 550 You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
 551 Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
 552 Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License.  Please note that the
 553 electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
 554 be used for execution.</p>
 555
 556 <p>I hope the above information is helpful.  If you have additional
 557 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
 558 free to contact me directly.</p>
 559 </blockquote></p>
 560
 561 <p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
 562 that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
 563 me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
 564 But I still had a few questions:</p>
 565
 566 <p><blockquote>
 567 <p>I have a small followup question.  Would it be possible for me to get
 568 a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid?  The
 569 reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
 570 clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA.  The clauses
 571 typically look similar to this:
 572
 573 <p><blockquote>
 574   This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
 575   the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
 576   video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
 577   decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
 578   personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
 579   obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
 580   license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
 581   information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
 582 </blockquote></p>
 583
 584 <p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
 585 an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
 586 there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA.  I suspect it will
 587 differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway.  What is
 588 MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
 589 </blockquote></p>
 590
 591 <p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
 592 non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
 593
 594 <p><blockquote>
 595
 596 <p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
 597 clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
 598 reads:</p>
 599
 600 <p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
 601 THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
 602 RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
 603 STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
 604 BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
 605 A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
 606 OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
 607 OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
 608
 609 <p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
 610 personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
 611 with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
 612 product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
 613 licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
 614 deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
 615 Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
 616 Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
 617
 618 <p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
 619 Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
 620 Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
 621 conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
 622 payable under the License.  On the other hand, if that party (either a
 623 Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
 624 own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
 625 above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
 626 Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
 627
 628 <p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
 629 countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
 630 Norway.</p>
 631
 632 <p>I hope this clarification is helpful.  If I may be of any further
 633 assistance, just let me know.</p>
 634 </blockquote></p>
 635
 636 <p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
 637 asked for more information:</p>
 638
 639 <p><blockquote>
 640
 641 <p>But one minor question at the end.  If I understand you correctly,
 642 you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
 643 Portfolio that are valid in Norway.  This make me believe I read the
 644 list available from &lt;URL:
 645 <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
 646 &gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
 647 were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
 648 Electric Corporation expired in 2012.  Which patents are you referring
 649 to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
 650
 651 </blockquote></p>
 652
 653 <p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
 654 in that list:</p>
 655
 656 <p><blockquote>
 657
 658 <p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
 659 Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012.  Therefore, where AVC
 660 Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
 661 royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
 662 With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
 663 Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
 664 the last Norwegian AVC patent expired.  I would also like to clarify
 665 that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
 666 country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
 667
 668 <p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
 669 a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
 670 Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
 671 coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
 672 initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
 673 Patents (for example, Norway).  Similarly, a party would need to
 674 conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
 675 country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
 676 such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
 677 Portfolio Patents.</p>
 678 </blockquote></p>
 679
 680 <p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
 681 Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
 682 license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
 683 anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
 684 Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
 685 content.  I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
 686 none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid.  Will the
 687 copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
 688 the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
 689
 690       </div>
 691       <div class="tags">
 692
 693
 694         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
 695
 696
 697       </div>
 698     </div>
 699     <div class="padding"></div>
 700
 701     <div class="entry">
 702       <div class="title">
 703         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html">New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</a>
 704       </div>
 705       <div class="date">
 706          5th July 2015
 707       </div>
 708       <div class="body">
 709         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
 710 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
 711 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
 712 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
 713 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
 714 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
 715 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
 716 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
 717 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
 718 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
 719 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
 720
 721 <p>One tip I got was to use the
 722 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
 723 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
 724 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
 725 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
 726 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
 727 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
 728
 729 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
 730 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
 731 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
 732 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
 733 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
 734 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
 735 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
 736 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
 737 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
 738 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
 739 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
 740 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
 741 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
 742 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
 743 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
 744
 745 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
 746 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
 747 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
 748 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
 749
 750 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
 751 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
 752
 753 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
 754 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
 755 different
 756 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
 757 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
 758
 759       </div>
 760       <div class="tags">
 761
 762
 763         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 764
 765
 766       </div>
 767     </div>
 768     <div class="padding"></div>
 769
 770     <div class="entry">
 771       <div class="title">
 772         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_to_find_a_new_laptop__as_the_old_one_is_broken_after_only_two_years.html">Time to find a new laptop, as the old one is broken after only two years</a>
 773       </div>
 774       <div class="date">
 775          3rd July 2015
 776       </div>
 777       <div class="body">
 778         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
 779 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
 780 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
 781 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
 782 flickering.</p>
 783
 784 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
 785 still as
 786 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
 787 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
 788 good help from
 789 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
 790 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
 791 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
 792 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
 793 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
 794 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
 795 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
 796 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
 797 deteriorated since X41.</p>
 798
 799 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
 800 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
 801 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
 802 have suggestions.</p>
 803
 804 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
 805 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
 806 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
 807
 808       </div>
 809       <div class="tags">
 810
 811
 812         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 813
 814
 815       </div>
 816     </div>
 817     <div class="padding"></div>
 818
 819     <div class="entry">
 820       <div class="title">
 821         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MakerCon_Nordic_videos_now_available_on_Frikanalen.html">MakerCon Nordic videos now available on Frikanalen</a>
 822       </div>
 823       <div class="date">
 824          2nd July 2015
 825       </div>
 826       <div class="body">
 827         <p>Last oktober I was involved on behalf of
 828 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> with recording the talks at
 829 <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">MakerCon Nordic</a>, a conference for
 830 the Maker movement.  Since then it has been the plan to publish the
 831 recordings on <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, which
 832 finally happened the last few days.  A few talks are missing because
 833 the speakers asked the organizers to not publish them, but most of the
 834 talks are available.  The talks are being broadcasted on RiksTV
 835 channel 50 and using multicast on Uninett, as well as being available
 836 from the Frikanalen web site.  The unedited recordings are
 837 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">available on
 838 Youtube too</a>.</p>
 839
 840 <p>This is the list of talks available at the moment.  Visit the
 841 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/?q=makercon">Frikanalen video
 842 pages</a> to view them.</p>
 843
 844 <ul>
 845
 846   <li>Evolutionary algorithms as a design tool - from art
 847       to robotics (Kyrre Glette)</li>
 848
 849   <li>Make and break (Hans Gerhard Meier)</li>
 850
 851   <li>Making a one year school course for young makers
 852       (Olav Helland)</li>
 853
 854   <li>Innovation Inspiration - IPR Databases as a Source of
 855       Inspiration (Hege Langlo)</li>
 856
 857   <li>Making a toy for makers (Erik Torstensson)</li>
 858
 859   <li>How to make 3D printer electronics (Elias Bakken)</li>
 860
 861   <li>Hovering Clouds: Looking at online tool offerings for Product
 862       Design and 3D Printing (William Kempton)</li>
 863
 864   <li>Travelling maker stories (Øyvind Nydal Dahl)</li>
 865
 866   <li>Making the first Maker Faire in Sweden (Nils Olander)</li>
 867
 868   <li>Breaking the mold: Printing 1000’s of parts (Espen Sivertsen)</li>
 869
 870   <li>Ultimaker — and open source 3D printing (Erik de Bruijn)</li>
 871
 872   <li>Autodesk’s 3D Printing Platform: Sparking innovation (Hilde
 873       Sevens)</li>
 874
 875   <li>How Making is Changing the World – and How You Can Too!
 876       (Jennifer Turliuk)</li>
 877
 878   <li>Open-Source Adventuring: OpenROV, OpenExplorer and the Future of
 879       Connected Exploration (David Lang)</li>
 880
 881   <li>Making in Norway (Haakon Karlsen Jr., Graham Hayward and Jens
 882       Dyvik)</li>
 883
 884   <li>The Impact of the Maker Movement (Mike Senese)</li>
 885
 886 </ul>
 887
 888 <p>Part of the reason this took so long was that the scripts NUUG had
 889 to prepare a recording for publication were five years old and no
 890 longer worked with the current video processing tools (command line
 891 argument changes).  In addition, we needed better audio normalization,
 892 which sent me on a detour to
 893 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">package
 894 bs1770gain for Debian</a>.  Now this is in place and it became a lot
 895 easier to publish NUUG videos on Frikanalen.</p>
 896
 897       </div>
 898       <div class="tags">
 899
 900
 901         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>.
 902
 903
 904       </div>
 905     </div>
 906     <div class="padding"></div>
 907
 908     <div class="entry">
 909       <div class="title">
 910         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html">Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</a>
 911       </div>
 912       <div class="date">
 913         15th June 2015
 914       </div>
 915       <div class="body">
 916         <p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
 917 in Norway.  The information is publicly available, but one need to
 918 recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
 919 ownership graph of a given set of companies.  To save me the work in
 920 the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
 921 ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format.  The data source
 922 is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
 923 I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
 924 the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
 925
 926 <p>To get an ownership graph for a set of companies, fetch
 927 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number.  I'm
 928 using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
 929 ownership structure is very simple:</p>
 930
 931 <pre>
 932 % time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
 933
 934 real    0m2.841s
 935 user    0m0.184s
 936 sys     0m0.036s
 937 %
 938 </pre>
 939
 940 <p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
 941 allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image.  The
 942 resulting dot file for the example above look like this.  The edges
 943 are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
 944 organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
 945
 946 <pre>
 947 digraph ownership {
 948 rankdir = LR;
 949 "Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
 950 "910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
 951 "998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
 952 "974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
 953 "958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
 954 "998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
 955 "974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
 956 "910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
 957 }
 958 </pre>
 959
 960 <p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
 961 convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
 962 dagbladet.png</tt>".  The result can be seen below:</p>
 963
 964 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
 965
 966 <p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
 967 data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
 968 registered in the official company register for Norway.  The ownership
 969 register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
 970 of the ownership links.</p>
 971
 972 <p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
 973 The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
 974
 975 <p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
 976 "<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
 977 Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
 978 have a Norwegian organisation number.  I've also been told that there
 979 is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
 980 services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
 981 willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
 982
 983       </div>
 984       <div class="tags">
 985
 986
 987         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
 988
 989
 990       </div>
 991     </div>
 992     <div class="padding"></div>
 993
 994     <div class="entry">
 995       <div class="title">
 996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html">Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</a>
 997       </div>
 998       <div class="date">
 999         11th June 2015
1000       </div>
1001       <div class="body">
1002         <p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
1003 everywhere.  Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
1004 ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
1005 the viewers do not like this.  This fact is well known to the TV
1006 channels.  See for example the BBC white paper
1007 "<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
1008 for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
1009 summary of the problem domain.  To better address the need for even
1010 loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
1011 new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
1012 standardizing loudness.  From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
1013 "<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
1014 measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
1015
1016 <p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
1017 loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
1018 having a way to measure is not enough.  To get the same loudness
1019 across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
1020 on.  For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
1021 R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
1022 normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
1023 specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS.  In Norway, I have been
1024 told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
1025 follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
1026
1027 <p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
1028 level using the LUFS.  In Debian, I am aware of a library named
1029 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
1030 able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
1031 named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
1032 capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
1033 for NEW processing.  I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
1034 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
1035 multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
1036
1037 <p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
1038 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
1039 R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
1040 do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
1041 the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
1042 Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
1043 I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
1044 NUUG member organisation</a>.  The program seem to be able to measure
1045 the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
1046 successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files.  I suspect it
1047 should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
1048
1049       </div>
1050       <div class="tags">
1051
1052
1053         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>.
1054
1055
1056       </div>
1057     </div>
1058     <div class="padding"></div>
1059
1060     <div class="entry">
1061       <div class="title">
1062         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</a>
1063       </div>
1064       <div class="date">
1065         10th May 2015
1066       </div>
1067       <div class="body">
1068         <p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
1069 citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
1070 criminal or not, are
1071 <a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
1072 give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
1073 ord).  The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
1074 years there will be no option any more.  The ID will be required to
1075 vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
1076 post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
1077 and many other tasks required to function in Norway.  The banks plan
1078 to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
1079 national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
1080 change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
1081 In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
1082 be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
1083 the police.</p>
1084
1085 <p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
1086 promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
1087 time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
1088 fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
1089 the face and other information about the person.  Some of the
1090 information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
1091 system as currently used in the passports.  The codes to decrypt will
1092 be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
1093 the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
1094 is good to know that
1095 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
1096 encryption is already broken</a>.  And they
1097 <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
1098 be read from 70 meters away</a>.  This can be mitigated a bit by
1099 keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
1100 one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
1101 ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
1102 business getting access to that information.</p>
1103
1104 <p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
1105 and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
1106 of privacy without any objections.  So are the Norwegian passports,
1107 but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
1108 That option is going away with the passing of the new law.  In this, I
1109 envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
1110 information is stored in their national ID.</p>
1111
1112 <p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
1113 information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
1114 over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
1115 extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
1116
1117 <p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
1118 really could make such decision, I wrote
1119 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
1120 summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
1121 (Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
1122
1123       </div>
1124       <div class="tags">
1125
1126
1127         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1128
1129
1130       </div>
1131     </div>
1132     <div class="padding"></div>
1133
1134     <div class="entry">
1135       <div class="title">
1136         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</a>
1137       </div>
1138       <div class="date">
1139          1st May 2015
1140       </div>
1141       <div class="body">
1142         <p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
1143 to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
1144 cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
1145 year.  I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
1146 like today.  To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
1147 needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
1148 Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
1149
1150 <p>The 2005 numbers are from
1151 <a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
1152 the 2012 numbers are from
1153 <a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
1154 NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
1155 email.  I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
1156 and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
1157 different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
1158
1159 <p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
1160 quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
1161 enough.  See for example a
1162 <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
1163 on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives.  8 Kbit/s is 60
1164 Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
1165 to get the storage requirements.</p>
1166
1167 <p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
1168 availability requirements etc.  But a simple way to calculate can be
1169 to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
1170 it to take space, power and redundancy into account.  It could be much
1171 higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
1172
1173 <p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
1174 calls in Norway?  Not much.  Here is a small table showing the
1175 estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
1176 and large organisations:</p>
1177
1178 <table border="1">
1179 <tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
1180 <tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
1181 <tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
1182 <tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
1183 </table>
1184
1185 <p>This is the cost of buying the storage.  Maintenance need to be
1186 taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
1187 for the reader.  But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
1188 recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
1189 stopped because it is too expensive.  I wonder if someone already is
1190 collecting the data?</p>
1191
1192       </div>
1193       <div class="tags">
1194
1195
1196         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1197
1198
1199       </div>
1200     </div>
1201     <div class="padding"></div>
1202
1203     <div class="entry">
1204       <div class="title">
1205         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</a>
1206       </div>
1207       <div class="date">
1208         26th April 2015
1209       </div>
1210       <div class="body">
1211         <p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
1212 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
1213 announcement today</a>:</p>
1214
1215 <pre>
1216 the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
1217 *beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
1218 time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
1219 release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
1220
1221 (As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
1222 released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
1223 later today ;)
1224
1225 We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
1226 weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
1227 from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
1228 be possible and encouraged!
1229
1230 Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
1231 bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
1232
1233 Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
1234 operating system for schools, universities and other
1235 organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
1236 administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
1237 will work in harmony on the school network.  With Debian Edu, the
1238 teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
1239 complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
1240 days.
1241
1242 Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
1243 world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
1244 with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
1245 archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
1246
1247 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
1248 installation instructions are available, including detailed
1249 instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
1250 up a network or adding users.  Please note that the password for the
1251 user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
1252 least 5 characters!
1253
1254 == Where to download ==
1255
1256 A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
1257 can be downloaded at the following locations:
1258
1259     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
1260     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
1261
1262 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
1263
1264 Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
1265 available, with more software included (saving additional download
1266 time):
1267
1268     http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1269     rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
1270
1271 The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
1272
1273 Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
1274 http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
1275 options.
1276
1277 == Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
1278
1279 Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
1280 the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
1281
1282 This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
1283 Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
1284 for Spanish.  See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
1285 online version of the translated manual.
1286
1287 More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
1288 release notes and the installation manual:
1289 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
1290 - http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
1291
1292
1293 == Errata / known problems ==
1294
1295     It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
1296     DHCP (#780461).
1297
1298     The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
1299
1300 Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
1301 hostname immediately.
1302
1303 Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
1304 more current and complete list.
1305
1306 == Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
1307
1308 === Software updates ===
1309
1310 Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
1311
1312  * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
1313    i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
1314    Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
1315
1316  * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
1317    Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
1318    * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
1319    * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
1320      the others see the manual.
1321  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
1322  * LibreOffice 4.3.3
1323  * GOsa 2.7.4
1324  * LTSP 5.5.4
1325  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
1326  * new boot framework: systemd
1327  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
1328  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
1329  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
1330  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
1331  * golearn 0.9
1332  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
1333  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
1334  * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
1335  * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
1336    notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
1337
1338 === Installation changes ===
1339
1340     Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
1341     for the hardware present.
1342
1343 === Fixed bugs ===
1344
1345 A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
1346 from a user perspective:
1347
1348  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
1349    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
1350    information is corrected (710362)
1351
1352  * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
1353
1354 === Sugar desktop removed ===
1355
1356 As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
1357 available in Debian Edu jessie.
1358
1359
1360 == About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
1361
1362 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
1363 Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
1364 configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
1365 running all services needed for a school network is set up just
1366 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
1367 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
1368 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
1369 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
1370 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
1371 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
1372 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
1373 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
1374 can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
1375 environment.
1376
1377 == About Debian ==
1378
1379 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
1380 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
1381 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
1382 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
1383 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
1384 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
1385 operating system.
1386
1387 == Thanks ==
1388
1389 Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
1390 You rock.
1391 </pre>
1392
1393       </div>
1394       <div class="tags">
1395
1396
1397         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1398
1399
1400       </div>
1401     </div>
1402     <div class="padding"></div>
1403
1404     <div class="entry">
1405       <div class="title">
1406         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a>
1407       </div>
1408       <div class="date">
1409         15th April 2015
1410       </div>
1411       <div class="body">
1412         <p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
1413 computer system for schools I've involved in,
1414 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
1415 being used in India.  But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
1416 interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
1417 Agarwal.</p>
1418
1419 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1420
1421 <p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
1422 historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
1423 My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
1424 installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
1425 fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
1426 few software start-ups as well.</p>
1427
1428 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1429 project?</strong></p>
1430
1431 <p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
1432 years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
1433 anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
1434 educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
1435 nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
1436 it was known then.  Since then I have started using the various
1437 education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
1438
1439 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1440 Edu?</strong></p>
1441
1442 <p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
1443 software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
1444 figuratively).  Even if I take the simplest software which is
1445 gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
1446 the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
1447 pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
1448 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
1449 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
1450
1451 <p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
1452 as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
1453 possibility of a larger life span.  Of course with both it's more a
1454 question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
1455 for the developer per-se.</p>
1456
1457 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1458 Edu?</strong></p>
1459
1460 <p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
1461 think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
1462 help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
1463
1464 <p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
1465 that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
1466 However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
1467 pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
1468 but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
1469 Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
1470 still) I have had for a long time :</p>
1471
1472 <p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
1473 each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
1474 far would each travel and similar questions like these.
1475
1476 <p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
1477 be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
1478 interactive manner. While sites such as the
1479 <a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
1480 Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
1481 inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done.  I dunno
1482 if there is a free software which does something like this.  The idea
1483 being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
1484 this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
1485 colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
1486 or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
1487 This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
1488 the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
1489 psychics and everything in-between.</p>
1490
1491 <p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
1492 one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
1493 meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
1494 also be used.</p>
1495
1496 <p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
1497 enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary.  I don't think it
1498 should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
1499 sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
1500 from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
1501 the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
1502 the user's input.</p>
1503
1504 <p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
1505 palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
1506 needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
1507 copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
1508 nature, history etc.  and let it loose. This could turn to be really
1509 huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
1510 commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
1511 stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
1512
1513 <p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
1514 both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
1515 lot.  This is more so in educational software as these applications
1516 need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
1517 immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
1518 maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
1519 of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
1520 maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
1521
1522 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1523
1524 <p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
1525 aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
1526 quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
1527 between kpat and Aiselriot.  In desktops it's a tie between
1528 gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
1529
1530 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1531 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1532
1533 <p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
1534 whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
1535 Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
1536 school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
1537 people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
1538 various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
1539
1540 <p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
1541 passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
1542 then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
1543 well.</p>
1544
1545 <p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
1546 instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
1547 there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
1548 Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
1549
1550 <p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
1551 and upgrades.  People have this myth that each update and upgrade
1552 means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
1553 innumerable times.  That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
1554 like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
1555 it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
1556 changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
1557 the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
1558 releases.</p>
1559
1560 <p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
1561 is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
1562 is aimed at.
1563
1564 <p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
1565 around 2 years, and
1566 <a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
1567 some experience</a> there.  Some of the things we learnt/discovered
1568 there was :</p>
1569
1570 <ol>
1571
1572   <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
1573    and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
1574    portion/syllabus given.</li>
1575
1576   <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
1577    is in the syllabus.</li>
1578
1579   <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
1580    times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
1581    you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
1582    say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
1583    as recognizable as say a
1584    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
1585    Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
1586    possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
1587    which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
1588    parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
1589    something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
1590
1591 </ol>
1592
1593       </div>
1594       <div class="tags">
1595
1596
1597         Tags: <a href="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>.
1598
1599
1600       </div>
1601     </div>
1602     <div class="padding"></div>
1603
1604     <div class="entry">
1605       <div class="title">
1606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html">I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</a>
1607       </div>
1608       <div class="date">
1609          7th April 2015
1610       </div>
1611       <div class="body">
1612         <p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
1613 href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
1614 Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
1615
1616 <p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
1617 where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
1618 <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
1619 it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted).  As
1620 part of my involvement with the
1621 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
1622 association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
1623 conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
1624 Hackathon with our friends
1625 over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
1626 <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>.  This part is
1627 named the 'My Society' track in the program.  There is still space for
1628 more talks and participants.  I hope to see you there.</p>
1629
1630 <p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
1631 submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
1632
1633       </div>
1634       <div class="tags">
1635
1636
1637         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn</a>.
1638
1639
1640       </div>
1641     </div>
1642     <div class="padding"></div>
1643
1644     <div class="entry">
1645       <div class="title">
1646         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html">Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</a>
1647       </div>
1648       <div class="date">
1649          4th April 2015
1650       </div>
1651       <div class="body">
1652         <p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
1653 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
1654 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1655 At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
1656 inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
1657 I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
1658 check the text up to chapter 13.  The current status is available on the
1659 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
1660 project pages.  You can also check out the
1661 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
1662 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1663 and HTML version available in the
1664 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
1665 directory</a>.</p>
1666
1667 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
1668 you find any.</p>
1669
1670       </div>
1671       <div class="tags">
1672
1673
1674         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>.
1675
1676
1677       </div>
1678     </div>
1679     <div class="padding"></div>
1680
1681     <div class="entry">
1682       <div class="title">
1683         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen__Norwegian_TV_channel_for_technical_topics.html">Frikanalen, Norwegian TV channel for technical topics</a>
1684       </div>
1685       <div class="date">
1686          9th March 2015
1687       </div>
1688       <div class="body">
1689         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a>,
1690 where I am a member, and where people interested in free software,
1691 open standards and UNIX like operating systems like Linux and the BSDs
1692 come together, record our monthly technical presentations on video.
1693 The purpose is to document the talks and spread them to a wider
1694 audience.  For this, the the Norwegian nationwide open channel
1695 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is a useful venue.
1696 Since a few days ago, when I figured out the
1697 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/api/">REST API</a> to program the
1698 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/guide/">channel time schedule</a>,
1699 the channel has been filled with NUUG talks, related recordings and
1700 some Creative Commons licensed TED talks (from archive.org).  I fill
1701 all "leftover bits" on the channel with content from NUUG, which at
1702 the moment is almost 17 of 24 hours every day.</p>
1703
1704 <p>The list of NUUG videos
1705 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/organization/82">uploaded so far</a>
1706 include things like a
1707 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/625090">one hour talk by John
1708 Perry Barlow when he visited Oslo</a>, a presentation of
1709 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624275">Haiku, the BeOS
1710 re-implementation</a>, the
1711 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/624493">history of FiksGataMi,
1712 the Norwegian version of FixMyStreet</a>, the good old
1713 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/video/623566">Warriors of the net
1714 video</A> and many others.</p>
1715
1716 <p>We have a large backlog of NUUG talks not yet uploaded to
1717 Frikanalen, and plan to upload every useful bit to the channel to
1718 spread the word there.  I also hope to find useful recordings from the
1719 Chaos Computer Club and Debian conferences and spread them on the
1720 channel as well.  But this require locating the videos and their meta
1721 information (title, description, license, etc), and preparing the
1722 recordings for broadcast, and I have not yet had the spare time to
1723 focus on this.  Perhaps you want to help.  Please join us on IRC,
1724 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
1725 if you want to help make this happen.</p>
1726
1727 <p>But as I said, already the channel is already almost exclusively
1728 filled with technical topics, and if you want to learn something new
1729 today, check out the <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">Ogg Theora
1730 web stream</a> or use one of the other ways to get access to the
1731 channel.  Unfortunately the Ogg Theora recoding for distribution still
1732 do not properly sync the video and sound.  It is generated by recoding
1733 a internal MPEG transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to
1734 Ogg Theora / Vorbis, and we have not been able to find a way that
1735 produces acceptable quality.  Help needed, please get in touch if you
1736 know how to fix it using free software.</p>
1737
1738       </div>
1739       <div class="tags">
1740
1741
1742         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1743
1744
1745       </div>
1746     </div>
1747     <div class="padding"></div>
1748
1749     <div class="entry">
1750       <div class="title">
1751         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Citizenfour_documentary_on_the_Snowden_confirmations_to_Norway.html">The Citizenfour documentary on the Snowden confirmations to Norway</a>
1752       </div>
1753       <div class="date">
1754         28th February 2015
1755       </div>
1756       <div class="body">
1757         <p>Today I was happy to learn that the documentary
1758 <a href="https://citizenfourfilm.com/">Citizenfour</a> by
1759 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Poitras">Laura Poitras</a>
1760 finally will show up in Norway.  According to the magazine
1761 <a href="http://montages.no/">Montages</a>, a deal has finally been
1762 made for
1763 <a href="http://montages.no/nyheter/snowden-dokumentaren-citizenfour-far-norsk-kinodistribusjon/">Cinema
1764 distribution in Norway</a> and the movie will have its premiere soon.
1765 This is great news.  As part of my involvement with
1766 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the Norwegian Unix User Group</a>, me and
1767 a friend have
1768 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_til_Norge_.shtml">tried
1769 to get the movie to Norway</a> ourselves, but obviously
1770 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Dokumentar_om_Snowdenbekreftelsene_endelig_til_Norge_.shtml">we
1771 were too late</a> and Tor Fosse beat us to it.  I am happy he did, as
1772 the movie will make its way to the public and we do not have to make
1773 it happen ourselves.
1774 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGwAvd5mvM">The trailer</a>
1775 can be seen on youtube, if you are curious what kind of film this
1776 is.</p>
1777
1778 <p>The whistle blower Edward Snowden really deserve political asylum
1779 here in Norway, but I am afraid he would not be safe.</p>
1780
1781       </div>
1782       <div class="tags">
1783
1784
1785         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1786
1787
1788       </div>
1789     </div>
1790     <div class="padding"></div>
1791
1792     <div class="entry">
1793       <div class="title">
1794         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Norwegian_open_channel_Frikanalen___24x7_on_the_Internet.html">The Norwegian open channel Frikanalen - 24x7 on the Internet</a>
1795       </div>
1796       <div class="date">
1797         25th February 2015
1798       </div>
1799       <div class="body">
1800         <p>The Norwegian nationwide open channel
1801 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> is still going
1802 strong.  It allow everyone to send the video they want on national
1803 television.  It is a TV station administrated completely using a web
1804 browser, running only <ahref="https://github.com/Frikanalen">Free
1805 Software</a>, providing <ahref="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api">a REST
1806 api</a> for administrators and members, and with distribution on the
1807 national DVB-T distribution network RiksTV.  But only between 12:00
1808 and 17:30 Norwegian time.  This has finally changed, after many years
1809 with limited distribution.  A few weeks ago, we set up a Ogg Theora
1810 stream via icecast to allow everyone with Internet access to check out
1811 the channel the rest of the day.  This is presented on
1812 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.tv/se">the Frikanalen web site now</a>.  And
1813 since a few days ago, the channel is also available
1814 via <a href="https://www.uninett.no/iptv-tilgang">multicast on
1815 UNINETT</a>, available for those using IPTV TVs and set-top boxes in
1816 the Norwegian National Research and Education network.</p>
1817
1818 <p>If you want to see what is on the channel, point your media player
1819 to one of these sources.  The first should work with most players and
1820 browsers, while as far as I know, the multicast UDP stream only work
1821 with VLC.</p>
1822
1823 <ul>
1824   <li><a href="http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv">http://video.nuug.no/frikanalen.ogv</a></li>
1825   <li>udp://@224.17.43.129:1234</li>
1826 </ul>
1827
1828 <p>The Ogg Theora / icecast stream is not working well, as the video
1829 and audio is slightly out of sync.  We have not been able to figure
1830 out how to fix it.  It is generated by recoding a internal MPEG
1831 transport stream with MPEG4 coded video (ie H.264) to Ogg Theora /
1832 Vorbis, and the result is less then stellar.  If you have ideas how to
1833 fix it, please let us know on frikanalen (at) nuug.no.  We currently
1834 use this with ffmpeg2theora 0.29:</p>
1835
1836 <blockquote><pre>
1837 ./ffmpeg2theora.linux &lt;OBE_gemini_URL.ts&gt; -F 25 -x 720 -y 405 \
1838  --deinterlace --inputfps 25 -c 1 -H 48000 --keyint 8 --buf-delay 100 \
1839  --nosync -V 700 -o - | oggfwd video.nuug.no 8000 &lt;pw&gt; /frikanalen.ogv
1840 </pre></blockquote>
1841
1842 <p>If you get the multicast UDP stream working, please let me know, as
1843 I am curious how far the multicast stream reach.  It do not make it to
1844 my home network, nor any other commercially available network in
1845 Norway that I am aware of.</p>
1846
1847       </div>
1848       <div class="tags">
1849
1850
1851         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1852
1853
1854       </div>
1855     </div>
1856     <div class="padding"></div>
1857
1858     <div class="entry">
1859       <div class="title">
1860         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nude_body_scanner_now_present_on_Norwegian_airport.html">Nude body scanner now present on Norwegian airport</a>
1861       </div>
1862       <div class="date">
1863         10th February 2015
1864       </div>
1865       <div class="body">
1866         <p>Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, today report
1867 that
1868 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/reise/Slik-skannes-kroppen-din-i-fremtidens-sikkerhetskontroll-490666_1.snd">three
1869 of the nude body scanners now is put to use at Gardermoen</a>, the
1870 main airport in Norway.  This way the travelers can have their body
1871 photographed without cloths when visiting Norway.  Of course this
1872 horrible news is presented with a positive spin, stating that "now
1873 travelers can move past the security check point faster and more
1874 efficiently", but fail to mention that the machines in question take
1875 pictures of their nude bodies and store them internally in the
1876 computer, while only presenting sketch figure of the body to the
1877 public.  The article is written in a way that leave the impression
1878 that the new machines do not take these nude pictures and only create
1879 the sketch figures.  In reality the same nude pictures are still
1880 taken, but not presented to everyone.  They are still available for
1881 the owners of the system and the people doing maintenance of the
1882 scanners, as long as they are taken and stored.</p>
1883
1884 <p>Wikipedia have a more on
1885 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_body_scanner">Full body
1886 scanners</a>, including example images and a summary of the
1887 controversy about these scanners.</p>
1888
1889 <p>Personally I will decline to use these machines, as I believe strip
1890 searches of my body is a very intrusive attack on my privacy, and not
1891 something everyone should have to accept to travel.</p>
1892
1893       </div>
1894       <div class="tags">
1895
1896
1897         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>.
1898
1899
1900       </div>
1901     </div>
1902     <div class="padding"></div>
1903
1904     <div class="entry">
1905       <div class="title">
1906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nagios_module_to_check_if_the_Frikanalen_video_stream_is_working.html">Nagios module to check if the Frikanalen video stream is working</a>
1907       </div>
1908       <div class="date">
1909          8th February 2015
1910       </div>
1911       <div class="body">
1912         <p>When running a TV station with both broadcast and web stream
1913 distribution, it is useful to know that the stream is working.  As I
1914 am involved in the Norwegian open channel
1915 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> as part of my
1916 activity in the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member
1917 organisation</a>, I wrote a script to use mplayer to connect to a
1918 video stream, pick two images 35 seconds apart and compare them.  If
1919 the images are missing or identical, something is probably wrong with
1920 the stream and an alarm should be triggered.  The script is written as
1921 a Nagios plugin, allowing us to use Nagios to run the check regularly
1922 and sound the alarm when something is wrong.  It is able to detect
1923 both a hanging and a broken video stream.</p>
1924
1925 <p>I just uploaded the code for the script into the
1926 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen/blob/master/nagios-plugin/check_video_stream_images">Frikanalen
1927 git repository</a> on github.  If you run a TV station with web
1928 streaming, perhaps you can find it useful too.</p>
1929
1930 <p>Last year, the Frikanalen public TV station transformed into using
1931 only Linux based free software to administrate, schedule and
1932 distribute the TV content.  The
1933 <a href="https://github.com/Frikanalen">source code for the entire TV
1934 station</a> is available from the Github project page.  Everyone can
1935 use it to send their content on national TV, and we provide both a web
1936 GUI and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/api/">a web API</a> to
1937 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/login/?next=/members/video/">add</a>
1938 and <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/members/plan/">schedule
1939 content</a>.  And thanks to last weeks developer gathering and
1940 following activity, we now have the schedule
1941 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/xmltv/2015/01/01">available as
1942 XMLTV</a> too.  Still a lot of work left to do, especially with the
1943 process to add videos and with the scheduling, so your contribution is
1944 most welcome.  Perhaps you want to set up your own TV station?</p>
1945
1946 <p>Update 2015-02-25: Got a tip from Uninett about their
1947 <a href="https://scm.uninett.no/maalepaaler/qstream/">qstream
1948 monitoring system</a>, which gather connection time, jitter, packet
1949 loss and burst bandwidth usage.  It look useful to check if UDP
1950 streams are working as they should.</p>
1951
1952       </div>
1953       <div class="tags">
1954
1955
1956         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1957
1958
1959       </div>
1960     </div>
1961     <div class="padding"></div>
1962
1963     <div class="entry">
1964       <div class="title">
1965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_subtitles_for_the_FSF_video_User_Liberation.html">Norwegian Bokmål subtitles for the FSF video User Liberation</a>
1966       </div>
1967       <div class="date">
1968         12th January 2015
1969       </div>
1970       <div class="body">
1971         <p>A few days ago, the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
1972 Foundation</a> announced a new video
1973 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">explaining
1974 Free software</a> in simple terms.  The video named User Liberation is
1975 3 minutes long, and I recommend showing it to everyone you know as a
1976 way to explain what Free Software is all about.  Unfortunately several
1977 of the people I know do not understand English and Spanish, so it did
1978 not make sense to show it to them.</p>
1979
1980 <p>But today I was told that
1981 <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video">English
1982 subtitles were available</a> and set out to provide Norwegian Bokmål
1983 subtitles based on these.  The result has been sent to FSF and made
1984 available in
1985 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/fsf-video-user-liberation-subtitles">a
1986 git repository</a> provided by Github.  Please let me know if you find
1987 errors or have improvements to the subtitles.</p>
1988
1989 <p>Update 2015-02-03: Since I publised this post, FSF created a
1990 Libreplanet
1991 <a href="http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:FSF/User_Liberation_Video_Translation">project
1992 to track subtitles</A> for the video.</p>
1993
1994       </div>
1995       <div class="tags">
1996
1997
1998         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
1999
2000
2001       </div>
2002     </div>
2003     <div class="padding"></div>
2004
2005     <div class="entry">
2006       <div class="title">
2007         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Updated_version_of_the_Norwegian_web_service_FiksGataMi.html">Updated version of the Norwegian web service FiksGataMi</a>
2008       </div>
2009       <div class="date">
2010         30th December 2014
2011       </div>
2012       <div class="body">
2013         <p>I am very happy that we in the
2014 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG)</a>,
2015 spearheaded by Marius Halden from NUUG and Matthew Somerville from
2016 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>, finally managed to
2017 upgrade the code base for the Norwegian version of
2018 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org/">FixMyStreet</a>.  This
2019 was the first major update since 2011. The refurbished
2020 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is already live, and
2021 seem to hold up the pressure.  The
2022 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Pressemelding__FiksGataMi_i_oppdatert_og_mobilvennlig_klesdrakt.shtml">press
2023 release and announcement</a> went out this morning.</p>
2024
2025 <p>FixMyStreet is a web platform for allowing the citizens to easily
2026 report problems with public infrastructure to the responsible
2027 authorities.  Think of it as a shared mail client with map support,
2028 allowing everyone to see what already was reported and comment on the
2029 reports in public.</p>
2030
2031       </div>
2032       <div class="tags">
2033
2034
2035         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>.
2036
2037
2038       </div>
2039     </div>
2040     <div class="padding"></div>
2041
2042     <div class="entry">
2043       <div class="title">
2044         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Of_course_USA_loses_in_cyber_war___NSA_and_friends_made_sure_it_would_happen.html">Of course USA loses in cyber war - NSA and friends made sure it would happen</a>
2045       </div>
2046       <div class="date">
2047         19th December 2014
2048       </div>
2049       <div class="body">
2050         <p>So, Sony caved in
2051 (<a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/545338568512917504">according
2052 to Rob Lowe</a>) and demonstrated that America lost its first cyberwar
2053 (<a href="https://twitter.com/newtgingrich/status/545339074975109122">according
2054 to Newt Gingrich</a>).  It should not surprise anyone, after the
2055 whistle blower Edward Snowden documented that the government of USA
2056 and their allies for many years have done their best to make sure the
2057 technology used by its citizens is filled with security holes allowing
2058 the secret services to spy on its own population.  No one in their
2059 right minds could believe that the ability to snoop on the people all
2060 over the globe could only be used by the personnel authorized to do so
2061 by the president of the United States of America.  If the capabilities
2062 are there, they will be used by friend and foe alike, and now they are
2063 being used to bring Sony on its knees.</p>
2064
2065 <p>I doubt it will a lesson learned, and expect USA to lose its next
2066 cyber war too, given how eager the western intelligence communities
2067 (and probably the non-western too, but it is less in the news) seem to
2068 be to continue its current dragnet surveillance practice.</p>
2069
2070 <p>There is a reason why China and others are trying to move away from
2071 Windows to Linux and other alternatives, and it is not to avoid
2072 sending its hard earned dollars to Cayman Islands (or whatever
2073 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_haven">tax haven</a>
2074 Microsoft is using these days to collect the majority of its
2075 income. :)</p>
2076
2077       </div>
2078       <div class="tags">
2079
2080
2081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2082
2083
2084       </div>
2085     </div>
2086     <div class="padding"></div>
2087
2088     <div class="entry">
2089       <div class="title">
2090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_stay_with_sysvinit_in_Debian_Jessie.html">How to stay with sysvinit in Debian Jessie</a>
2091       </div>
2092       <div class="date">
2093         22nd November 2014
2094       </div>
2095       <div class="body">
2096         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
2097 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
2098 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
2099 courtesy of
2100 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
2101 Schubert</a> and
2102 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
2103 McVittie</a>.
2104
2105 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
2106 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
2107 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
2108 you upgrade:</p>
2109
2110 <p><blockquote><pre>
2111 Package: systemd-sysv
2112 Pin: release o=Debian
2113 Pin-Priority: -1
2114 </pre></blockquote><p>
2115
2116 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
2117 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
2118 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
2119 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
2120 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
2121
2122 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
2123 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
2124 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
2125 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
2126 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
2127 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
2128
2129 <p><blockquote><pre>
2130 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
2131 </pre></blockquote><p>
2132
2133 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
2134
2135 <p><blockquote><pre>
2136 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
2137 </pre></blockquote><p>
2138
2139 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
2140 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
2141
2142 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
2143 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
2144 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
2145 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
2146 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
2147 Jessie is released.</p>
2148
2149 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
2150 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
2151 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
2152 line.</p>
2153
2154       </div>
2155       <div class="tags">
2156
2157
2158         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>.
2159
2160
2161       </div>
2162     </div>
2163     <div class="padding"></div>
2164
2165     <div class="entry">
2166       <div class="title">
2167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
2168       </div>
2169       <div class="date">
2170         10th November 2014
2171       </div>
2172       <div class="body">
2173         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
2174 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
2175 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
2176
2177 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
2178 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
2179 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
2180 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
2181 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
2182 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
2183 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
2184 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
2185 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
2186 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
2187 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
2188 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
2189 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
2190 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
2191 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
2192
2193 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
2194 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
2195 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
2196 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
2197 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
2198 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
2199 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
2200 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
2201 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
2202 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
2203 were fairly easy, and
2204 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
2205 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
2206 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
2207 useful approach.</p>
2208
2209 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
2210 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
2211 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
2212 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
2213 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
2214 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
2215 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
2216 this:</p>
2217
2218 <p><blockquote><pre>
2219 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
2220   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
2221 </pre></blockquote></p>
2222
2223 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
2224 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
2225
2226 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
2227 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
2228 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
2229 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
2230 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
2231 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
2232 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
2233 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
2234 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
2235 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
2236 system.</p>
2237
2238 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
2239 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
2240 SMTorP. :)</p>
2241
2242       </div>
2243       <div class="tags">
2244
2245
2246         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2247
2248
2249       </div>
2250     </div>
2251     <div class="padding"></div>
2252
2253     <div class="entry">
2254       <div class="title">
2255         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html">First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</a>
2256       </div>
2257       <div class="date">
2258         27th October 2014
2259       </div>
2260       <div class="body">
2261         <p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
2262 sent out
2263 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
2264 announcement</a>:</p>
2265
2266 <pre>
2267 The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
2268 Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
2269
2270 Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
2271 various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
2272 and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
2273 Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
2274 roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
2275 hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
2276 pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
2277
2278 For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
2279 installation instructions are available, including detailed
2280 instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
2281 setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
2282 for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
2283 of at least 5 characters!
2284
2285  [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
2286
2287 Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
2288 tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
2289 reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
2290 the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
2291 Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
2292
2293 Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
2294 mostly in Germany and Norway.
2295
2296 About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
2297 ===============================
2298
2299 Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
2300 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
2301 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
2302 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
2303 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
2304 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
2305 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
2306 machines can be installed via the network.  The provided school server
2307 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
2308 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
2309 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
2310 packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
2311 schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
2312 environment.
2313
2314  [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
2315  [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
2316
2317 Full release notes and manual
2318 =============================
2319
2320 Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
2321 and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
2322 list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
2323 the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
2324 available, see the manual translation overview[5].
2325
2326  [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
2327  [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
2328
2329 Where to get it
2330 ---------------
2331
2332 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
2333
2334  * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2335  * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
2336  * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
2337
2338 The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
2339
2340 New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
2341 ===============================================================================
2342
2343
2344 Installation changes
2345 --------------------
2346
2347  * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
2348
2349 Software updates
2350 ----------------
2351
2352 Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
2353
2354  * Linux kernel 3.16.x
2355  * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
2356    LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
2357    choose one of the others see manual.)
2358  * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
2359  * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
2360  * GOsa 2.7.4
2361  * LTSP 5.5.4
2362  * CUPS print system 1.7.5
2363  * new boot framework: systemd
2364  * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
2365  * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
2366  * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
2367  * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
2368  * golearn 0.9
2369  * tuxpaint 0.9.22
2370  * New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
2371  * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
2372    installation.
2373  * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
2374    notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
2375
2376  [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
2377  [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
2378
2379 Fixed bugs
2380 ----------
2381
2382  * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
2383    DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
2384    information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
2385  * and many others.
2386
2387 Documentation and translation updates
2388 -------------------------------------
2389
2390  * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
2391    Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
2392    Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
2393
2394 Other changes
2395 -------------
2396
2397  * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
2398    server takes more time.
2399  * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
2400    doesn't work.
2401
2402 Regressions / known problems
2403 ----------------------------
2404
2405  * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
2406    exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
2407    and Debian bug #762103).
2408  * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
2409    #764594).  The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
2410  * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
2411    work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
2412    Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
2413
2414 See the status page[8] for the complete list.
2415
2416  [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
2417
2418 How to report bugs
2419 ------------------
2420
2421 &lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
2422
2423 About Debian
2424 ============
2425
2426 The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
2427 free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
2428 the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
2429 volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
2430 maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
2431 huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
2432 operating system.
2433
2434 Contact Information
2435 For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
2436 mail to press@debian.org.
2437
2438  [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
2439 </pre>
2440
2441       </div>
2442       <div class="tags">
2443
2444
2445         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2446
2447
2448       </div>
2449     </div>
2450     <div class="padding"></div>
2451
2452     <div class="entry">
2453       <div class="title">
2454         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html">I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</a>
2455       </div>
2456       <div class="date">
2457         23rd October 2014
2458       </div>
2459       <div class="body">
2460         <p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
2461 Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
2462 the surrounding countries.  I had volunteered on behalf of the
2463 Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
2464 had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
2465 a row.  There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
2466 regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
2467 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
2468 camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
2469 live.</p>
2470
2471 <p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
2472 around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
2473 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
2474 public</a> on the MakerConNordic account.  The videos have the license
2475 NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
2476 <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
2477 Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>.  Many great
2478 talks available.  Check it out! :)</p>
2479
2480       </div>
2481       <div class="tags">
2482
2483
2484         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>.
2485
2486
2487       </div>
2488     </div>
2489     <div class="padding"></div>
2490
2491     <div class="entry">
2492       <div class="title">
2493         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</a>
2494       </div>
2495       <div class="date">
2496         22nd October 2014
2497       </div>
2498       <div class="body">
2499         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
2500 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
2501 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
2502 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
2503 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
2504 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
2505 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
2506 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
2507 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
2508 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
2509 lists I recently took over:</p>
2510
2511 <p><blockquote><pre>
2512 % time listadmin xiph
2513 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2514 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
2515
2516 real    0m1.709s
2517 user    0m0.232s
2518 sys     0m0.012s
2519 %
2520 </pre></blockquote></p>
2521
2522 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
2523 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
2524 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
2525 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
2526 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
2527 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
2528 program.</p>
2529
2530 <p>If you install
2531 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
2532 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
2533 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
2534
2535 <p><blockquote><pre>
2536 username username@example.org
2537 spamlevel 23
2538 default discard
2539 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
2540
2541 password secret
2542 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
2543 mailman-list@lists.example.com
2544
2545 password hidden
2546 other-list@otherserver.example.org
2547 </pre></blockquote></p>
2548
2549 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
2550 learn the details.</p>
2551
2552 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
2553 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
2554 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
2555 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
2556
2557 <p><blockquote><pre>
2558 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
2559 </pre></blockquote></p>
2560
2561 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
2562 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
2563 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
2564 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
2565 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
2566 email.</p>
2567
2568 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
2569 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
2570 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
2571 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
2572 software.</p>
2573
2574 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2575 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2576 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2577
2578 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
2579 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
2580 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
2581 sure why.</p>
2582
2583       </div>
2584       <div class="tags">
2585
2586
2587         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2588
2589
2590       </div>
2591     </div>
2592     <div class="padding"></div>
2593
2594     <div class="entry">
2595       <div class="title">
2596         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
2597       </div>
2598       <div class="date">
2599         17th October 2014
2600       </div>
2601       <div class="body">
2602         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
2603 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
2604 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
2605 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
2606 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
2607 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
2608 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
2609
2610 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
2611 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
2612 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
2613 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
2614 of this story.)</p>
2615
2616 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
2617 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
2618 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
2619 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
2620 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
2621 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
2622 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
2623 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
2624 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
2625 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
2626
2627 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
2628 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
2629 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
2630 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
2631
2632 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
2633 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
2634
2635 <p><blockquote><pre>
2636 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
2637 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
2638 </pre></blockquote></p>
2639
2640 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
2641 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
2642 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
2643 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
2644 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
2645 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
2646 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
2647 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
2648
2649 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
2650 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
2651
2652 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
2653 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
2654 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
2655 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
2656 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
2657
2658 <p><blockquote><pre>
2659 Task: isenkram-packages
2660 Section: hardware
2661 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2662  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
2663  proposed.
2664 Test-new-install: show show
2665 Relevance: 8
2666 Packages: for-current-hardware
2667
2668 Task: isenkram-firmware
2669 Section: hardware
2670 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
2671  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
2672  packages are proposed.
2673 Test-new-install: mark show
2674 Relevance: 8
2675 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
2676 </pre></blockquote></p>
2677
2678 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
2679 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
2680 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
2681 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
2682 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
2683
2684 <p><blockquote><pre>
2685 #!/bin/sh
2686 #
2687 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
2688 export PATH
2689 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
2690 </pre></blockquote></p>
2691
2692 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
2693 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
2694
2695 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
2696 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
2697 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
2698 install.</p>
2699
2700 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
2701 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
2702 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
2703
2704       </div>
2705       <div class="tags">
2706
2707
2708         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
2709
2710
2711       </div>
2712     </div>
2713     <div class="padding"></div>
2714
2715     <div class="entry">
2716       <div class="title">
2717         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html">Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</a>
2718       </div>
2719       <div class="date">
2720          4th October 2014
2721       </div>
2722       <div class="body">
2723         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
2724 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
2725 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
2726 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
2727
2728 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
2729
2730 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
2731 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
2732 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
2733
2734       </div>
2735       <div class="tags">
2736
2737
2738         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2739
2740
2741       </div>
2742     </div>
2743     <div class="padding"></div>
2744
2745     <div class="entry">
2746       <div class="title">
2747         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html">New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</a>
2748       </div>
2749       <div class="date">
2750          4th October 2014
2751       </div>
2752       <div class="body">
2753         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
2754 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
2755 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
2756 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
2757 Dibb.</p>
2758
2759 <p>I just wrapped up
2760 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
2761 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
2762 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
2763 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
2764 0.17.</p>
2765
2766 <ul>
2767
2768  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
2769  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
2770    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
2771  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
2772  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
2773  <li>Fix include orders</li>
2774  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
2775  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
2776  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
2777    the palette size is the same.</li>
2778  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
2779  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
2780  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
2781  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
2782    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
2783
2784 </ul>
2785
2786 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
2787 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
2788 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
2789
2790       </div>
2791       <div class="tags">
2792
2793
2794         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2795
2796
2797       </div>
2798     </div>
2799     <div class="padding"></div>
2800
2801     <div class="entry">
2802       <div class="title">
2803         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html">How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</a>
2804       </div>
2805       <div class="date">
2806         26th September 2014
2807       </div>
2808       <div class="body">
2809         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
2810 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
2811 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
2812 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
2813 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
2814 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
2815 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
2816 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
2817 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
2818 future.  The
2819 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
2820 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
2821 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
2822 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
2823 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
2824
2825 <p>First, download the test ISO via
2826 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
2827 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
2828 or rsync (use
2829 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
2830 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
2831 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
2832 install with some tweaking.</p>
2833
2834 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
2835 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
2836
2837 <p><blockquote><pre>
2838 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
2839 </pre></blockquote></p>
2840
2841 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
2842 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
2843 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
2844 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
2845
2846 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
2847 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
2848 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
2849 your need.</p>
2850
2851 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
2852 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
2853 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
2854 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
2855 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
2856 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
2857 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
2858 days.</p>
2859
2860 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
2861 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
2862 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
2863 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
2864 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
2865 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
2866 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
2867 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
2868 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
2869
2870 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
2871 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
2872 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
2873
2874       </div>
2875       <div class="tags">
2876
2877
2878         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2879
2880
2881       </div>
2882     </div>
2883     <div class="padding"></div>
2884
2885     <div class="entry">
2886       <div class="title">
2887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html">Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</a>
2888       </div>
2889       <div class="date">
2890         25th September 2014
2891       </div>
2892       <div class="body">
2893         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
2894 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
2895 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
2896 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
2897 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
2898 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
2899 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
2900 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
2901 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
2902 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
2903 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
2904 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
2905 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
2906
2907 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
2908 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
2909 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
2910 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
2911 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
2912 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
2913 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
2914 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
2915 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
2916 list</a>. :)</p>
2917
2918       </div>
2919       <div class="tags">
2920
2921
2922         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>.
2923
2924
2925       </div>
2926     </div>
2927     <div class="padding"></div>
2928
2929     <div class="entry">
2930       <div class="title">
2931         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">Speeding up the Debian installer using eatmydata and dpkg-divert</a>
2932       </div>
2933       <div class="date">
2934         16th September 2014
2935       </div>
2936       <div class="body">
2937         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
2938 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
2939 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
2940 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
2941 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
2942 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
2943 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
2944 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
2945 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
2946 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
2947 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
2948 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
2949 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
2950 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
2951
2952 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
2953 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
2954 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
2955 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
2956 depend on the small and clever package
2957 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
2958 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
2959 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
2960 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
2961 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
2962 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
2963 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
2964 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
2965 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
2966 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
2967 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
2968
2969 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
2970 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
2971 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
2972 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
2973 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
2974 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
2975 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
2976 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
2977 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
2978 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
2979 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
2980 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
2981 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
2982 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
2983 dialog.</p>
2984
2985 <p><table>
2986
2987 <tr>
2988 <th>Machine/setup</th>
2989 <th>Original tasksel</th>
2990 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
2991 <th>Reduction</th>
2992 </tr>
2993
2994 <tr>
2995 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
2996 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
2997 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
2998 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
2999 </tr>
3000
3001 <tr>
3002 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
3003 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
3004 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
3005 <td>23 min 40%</td>
3006 </tr>
3007
3008 <tr>
3009 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
3010 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
3011 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
3012 <td>11 min 50%</td>
3013 </tr>
3014
3015 <tr>
3016 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
3017 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
3018 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
3019 <td>2 min 33%</td>
3020 </tr>
3021
3022 <tr>
3023 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
3024 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
3025 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
3026 <td>4 min 21%</td>
3027 </tr>
3028
3029 </table></p>
3030
3031 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
3032 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
3033 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
3034 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
3035 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
3036 installed.</p>
3037
3038 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
3039 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
3040 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
3041 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
3042 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
3043 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
3044 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
3045 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
3046 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
3047 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
3048 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
3049 for the entire installation.</p>
3050
3051 <p>I've implemented this in the
3052 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
3053 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
3054 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
3055 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
3056 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
3057
3058 <p><blockquote><pre>
3059 #!/bin/sh
3060 set -e
3061 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3062 info() {
3063     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
3064 }
3065 error() {
3066     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
3067 }
3068 override_install() {
3069     apt-install eatmydata || true
3070     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
3071         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3072             file=/usr/bin/$bin
3073             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
3074             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
3075                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
3076                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
3077                     > /target$file.edu
3078                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
3079                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3080                     --rename --quiet --add $file
3081                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
3082             else
3083                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
3084             fi
3085         done
3086     else
3087         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
3088     fi
3089 }
3090
3091 override_install
3092 </pre></blockquote></p>
3093
3094 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
3095 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
3096
3097 <p><blockquote><pre>
3098 #! /bin/sh -e
3099 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
3100 error() {
3101     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
3102 }
3103 remove_install_override() {
3104     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
3105         file=/usr/bin/$bin
3106         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
3107             rm /target$file
3108             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
3109                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
3110             rm /target$file.edu
3111         else
3112             error "Missing divert for $file."
3113         fi
3114     done
3115     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
3116 }
3117
3118 remove_install_override
3119 </pre></blockquote></p>
3120
3121 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
3122 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
3123 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
3124
3125 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
3126 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
3127 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
3128 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
3129 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
3130 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
3131 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
3132 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
3133 everyone.</p>
3134
3135 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
3136 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
3137 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
3138 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
3139
3140 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
3141 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
3142 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
3143 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
3144 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
3145
3146 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
3147 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
3148 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
3149 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
3150 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
3151
3152       </div>
3153       <div class="tags">
3154
3155
3156         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>.
3157
3158
3159       </div>
3160     </div>
3161     <div class="padding"></div>
3162
3163     <div class="entry">
3164       <div class="title">
3165         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_bye_subkeys_pgp_net__welcome_pool_sks_keyservers_net.html">Good bye subkeys.pgp.net, welcome pool.sks-keyservers.net</a>
3166       </div>
3167       <div class="date">
3168         10th September 2014
3169       </div>
3170       <div class="body">
3171         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
3172 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
3173 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
3174 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
3175 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
3176 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
3177 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
3178 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
3179 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
3180 those problems are gone now.</p>
3181
3182 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
3183 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
3184 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
3185 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
3186 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
3187
3188 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
3189 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
3190 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
3191
3192 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
3193 line:</p>
3194
3195 <p><blockquote><pre>
3196 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
3197 </pre></blockquote></p>
3198
3199 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
3200 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
3201 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
3202 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
3203
3204 <p><blockquote><pre>
3205 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
3206 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
3207 %
3208 </pre></blockquote></p>
3209
3210 <p>Now if only
3211 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
3212 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
3213 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
3214 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
3215 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
3216 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
3217 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
3218 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
3219 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
3220
3221       </div>
3222       <div class="tags">
3223
3224
3225         Tags: <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>.
3226
3227
3228       </div>
3229     </div>
3230     <div class="padding"></div>
3231
3232     <div class="entry">
3233       <div class="title">
3234         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Do_you_need_an_agreement_with_MPEG_LA_to_publish_and_broadcast_H_264_video_in_Norway_.html">Do you need an agreement with MPEG-LA to publish and broadcast H.264 video in Norway?</a>
3235       </div>
3236       <div class="date">
3237         25th August 2014
3238       </div>
3239       <div class="body">
3240         <p>Two years later, I am still not sure if it is legal here in Norway
3241 to use or publish a video in H.264 or MPEG4 format edited by the
3242 commercially licensed video editors, without limiting the use to
3243 create "personal" or "non-commercial" videos or get a license
3244 agreement with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">MPEG LA</a>.  If one
3245 want to publish and broadcast video in a non-personal or commercial
3246 setting, it might be that those tools can not be used, or that video
3247 format can not be used, without breaking their copyright license.  I
3248 am not sure.
3249 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html">Back
3250 then</a>, I found that the copyright license terms for Adobe Premiere
3251 and Apple Final Cut Pro both specified that one could not use the
3252 program to produce anything else without a patent license from MPEG
3253 LA.  The issue is not limited to those two products, though.  Other
3254 much used products like those from Avid and Sorenson Media have terms
3255 of use are similar to those from Adobe and Apple.  The complicating
3256 factor making me unsure if those terms have effect in Norway or not is
3257 that the patents in question are not valid in Norway, but copyright
3258 licenses are.</p>
3259
3260 <p>These are the terms for Avid Artist Suite, according to their
3261 <a href="http://www.avid.com/US/about-avid/legal-notices/legal-enduserlicense2">published
3262 end user</a>
3263 <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">license
3264 text</a> (converted to lower case text for easier reading):</p>
3265
3266 <p><blockquote>
3267 <p>18.2. MPEG-4. MPEG-4 technology may be included with the
3268 software. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice: </p>
3269
3270 <p>This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio
3271 license for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i)
3272 encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4
3273 video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a
3274 consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was
3275 obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4
3276 video.  No license is granted or shall be implied for any other
3277 use. Additional information including that relating to promotional,
3278 internal and commercial uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG
3279 LA, LLC.  See http://www.mpegla.com. This product is licensed under
3280 the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license for encoding in compliance
3281 with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except that an additional license
3282 and payment of royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with
3283 (i) data stored or replicated in physical media which is paid for on a
3284 title by title basis and/or (ii) data which is paid for on a title by
3285 title basis and is transmitted to an end user for permanent storage
3286 and/or use, such additional license may be obtained from MPEG LA,
3287 LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional details.</p>
3288
3289 <p>18.3. H.264/AVC. H.264/AVC technology may be included with the
3290 software.  MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this notice:</p>
3291
3292 <p>This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
3293 the personal use of a consumer or other uses in which it does not
3294 receive remuneration to (i) encode video in compliance with the AVC
3295 standard (“AVC video”) and/or (ii) decode AVC video that was encoded
3296 by a consumer engaged in a personal activity and/or was obtained from
3297 a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No license is granted
3298 or shall be implied for any other use. Additional information may be
3299 obtained from MPEG LA, L.L.C. See http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3300 </blockquote></p>
3301
3302 <p>Note the requirement that the videos created can only be used for
3303 personal or non-commercial purposes.</p>
3304
3305 <p>The Sorenson Media software have
3306 <a href="http://www.sorensonmedia.com/terms/">similar terms</a>:</p>
3307
3308 <p><blockquote>
3309
3310 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4 Video
3311 Decoders and/or Encoders: Any such product is licensed under the
3312 MPEG-4 visual patent portfolio license for the personal and
3313 non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) encoding video in compliance
3314 with the MPEG-4 visual standard (“MPEG-4 video”) and/or (ii) decoding
3315 MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a personal and
3316 non-commercial activity and/or was obtained from a video provider
3317 licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 video. No license is granted or
3318 shall be implied for any other use. Additional information including
3319 that relating to promotional, internal and commercial uses and
3320 licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See
3321 http://www.mpegla.com.</p>
3322
3323 <p>With respect to a license from Sorenson pertaining to MPEG-4
3324 Consumer Recorded Data Encoder, MPEG-4 Systems Internet Data Encoder,
3325 MPEG-4 Mobile Data Encoder, and/or MPEG-4 Unique Use Encoder: Any such
3326 product is licensed under the MPEG-4 systems patent portfolio license
3327 for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 systems standard, except
3328 that an additional license and payment of royalties are necessary for
3329 encoding in connection with (i) data stored or replicated in physical
3330 media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or (ii) data
3331 which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an
3332 end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may
3333 be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for
3334 additional details.</p>
3335
3336 </blockquote></p>
3337
3338 <p>Some free software like
3339 <a href="https://handbrake.fr/">Handbrake</A> and
3340 <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/">FFMPEG</a> uses GPL/LGPL licenses and do
3341 not have any such terms included, so for those, there is no
3342 requirement to limit the use to personal and non-commercial.</p>
3343
3344       </div>
3345       <div class="tags">
3346
3347
3348         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3349
3350
3351       </div>
3352     </div>
3353     <div class="padding"></div>
3354
3355     <div class="entry">
3356       <div class="title">
3357         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Bernd_Zeitzen.html">Debian Edu interview: Bernd Zeitzen</a>
3358       </div>
3359       <div class="date">
3360         31st July 2014
3361       </div>
3362       <div class="body">
3363         <p>The complete and free “out of the box” software solution for
3364 schools, <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
3365 Skolelinux</a>, is used quite a lot in Germany, and one of the people
3366 involved is Bernd Zeitzen, who show up on the project mailing lists
3367 from time to time with interesting questions and tips on how to adjust
3368 the setup.  I managed to interview him this summer.</p>
3369
3370 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3371
3372 <p>My name is Bernd Zeitzen and I'm married with Hedda, a self
3373 employed physiotherapist.  My former profession is tool maker, but I
3374 haven't worked for 30 years in this job.  30 years ago I started to
3375 support my wife and become her officeworker and a few years later the
3376 administrator for a small computer network, today based on Ubuntu
3377 Server (Samba, OpenVPN). For her daily work she has to use Windows
3378 Desktops because the software she needs to organize her business only
3379 works with Windows . :-(</p>
3380
3381 <p>In 1988 we started with one PC and DOS, then I learned to use
3382 Windows 98, 2000, XP, …, 8, Ubuntu, MacOSX.  Today we are running a
3383 Linux server with 6 Windows clients and 10 persons (teacher of
3384 children with special needs, speech therapist, occupational therapist,
3385 psychologist and officeworkers) using our Samba shares via OpenVPN to
3386 work with the documentations of our patients.</p>
3387
3388 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
3389 project?</strong></p>
3390
3391 <p>Two years ago a friend of mine asked me, if I want to get a job in
3392 his school (<a href="http://www.gymnasium-harsewinkel.de/">Gymnasium
3393 Harsewinkel</a>).  They started with Skolelinux / Debian Edu and they
3394 were looking for people to give support to the teachers using the
3395 software and the network and teaching the pupils increasing their
3396 computer skills in optional lessons.  I'm spending 4-6 hours a week
3397 with this job.</p>
3398
3399 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3400 Edu?</strong></p>
3401
3402 <p>The independence.</p>
3403
3404 <p>First: Every person is allowed to use, share and develop the
3405 software. Even if you are poor, you are allowed to use the software
3406 included in Skolelinux/Debian Edu and all the other Free Software.</p>
3407
3408 <p>Second: The software runs on old machines and this gives us the
3409 possibility to recycle computers, weeded out from offices.  The
3410 servers and desktops are running for more than two years and they are
3411 working reliable. </p>
3412
3413 <p>We have two servers (one tjener and one terminal server), 45
3414 workstations in three classrooms and seven laptops as a mobile
3415 solution for all classrooms.  These machines are all booting from the
3416 terminal server.  In the moment we are installing 30 laptops as mobile
3417 workstations.  Then the pupils have the possibility to work with these
3418 machines in their classrooms.  Internet access is realized by a WLAN
3419 router, connected to the schools network. This is all done without a
3420 dedicated system administrator or a computer science teacher.</p>
3421
3422 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
3423 Edu?</strong></p>
3424
3425 <p>Teachers and pupils are Windows users.  &lt;Irony on&gt; And Linux
3426 isn't cool. It's software for freaks using the command line. &lt;Irony
3427 off&gt; They don't realize the stability of the system. </p>
3428
3429 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3430
3431 <p>Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Ubuntu Server 12.04 (Samba,
3432 Apache, MySQL, Joomla!, … and Skolelinux / Debian Edu)</p>
3433
3434 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3435 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3436
3437 <p>In Germany we have the situation: every school is free to decide
3438 which software they want to use. This decision is influenced by
3439 teachers who learned to use Windows and MS Office. They buy a PC with
3440 Windows preinstalled and an additional testing version of MS
3441 Office. They don't know about the possibility to use Free Software
3442 instead.  Another problem are the publisher of school books.  They
3443 develop their software, added to the school books, for Windows.</p>
3444
3445       </div>
3446       <div class="tags">
3447
3448
3449         Tags: <a href="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>.
3450
3451
3452       </div>
3453     </div>
3454     <div class="padding"></div>
3455
3456     <div class="entry">
3457       <div class="title">
3458         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/98_6_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">98.6 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
3459       </div>
3460       <div class="date">
3461         23rd July 2014
3462       </div>
3463       <div class="body">
3464         <p>This summer I finally had time to continue working on the Norwegian
3465 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
3466 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
3467 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with todays copyright
3468 law.  Yesterday, I finally completed translated the book text.  There
3469 are still some foot/end notes left to translate, the colophon page
3470 need to be rewritten, and a few words and phrases still need to be
3471 translated, but the Norwegian text is ready for the first proof
3472 reading. :) More spell checking is needed, and several illustrations
3473 need to be cleaned up.  The work stopped up because I had to give
3474 priority to other projects the last year, and the progress graph of
3475 the translation show this very well:</p>
3476
3477 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
3478
3479 <p>If you want to read the result, check out the
3480 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
3481 project pages and the
3482 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
3483 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
3484 and HTML version available in the
3485 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
3486 directory</a>.</p>
3487
3488 <p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
3489 you find any.</p>
3490
3491       </div>
3492       <div class="tags">
3493
3494
3495         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>.
3496
3497
3498       </div>
3499     </div>
3500     <div class="padding"></div>
3501
3502     <div class="entry">
3503       <div class="title">
3504         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/From_English_wiki_to_translated_PDF_and_epub_via_Docbook.html">From English wiki to translated PDF and epub via Docbook</a>
3505       </div>
3506       <div class="date">
3507         17th June 2014
3508       </div>
3509       <div class="body">
3510         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
3511 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
3512 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
3513 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
3514 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
3515
3516 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
3517 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
3518 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
3519 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
3520 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
3521 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
3522 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
3523 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
3524 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
3525 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
3526 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
3527 goals.</p>
3528
3529 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
3530 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
3531 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
3532 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
3533 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
3534 chapters together into one large web page (aka
3535 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
3536 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
3537 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
3538 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
3539 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
3540 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
3541 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
3542 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
3543 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
3544 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
3545 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
3546 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
3547 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
3548 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
3549 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
3550 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
3551 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
3552 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
3553
3554 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
3555 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
3556 track the English original.  For this we use the
3557 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
3558 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
3559 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
3560 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
3561 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
3562 files), which the translations update with the native language
3563 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
3564 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
3565 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
3566 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
3567 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
3568 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
3569 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
3570 of the documentation.</p>
3571
3572 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
3573 recommend using
3574 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
3575 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
3576 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
3577 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
3578 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
3579 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
3580 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
3581 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
3582
3583 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
3584 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
3585 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
3586 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
3587 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
3588 translated images by storing translated versions in
3589 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
3590 package maintainers know more.</p>
3591
3592 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
3593 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
3594 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
3595 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
3596 PDF version</a> or the
3597 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
3598 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
3599 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
3600
3601 <p>To learn more, check out
3602 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
3603 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
3604 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
3605 manual on the wiki</a> and
3606 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
3607 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
3608
3609       </div>
3610       <div class="tags">
3611
3612
3613         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3614
3615
3616       </div>
3617     </div>
3618     <div class="padding"></div>
3619
3620     <div class="entry">
3621       <div class="title">
3622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_car_computer_solution_.html">Free software car computer solution?</a>
3623       </div>
3624       <div class="date">
3625         29th May 2014
3626       </div>
3627       <div class="body">
3628         <p>Dear lazyweb.  I'm planning to set up a small Raspberry Pi computer
3629 in my car, connected to
3630 <a href="http://www.dx.com/p/400a-4-0-tft-lcd-digital-monitor-for-vehicle-parking-reverse-camera-1440x272-12v-dc-57776">a
3631 small screen</a> next to the rear mirror.  I plan to hook it up with a
3632 GPS and a USB wifi card too.  The idea is to get my own
3633 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carputer">Carputer</a>".  But I
3634 wonder if someone already created a good free software solution for
3635 such car computer.</p>
3636
3637 <p>This is my current wish list for such system:</p>
3638
3639 <ul>
3640
3641  <li>Work on Raspberry Pi.</li>
3642
3643  <li>Show current speed limit based on location, and warn if going too
3644    fast (for example using color codes yellow and red on the screen,
3645    or make a sound).  This could be done either using either data from
3646    <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">Openstreetmap</a> or OCR
3647    info gathered from a dashboard camera.</li>
3648
3649  <li>Track automatic toll road passes and their cost, show total spent
3650    and make it possible to calculate toll costs for planned
3651    route.</li>
3652
3653  <li>Collect GPX tracks for use with OpenStreetMap.</li>
3654
3655  <li>Automatically detect and use any wireless connection to connect
3656    to home server.  Try IP over DNS
3657    (<a href="http://dev.kryo.se/iodine/">iodine</a>) or ICMP
3658    (<a href="http://code.gerade.org/hans/">Hans</a>) if direct
3659    connection do not work.</li>
3660
3661  <li>Set up mesh network to talk to other cars with the same system,
3662    or some standard car mesh protocol.</li>
3663
3664  <li>Warn when approaching speed cameras and speed camera ranges
3665    (speed calculated between two cameras).</li>
3666
3667  <li>Suport dashboard/front facing camera to discover speed limits and
3668    run OCR to track registration number of passing cars.</li>
3669
3670 </ul>
3671
3672 <p>If you know of any free software car computer system supporting
3673 some or all of these features, please let me know.</p>
3674
3675       </div>
3676       <div class="tags">
3677
3678
3679         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3680
3681
3682       </div>
3683     </div>
3684     <div class="padding"></div>
3685
3686     <div class="entry">
3687       <div class="title">
3688         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_the_Coverity_issues_in_Gnash_fixed_in_the_next_release.html">Half the Coverity issues in Gnash fixed in the next release</a>
3689       </div>
3690       <div class="date">
3691         29th April 2014
3692       </div>
3693       <div class="body">
3694         <p>I've been following <a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">the Gnash
3695 project</a> for quite a while now.  It is a free software
3696 implementation of Adobe Flash, both a standalone player and a browser
3697 plugin.  Gnash implement support for the AVM1 format (and not the
3698 newer AVM2 format - see
3699 <a href="http://lightspark.github.io/">Lightspark</a> for that one),
3700 allowing several flash based sites to work.  Thanks to the friendly
3701 developers at Youtube, it also work with Youtube videos, because the
3702 Javascript code at Youtube detect Gnash and serve a AVM1 player to
3703 those users. :) Would be great if someone found time to implement AVM2
3704 support, but it has not happened yet.  If you install both Lightspark
3705 and Gnash, Lightspark will invoke Gnash if it find a AVM1 flash file,
3706 so you can get both handled as free software.  Unfortunately,
3707 Lightspark so far only implement a small subset of AVM2, and many
3708 sites do not work yet.</p>
3709
3710 <p>A few months ago, I started looking at
3711 <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/">Coverity</a>, the static source
3712 checker used to find heaps and heaps of bugs in free software (thanks
3713 to the donation of a scanning service to free software projects by the
3714 company developing this non-free code checker), and Gnash was one of
3715 the projects I decided to check out.  Coverity is able to find lock
3716 errors, memory errors, dead code and more.  A few days ago they even
3717 extended it to also be able to find the heartbleed bug in OpenSSL.
3718 There are heaps of checks being done on the instrumented code, and the
3719 amount of bogus warnings is quite low compared to the other static
3720 code checkers I have tested over the years.</p>
3721
3722 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I've been working with the other Gnash
3723 developers squashing bugs discovered by Coverity.  I was quite happy
3724 today when I checked the current status and saw that of the 777 issues
3725 detected so far, 374 are marked as fixed.  This make me confident that
3726 the next Gnash release will be more stable and more dependable than
3727 the previous one.  Most of the reported issues were and are in the
3728 test suite, but it also found a few in the rest of the code.</p>
3729
3730 <p>If you want to help out, you find us on
3731 <a href="https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev">the
3732 gnash-dev mailing list</a> and on
3733 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#gnash">the #gnash channel on
3734 irc.freenode.net IRC server</a>.</p>
3735
3736       </div>
3737       <div class="tags">
3738
3739
3740         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>.
3741
3742
3743       </div>
3744     </div>
3745     <div class="padding"></div>
3746
3747     <div class="entry">
3748       <div class="title">
3749         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Install_hardware_dependent_packages_using_tasksel__Isenkram_0_7_.html">Install hardware dependent packages using tasksel (Isenkram 0.7)</a>
3750       </div>
3751       <div class="date">
3752         23rd April 2014
3753       </div>
3754       <div class="body">
3755         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
3756 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
3757 So I implemented one, using
3758 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
3759 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
3760 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
3761 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
3762 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
3763 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
3764
3765 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
3766 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
3767 packages to install.  The first part is in
3768 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
3769 this:</p>
3770
3771 <p><blockquote><pre>
3772 Task: isenkram
3773 Section: hardware
3774 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
3775  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
3776  proposed.
3777 Test-new-install: mark show
3778 Relevance: 8
3779 Packages: for-current-hardware
3780 </pre></blockquote></p>
3781
3782 <p>The second part is in
3783 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
3784 this:</p>
3785
3786 <p><blockquote><pre>
3787 #!/bin/sh
3788 #
3789 (
3790     isenkram-lookup
3791     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
3792 ) | sort -u
3793 </pre></blockquote></p>
3794
3795 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
3796 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
3797 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
3798 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
3799 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
3800 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
3801
3802 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
3803 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
3804 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
3805 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
3806 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
3807 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
3808 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
3809 the python-apt code (bug
3810 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
3811 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
3812 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
3813 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
3814 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
3815 unstable today.</p>
3816
3817 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
3818 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
3819 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
3820 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
3821 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
3822 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
3823 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
3824 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
3825 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
3826
3827 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
3828 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
3829 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
3830 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
3831 package.  See also
3832 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
3833 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
3834 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
3835 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
3836
3837       </div>
3838       <div class="tags">
3839
3840
3841         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
3842
3843
3844       </div>
3845     </div>
3846     <div class="padding"></div>
3847
3848     <div class="entry">
3849       <div class="title">
3850         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/FreedomBox_milestone___all_packages_now_in_Debian_Sid.html">FreedomBox milestone - all packages now in Debian Sid</a>
3851       </div>
3852       <div class="date">
3853         15th April 2014
3854       </div>
3855       <div class="body">
3856         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
3857 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
3858 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
3859 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
3860 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
3861 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
3862
3863 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
3864 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
3865 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
3866 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
3867 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
3868 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
3869 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
3870
3871 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
3872 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
3873 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
3874 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
3875 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
3876 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
3877 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
3878 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
3879 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
3880 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
3881 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
3882 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
3883
3884 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
3885 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
3886 become root:</p>
3887
3888 <p><pre>
3889 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
3890   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
3891   u-boot-tools
3892 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
3893   freedom-maker
3894 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
3895 </pre></p>
3896
3897 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
3898 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
3899 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
3900 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
3901 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
3902 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
3903 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
3904 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
3905
3906 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
3907 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
3908 the preseed values:</p>
3909
3910 <p><pre>
3911 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
3912 </pre></p>
3913
3914 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
3915 it still work.</p>
3916
3917 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
3918 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
3919 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
3920 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
3921 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
3922 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
3923 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
3924
3925 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
3926 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
3927 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
3928 irc.debian.org)</a> and
3929 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
3930 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
3931
3932       </div>
3933       <div class="tags">
3934
3935
3936         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
3937
3938
3939       </div>
3940     </div>
3941     <div class="padding"></div>
3942
3943     <div class="entry">
3944       <div class="title">
3945         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/S3QL__a_locally_mounted_cloud_file_system___nice_free_software.html">S3QL, a locally mounted cloud file system - nice free software</a>
3946       </div>
3947       <div class="date">
3948          9th April 2014
3949       </div>
3950       <div class="body">
3951         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
3952 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
3953 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
3954 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
3955 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
3956 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
3957 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
3958 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
3959 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
3960 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
3961 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
3962 have looked at a system called
3963 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
3964 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
3965
3966 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
3967 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
3968 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
3969 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
3970 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
3971 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
3972 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
3973 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
3974 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
3975 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
3976 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
3977 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
3978 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
3979
3980 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
3981 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
3982 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
3983 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
3984 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
3985 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
3986 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
3987 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
3988 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
3989 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
3990 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
3991 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
3992 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
3993 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
3994 account.</p>
3995
3996 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
3997 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
3998 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
3999 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
4000 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
4001 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
4002 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
4003
4004 <p><blockquote><pre>
4005 [s3c]
4006 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4007 backend-login: API-login
4008 backend-password: API-password
4009 fs-passphrase: local-password
4010 </pre></blockquote></p>
4011
4012 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
4013 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
4014 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
4015 details and password to create it:</p>
4016
4017 <p><blockquote><pre>
4018 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
4019 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4020   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4021 Enter backend login:
4022 Enter backend password:
4023 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
4024 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
4025 Enter encryption password:
4026 Confirm encryption password:
4027 Generating random encryption key...
4028 Creating metadata tables...
4029 Dumping metadata...
4030 ..objects..
4031 ..blocks..
4032 ..inodes..
4033 ..inode_blocks..
4034 ..symlink_targets..
4035 ..names..
4036 ..contents..
4037 ..ext_attributes..
4038 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4039 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
4040 # </pre></blockquote></p>
4041
4042 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
4043
4044 <p><blockquote><pre>
4045 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4046   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4047 Using 4 upload threads.
4048 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
4049 Reading metadata...
4050 ..objects..
4051 ..blocks..
4052 ..inodes..
4053 ..inode_blocks..
4054 ..symlink_targets..
4055 ..names..
4056 ..contents..
4057 ..ext_attributes..
4058 Mounting filesystem...
4059 # df -h /s3ql
4060 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
4061 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
4062 #
4063 </pre></blockquote></p>
4064
4065 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
4066 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
4067 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
4068 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
4069 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
4070 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
4071
4072 <p><blockquote><pre>
4073 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
4074 #
4075 </pre></blockquote></p>
4076
4077 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
4078 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
4079 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
4080 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
4081 file system:</p>
4082
4083 <p><blockquote><pre>
4084 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
4085 Using cached metadata.
4086 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
4087 Checking DB integrity...
4088 Creating temporary extra indices...
4089 Checking lost+found...
4090 Checking cached objects...
4091 Checking names (refcounts)...
4092 Checking contents (names)...
4093 Checking contents (inodes)...
4094 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
4095 Checking objects (reference counts)...
4096 Checking objects (backend)...
4097 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
4098 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
4099 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
4100 Checking objects (sizes)...
4101 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
4102 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
4103 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
4104 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
4105 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
4106 Checking inodes (sizes)...
4107 Checking extended attributes (names)...
4108 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
4109 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
4110 Checking directory reachability...
4111 Checking unix conventions...
4112 Checking referential integrity...
4113 Dropping temporary indices...
4114 Backing up old metadata...
4115 Dumping metadata...
4116 ..objects..
4117 ..blocks..
4118 ..inodes..
4119 ..inode_blocks..
4120 ..symlink_targets..
4121 ..names..
4122 ..contents..
4123 ..ext_attributes..
4124 Compressing and uploading metadata...
4125 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
4126 #
4127 </pre></blockquote></p>
4128
4129 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
4130 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
4131 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
4132 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
4133 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
4134 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
4135 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
4136 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
4137 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
4138 working set.</p>
4139
4140 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
4141 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
4142 busy:</p>
4143
4144 <p><blockquote><pre>
4145 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
4146   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
4147 Using 8 upload threads.
4148 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
4149 #
4150 </pre></blockquote></p>
4151
4152 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
4153 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
4154 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
4155 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
4156 s3qlctrl:
4157
4158 <p><blockquote><pre>
4159 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
4160 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
4161 #
4162 </pre></blockquote></p>
4163
4164 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
4165 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
4166 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
4167 a report:</p>
4168
4169 <p><blockquote><pre>
4170 # s3qlstat /s3ql
4171 Directory entries:    9141
4172 Inodes:               9143
4173 Data blocks:          8851
4174 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
4175 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
4176 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
4177 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
4178 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
4179 #
4180 </pre></blockquote></p>
4181
4182 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
4183 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
4184 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
4185 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
4186 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
4187 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
4188 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
4189 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
4190 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
4191 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
4192 best.</p>
4193
4194 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
4195 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
4196 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
4197 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
4198 poster is titled
4199 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
4200 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
4201 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
4202 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
4203 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
4204
4205 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
4206 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
4207 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
4208 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
4209 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
4210 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
4211 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
4212 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
4213
4214 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
4215 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
4216 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
4217 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
4218 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
4219 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
4220 only read from it.</p>
4221
4222 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4223 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4224 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4225
4226       </div>
4227       <div class="tags">
4228
4229
4230         Tags: <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>.
4231
4232
4233       </div>
4234     </div>
4235     <div class="padding"></div>
4236
4237     <div class="entry">
4238       <div class="title">
4239         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ReactOS_Windows_clone___nice_free_software.html">ReactOS Windows clone - nice free software</a>
4240       </div>
4241       <div class="date">
4242          1st April 2014
4243       </div>
4244       <div class="body">
4245         <p>Microsoft have announced that Windows XP reaches its end of life
4246 2014-04-08, in 7 days.  But there are heaps of machines still running
4247 Windows XP, and depending on Windows XP to run their applications, and
4248 upgrading will be expensive, both when it comes to money and when it
4249 comes to the amount of effort needed to migrate from Windows XP to a
4250 new operating system.  Some obvious options (buy new a Windows
4251 machine, buy a MacOSX machine, install Linux on the existing machine)
4252 are already well known and covered elsewhere.  Most of them involve
4253 leaving the user applications installed on Windows XP behind and
4254 trying out replacements or updated versions. In this blog post I want
4255 to mention one strange bird that allow people to keep the hardware and
4256 the existing Windows XP applications and run them on a free software
4257 operating system that is Windows XP compatible.</p>
4258
4259 <p><a href="http://www.reactos.org/">ReactOS</a> is a free software
4260 operating system (GNU GPL licensed) working on providing a operating
4261 system that is binary compatible with Windows, able to run windows
4262 programs directly and to use Windows drivers for hardware directly.
4263 The project goal is for Windows user to keep their existing machines,
4264 drivers and software, and gain the advantages from user a operating
4265 system without usage limitations caused by non-free licensing.  It is
4266 a Windows clone running directly on the hardware, so quite different
4267 from the approach taken by <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">the Wine
4268 project</a>, which make it possible to run Windows binaries on
4269 Linux.</p>
4270
4271 <p>The ReactOS project share code with the Wine project, so most
4272 shared libraries available on Windows are already implemented already.
4273 There is also a software manager like the one we are used to on Linux,
4274 allowing the user to install free software applications with a simple
4275 click directly from the Internet.  Check out the
4276 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/screenshots">screen shots on the
4277 project web site</a> for an idea what it look like (it looks just like
4278 Windows before metro).</p>
4279
4280 <p>I do not use ReactOS myself, preferring Linux and Unix like
4281 operating systems.  I've tested it, and it work fine in a virt-manager
4282 virtual machine.  The browser, minesweeper, notepad etc is working
4283 fine as far as I can tell.  Unfortunately, my main test application
4284 is the software included on a CD with the Lego Mindstorms NXT, which
4285 seem to install just fine from CD but fail to leave any binaries on
4286 the disk after the installation.  So no luck with that test software.
4287 No idea why, but hope someone else figure out and fix the problem.
4288 I've tried the ReactOS Live ISO on a physical machine, and it seemed
4289 to work just fine.  If you like Windows and want to keep running your
4290 old Windows binaries, check it out by
4291 <a href="http://www.reactos.org/download">downloading</a> the
4292 installation CD, the live CD or the preinstalled virtual machine
4293 image.</p>
4294
4295       </div>
4296       <div class="tags">
4297
4298
4299         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos</a>.
4300
4301
4302       </div>
4303     </div>
4304     <div class="padding"></div>
4305
4306     <div class="entry">
4307       <div class="title">
4308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html">Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</a>
4309       </div>
4310       <div class="date">
4311         30th March 2014
4312       </div>
4313       <div class="body">
4314         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4315 keep gaining new users.  Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
4316 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
4317 wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
4318 contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
4319
4320 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4321
4322 <p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
4323 live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
4324 work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent.  Additionally,
4325 I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
4326 last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
4327
4328 <p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
4329 ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
4330 and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
4331
4332 <p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
4333 can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
4334 hunger.</p>
4335
4336 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
4337 project?</strong></p>
4338
4339 <p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
4340 with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
4341 started looking for an alternative.  Even though I highly value and
4342 respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
4343 change to a more robust and stable alternative.  As far as I was using
4344 Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
4345 Debian and configure an LTSP server myself.  Surprised, I discovered
4346 that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
4347 and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
4348 running.  I just loved it.</p>
4349
4350 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4351 Edu?</strong></p>
4352
4353 <p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
4354 tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
4355 complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
4356 other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
4357 be made of steel.</p>
4358
4359 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
4360 Edu?</strong></p>
4361
4362 <p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
4363
4364 <p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
4365 amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
4366 stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
4367 resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
4368 or dropped.</p>
4369
4370 <p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
4371 this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
4372 more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
4373 discourage many people too.</p>
4374
4375 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4376
4377 <p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
4378 Virtualbox.</p>
4379
4380
4381 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4382 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4383
4384 <p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
4385 attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
4386 really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
4387 the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
4388 few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
4389 Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
4390 different level of studies.  I believe free and open software will
4391 increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
4392 first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
4393
4394       </div>
4395       <div class="tags">
4396
4397
4398         Tags: <a href="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>.
4399
4400
4401       </div>
4402     </div>
4403     <div class="padding"></div>
4404
4405     <div class="entry">
4406       <div class="title">
4407         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html">Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</a>
4408       </div>
4409       <div class="date">
4410         25th March 2014
4411       </div>
4412       <div class="body">
4413         <p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
4414 allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
4415 demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
4416 changed since it was created?  Or, did you ever need to document that
4417 a given document was received at some point in time, like some
4418 archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
4419 was received?  The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
4420 trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
4421 that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
4422
4423 <p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
4424 "stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
4425 looked a given way.  Such
4426 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
4427 have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
4428 called a
4429 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
4430 timestamping service</a>.  <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
4431 Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
4432 few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
4433 3161</a>.  The mechanism is simple.  Create a hash of the file in
4434 question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
4435 the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
4436 signed hash + timestamp.  Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
4437 request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
4438 used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
4439 the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
4440 checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
4441 There are several commercial services around providing such
4442 timestamping.  A quick search for
4443 "<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
4444 service</a>" pointed me to at least
4445 <a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
4446 <a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
4447 Vadis</a>,
4448 <a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
4449 and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
4450 Trust Finder</a>.  The system work as long as the private key of the
4451 trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
4452
4453 <p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
4454 timestamp services available for everyone.  I've been looking for one
4455 for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
4456 <a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
4457 Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
4458 <a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
4459 blog by David Müller</a>.  I then found
4460 <a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
4461 good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
4462 Greifswald.</p>
4463
4464 <p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
4465 both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service.  See
4466 the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details.  The
4467 following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
4468 for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
4469
4470 <p><blockquote><pre>
4471 #!/bin/sh
4472 set -e
4473 url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
4474 caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
4475 reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
4476 resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
4477 cafile=chain.txt
4478 if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
4479     wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
4480 fi
4481 openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
4482     | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
4483 openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
4484 openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
4485 base64 < "$resfile"
4486 rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
4487 </pre></blockquote></p>
4488
4489 <p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
4490 is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
4491 about the signature to STDERR.  Note that due to
4492 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
4493 in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
4494 and remove the last line.  Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
4495 curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
4496 changed.</p>
4497
4498 <p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
4499 Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
4500 my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
4501 to set up?</p>
4502
4503       </div>
4504       <div class="tags">
4505
4506
4507         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
4508
4509
4510       </div>
4511     </div>
4512     <div class="padding"></div>
4513
4514     <div class="entry">
4515       <div class="title">
4516         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html">Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</a>
4517       </div>
4518       <div class="date">
4519         21st March 2014
4520       </div>
4521       <div class="body">
4522         <p>Keeping your DVD collection safe from scratches and curious
4523 children fingers while still having it available when you want to see a
4524 movie is not straight forward.  My preferred method at the moment is
4525 to store a full copy of the ISO on a hard drive, and use VLC, Popcorn
4526 Hour or other useful players to view the resulting file.  This way the
4527 subtitles and bonus material are still available and using the ISO is
4528 just like inserting the original DVD record in the DVD player.</p>
4529
4530 <p>Earlier I used dd for taking security copies, but it do not handle
4531 DVDs giving read errors (which are quite a few of them).  I've also
4532 tried using
4533 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">dvdbackup
4534 and genisoimage</a>, but these days I use the marvellous python library
4535 and program
4536 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
4537 written by Bastian Blank.  It is
4538 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
4539 already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
4540 of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
4541 structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
4542 and only read those blocks from the DVD.  This work surprisingly well,
4543 and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
4544 this method.</p>
4545
4546 <p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
4547 20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection.  The most common
4548 problem is
4549 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
4550 using UTF-16 instead of UTF-8 characters</a>, which according to
4551 Bastian is against the DVD specification (and seem to cause some
4552 players to fail too).  A rarer problem is what seem to be inconsistent
4553 DVD structures, as the python library
4554 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=723079">claim
4555 there is a overlap between objects</a>.  An equally rare problem claim
4556 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=741878">some
4557 value is out of range</a>.  No idea what is going on there.  I wish I
4558 knew enough about the DVD format to fix these, to ensure my movie
4559 collection will stay with me in the future.</p>
4560
4561 <p>So, if you need to keep your DVDs safe, back them up using
4562 python-dvdvideo. :)</p>
4563
4564       </div>
4565       <div class="tags">
4566
4567
4568         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4569
4570
4571       </div>
4572     </div>
4573     <div class="padding"></div>
4574
4575     <div class="entry">
4576       <div class="title">
4577         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Freedombox_on_Dreamplug__Raspberry_Pi_and_virtual_x86_machine.html">Freedombox on Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and virtual x86 machine</a>
4578       </div>
4579       <div class="date">
4580         14th March 2014
4581       </div>
4582       <div class="body">
4583         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
4584 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
4585 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
4586 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
4587 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
4588 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
4589 release (0.2).</p>
4590
4591 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
4592 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
4593 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
4594 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
4595 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
4596 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
4597 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
4598 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
4599 and build using
4600 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
4601 with a user with sudo access to become root:
4602
4603 <pre>
4604 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
4605   freedom-maker
4606 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
4607   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
4608   u-boot-tools
4609 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
4610 </pre>
4611
4612 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
4613 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
4614 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
4615 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
4616 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
4617 kpartx call.</p>
4618
4619 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
4620 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
4621 the preseed values:</p>
4622
4623 <pre>
4624 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
4625 </pre>
4626
4627 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
4628 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
4629 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
4630 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
4631 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
4632 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
4633
4634 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
4635 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
4636 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
4637 irc.debian.org)</a> and
4638 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
4639 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
4640
4641       </div>
4642       <div class="tags">
4643
4644
4645         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4646
4647
4648       </div>
4649     </div>
4650     <div class="padding"></div>
4651
4652     <div class="entry">
4653       <div class="title">
4654         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_add_extra_storage_servers_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">How to add extra storage servers in Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4655       </div>
4656       <div class="date">
4657         12th March 2014
4658       </div>
4659       <div class="body">
4660         <p>On larger sites, it is useful to use a dedicated storage server for
4661 storing user home directories and data.  The design for handling this
4662 in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, is
4663 to update the automount rules in LDAP and let the automount daemon on
4664 the clients take care of the rest.  I was reminded about the need to
4665 document this better when one of the customers of
4666 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a>, where I am
4667 on the board of directors, asked about how to do this.  The steps to
4668 get this working are the following:</p>
4669
4670 <p><ol>
4671
4672 <li>Add new storage server in DNS.  I use nas-server.intern as the
4673 example host here.</li>
4674
4675 <li>Add automoun LDAP information about this server in LDAP, to allow
4676 all clients to automatically mount it on reqeust.</li>
4677
4678 <li>Add the relevant entries in tjener.intern:/etc/fstab, because
4679 tjener.intern do not use automount to avoid mounting loops.</li>
4680
4681 </ol></p>
4682
4683 <p>DNS entries are added in GOsa², and not described here.  Follow the
4684 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/GettingStarted">instructions
4685 in the manual</a> (Machine Management with GOsa² in section Getting
4686 started).</p>
4687
4688 <p>Ensure that the NFS export points on the server are exported to the
4689 relevant subnets or machines:</p>
4690
4691 <p><blockquote><pre>
4692 root@tjener:~# showmount -e nas-server
4693 Export list for nas-server:
4694 /storage         10.0.0.0/8
4695 root@tjener:~#
4696 </pre></blockquote></p>
4697
4698 <p>Here everything on the backbone network is granted access to the
4699 /storage export.  With NFSv3 it is slightly better to limit it to
4700 netgroup membership or single IP addresses to have some limits on the
4701 NFS access.</p>
4702
4703 <p>The next step is to update LDAP.  This can not be done using GOsa²,
4704 because it lack a module for automount.  Instead, use ldapvi and add
4705 the required LDAP objects using an editor.</p>
4706
4707 <p><blockquote><pre>
4708 ldapvi --ldap-conf -ZD '(cn=admin)' -b ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4709 </pre></blockquote></p>
4710
4711 <p>When the editor show up, add the following LDAP objects at the
4712 bottom of the document.  The "/&" part in the last LDAP object is a
4713 wild card matching everything the nas-server exports, removing the
4714 need to list individual mount points in LDAP.</p>
4715
4716 <p><blockquote><pre>
4717 add cn=nas-server,ou=auto.skole,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4718 objectClass: automount
4719 cn: nas-server
4720 automountInformation: -fstype=autofs --timeout=60 ldap:ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4721
4722 add ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4723 objectClass: top
4724 objectClass: automountMap
4725 ou: auto.nas-server
4726
4727 add cn=/,ou=auto.nas-server,ou=automount,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
4728 objectClass: automount
4729 cn: /
4730 automountInformation: -fstype=nfs,tcp,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,rw,intr,hard,nodev,nosuid,noatime nas-server.intern:/&
4731 </pre></blockquote></p>
4732
4733 <p>The last step to remember is to mount the relevant mount points in
4734 tjener.intern by adding them to /etc/fstab, creating the mount
4735 directories using mkdir and running "mount -a" to mount them.</p>
4736
4737 <p>When this is done, your users should be able to access the files on
4738 the storage server directly by just visiting the
4739 /tjener/nas-server/storage/ directory using any application on any
4740 workstation, LTSP client or LTSP server.</p>
4741
4742       </div>
4743       <div class="tags">
4744
4745
4746         Tags: <a href="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>.
4747
4748
4749       </div>
4750     </div>
4751     <div class="padding"></div>
4752
4753     <div class="entry">
4754       <div class="title">
4755         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_home_and_release_1_0_for_netgroup_and_innetgr__aka_ng_utils_.html">New home and release 1.0 for netgroup and innetgr (aka ng-utils)</a>
4756       </div>
4757       <div class="date">
4758         22nd February 2014
4759       </div>
4760       <div class="body">
4761         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
4762 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
4763 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
4764 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
4765 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
4766 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
4767 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
4768 proper home since then.</p>
4769
4770 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
4771 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
4772 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
4773 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
4774 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
4775
4776 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
4777 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
4778 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
4779 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
4780 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
4781 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
4782 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
4783 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
4784 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
4785
4786       </div>
4787       <div class="tags">
4788
4789
4790         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4791
4792
4793       </div>
4794     </div>
4795     <div class="padding"></div>
4796
4797     <div class="entry">
4798       <div class="title">
4799         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
4800       </div>
4801       <div class="date">
4802          3rd February 2014
4803       </div>
4804       <div class="body">
4805         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
4806 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
4807 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
4808 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
4809 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
4810 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
4811 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
4812 <a href="http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz">http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/debian-hurd.img.tar.gz</a>,
4813 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
4814
4815 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
4816 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
4817 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
4818 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
4819 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
4820 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
4821
4822 <p><blockquote><pre>
4823 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
4824 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
4825 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
4826 dhclient /dev/eth0
4827 </pre></blockquote></p>
4828
4829 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
4830 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
4831 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
4832
4833 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
4834 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
4835 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
4836 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
4837 side.</p>
4838
4839 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
4840 stuff:</p>
4841
4842 <p><blockquote><pre>
4843 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4844 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
4845 EOF
4846 apt-get update
4847 apt-get dist-upgrade
4848 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
4849     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
4850 update-alternatives --config runsystem
4851 </pre></blockquote></p>
4852
4853 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
4854 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
4855 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
4856 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
4857 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
4858 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
4859 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
4860 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
4861 ssh instead.
4862
4863 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
4864 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
4865 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
4866 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
4867 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
4868 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
4869
4870 <p><blockquote><pre>
4871 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
4872 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
4873 EOF
4874 </pre></blockquote></p>
4875
4876 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
4877 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
4878 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
4879 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
4880
4881 <p><blockquote><pre>
4882 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
4883 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
4884 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
4885 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
4886 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
4887 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
4888 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
4889 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
4890 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
4891 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
4892 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
4893 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
4894 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
4895 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
4896 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
4897 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
4898 #
4899 </pre></blockquote></p>
4900
4901 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
4902 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
4903 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
4904 command line stuff.<p>
4905
4906       </div>
4907       <div class="tags">
4908
4909
4910         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>.
4911
4912
4913       </div>
4914     </div>
4915     <div class="padding"></div>
4916
4917     <div class="entry">
4918       <div class="title">
4919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_fist_full_of_non_anonymous_Bitcoins.html">A fist full of non-anonymous Bitcoins</a>
4920       </div>
4921       <div class="date">
4922         29th January 2014
4923       </div>
4924       <div class="body">
4925         <p>Bitcoin is a incredible use of peer to peer communication and
4926 encryption, allowing direct and immediate money transfer without any
4927 central control.  It is sometimes claimed to be ideal for illegal
4928 activity, which I believe is quite a long way from the truth.  At least
4929 I would not conduct illegal money transfers using a system where the
4930 details of every transaction are kept forever.  This point is
4931 investigated in
4932 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">USENIX ;login:</a>
4933 from December 2013, in the article
4934 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login/articles/03_meiklejohn-online.pdf">A
4935 Fistful of Bitcoins - Characterizing Payments Among Men with No
4936 Names</a>" by Sarah Meiklejohn, Marjori Pomarole,Grant Jordan, Kirill
4937 Levchenko, Damon McCoy, Geoffrey M. Voelker, and Stefan Savage.  They
4938 analyse the transaction log in the Bitcoin system, using it to find
4939 addresses belong to individuals and organisations and follow the flow
4940 of money from both Bitcoin theft and trades on Silk Road to where the
4941 money end up.  This is how they wrap up their article:</p>
4942
4943 <p><blockquote>
4944 <p>"To demonstrate the usefulness of this type of analysis, we turned
4945 our attention to criminal activity. In the Bitcoin economy, criminal
4946 activity can appear in a number of forms, such as dealing drugs on
4947 Silk Road or simply stealing someone else’s bitcoins. We followed the
4948 flow of bitcoins out of Silk Road (in particular, from one notorious
4949 address) and from a number of highly publicized thefts to see whether
4950 we could track the bitcoins to known services. Although some of the
4951 thieves attempted to use sophisticated mixing techniques (or possibly
4952 mix services) to obscure the flow of bitcoins, for the most part
4953 tracking the bitcoins was quite straightforward, and we ultimately saw
4954 large quantities of bitcoins flow to a variety of exchanges directly
4955 from the point of theft (or the withdrawal from Silk Road).</p>
4956
4957 <p>As acknowledged above, following stolen bitcoins to the point at
4958 which they are deposited into an exchange does not in itself identify
4959 the thief; however, it does enable further de-anonymization in the
4960 case in which certain agencies can determine (through, for example,
4961 subpoena power) the real-world owner of the account into which the
4962 stolen bitcoins were deposited.  Because such exchanges seem to serve
4963 as chokepoints into and out of the Bitcoin economy (i.e., there are
4964 few alternative ways to cash out), we conclude that using Bitcoin for
4965 money laundering or other illicit purposes does not (at least at
4966 present) seem to be particularly attractive."</p>
4967 </blockquote><p>
4968
4969 <p>These researches are not the first to analyse the Bitcoin
4970 transaction log.  The 2011 paper
4971 "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.4524">An Analysis of Anonymity in
4972 the Bitcoin System</A>" by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan is
4973 summarized like this:</p>
4974
4975 <p><blockquote>
4976 "Anonymity in Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic currency system, is a
4977 complicated issue. Within the system, users are identified by
4978 public-keys only. An attacker wishing to de-anonymize its users will
4979 attempt to construct the one-to-many mapping between users and
4980 public-keys and associate information external to the system with the
4981 users. Bitcoin tries to prevent this attack by storing the mapping of
4982 a user to his or her public-keys on that user's node only and by
4983 allowing each user to generate as many public-keys as required. In
4984 this chapter we consider the topological structure of two networks
4985 derived from Bitcoin's public transaction history. We show that the
4986 two networks have a non-trivial topological structure, provide
4987 complementary views of the Bitcoin system and have implications for
4988 anonymity. We combine these structures with external information and
4989 techniques such as context discovery and flow analysis to investigate
4990 an alleged theft of Bitcoins, which, at the time of the theft, had a
4991 market value of approximately half a million U.S. dollars."
4992 </blockquote></p>
4993
4994 <p>I hope these references can help kill the urban myth that Bitcoin
4995 is anonymous.  It isn't really a good fit for illegal activites.  Use
4996 cash if you need to stay anonymous, at least until regular DNA
4997 sampling of notes and coins become the norm. :)</p>
4998
4999 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5000 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5001 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5002
5003       </div>
5004       <div class="tags">
5005
5006
5007         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
5008
5009
5010       </div>
5011     </div>
5012     <div class="padding"></div>
5013
5014     <div class="entry">
5015       <div class="title">
5016         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
5017       </div>
5018       <div class="date">
5019         14th January 2014
5020       </div>
5021       <div class="body">
5022         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
5023 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5024 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5025 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5026 the source.  The company behind it provide
5027 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5028 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5029 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
5030 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
5031 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
5032 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
5033 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
5034 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
5035 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
5036 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
5037 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
5038 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
5039 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
5040 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
5041 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
5042 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
5043 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
5044 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
5045 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
5046
5047 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
5048
5049 <ul>
5050
5051   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
5052   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
5053   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
5054
5055 </ul>
5056
5057 <p>You can
5058 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5059 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5060 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5061 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5062 include a test suite check.</p>
5063
5064       </div>
5065       <div class="tags">
5066
5067
5068         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5069
5070
5071       </div>
5072     </div>
5073     <div class="padding"></div>
5074
5075     <div class="entry">
5076       <div class="title">
5077         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Dominik_George.html">Debian Edu interview: Dominik George</a>
5078       </div>
5079       <div class="date">
5080         25th December 2013
5081       </div>
5082       <div class="body">
5083         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5084 project</a> consist of both newcomers and old timers, and this time I
5085 was able to get an interview with a newcomer in the project who showed
5086 up on the IRC channel a few weeks ago to let us know about his
5087 successful installation of Debian Edu Wheezy in his School.  Say hello
5088 to <a href="https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/Natureshadow">Dominik
5089 George</a>.</p>
5090
5091 <!-- http://www.dominik-george.de/images/foto.jpg -->
5092
5093 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5094
5095 <p>I am a 23 year-old student from Germany who has spent half of his
5096 life with open source. In "real life", I am, as already mentioned, a
5097 student in the fields of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
5098 Information Technologies and Anglistics. Due to my (only partially
5099 voluntary) huge engagement in the open source world, these things are
5100 a bit vacant right now however.</p>
5101
5102 <p>I also have been working as a project teacher at a Gymasnium
5103 (public school) for various years now. I took up that work some time
5104 around 2005 when still attending that school myself and have continued
5105 it until today. I also had been running the (kind of very advanced)
5106 network of that school together with a team of very interested and
5107 talented students in the age of 11 to 15 years, who took the chance to
5108 learn a lot about open source and networking before I left the school
5109 to help building another school's informational education concept from
5110 scratch.</p>
5111
5112 <p>That said, one might see me as a kind of "glue" between school kids
5113 and the elderly of teachers as well as between the open source
5114 ecosystem and the (even more complex) educational ecosystem.</p>
5115
5116 <p>When I am not busy with open source or education, I like Geocaching
5117 and cycling.</p>
5118
5119 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5120 project?</strong></p>
5121
5122 <p>I think that happened some time around 2009 when I first attended
5123 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">FrOSCon</a> and visited the project
5124 booth. I think I wasn't too interested back then because I used to
5125 have an attitude of disliking software that does too much stuff on its
5126 own. Maybe I was too inexperienced to realise the upsides of an
5127 "out-of-the-box" solution ;).</p>
5128
5129 <p>The first time I actively talked to Skolelinux people was at
5130 <a href="http://www.openrheinruhr.de">OpenRheinRuhr</a> 2011 when the
5131 BiscuIT project, a home-grewn software used by my school for various
5132 really cool things from timetables and class contact lists to lunch
5133 ordering, student ID card printing and project elections first got to
5134 a stage where it could have been published. I asked the Skolelinux
5135 guys running the booth if the project were interested in it and gave a
5136 small demonstration, but there wasn't any real feedback and the guys
5137 seemed rather uninterested.</p>
5138
5139 <p>After I left the school where I developed the software, it got
5140 mostly lost, but I am now reimplementing it for my new school. I have
5141 reusability and compatibility in mind, and I hop there will be a new
5142 basis for contributing it to the Skolelinux project ;)!</p>
5143
5144 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5145 Edu?</strong></p>
5146
5147 <p>The most important advantage seems to be that it "just
5148 works". After overcoming some minor (but still very annoying) glitches
5149 in the installer, I got a fully functional, working school network,
5150 without the month-long hassle I experienced when setting all that up
5151 from scratch in earlier years. And above that, it rocked - I didn't
5152 have any real hardware at hand, because the school was just founded
5153 and has no money whatsoever, so I installed a combined server (main
5154 server, terminal services and workstation) in a VM on my personal
5155 notebook, bridging the LTSP network interface to the ethernet port,
5156 and then PXE-booted the Windows notebooks that were lying around from
5157 it. I could use 8 clients without any performance issues, by using a
5158 tiny little VM on a tiny little notebook. I think that's enough to say
5159 that it rocks!</p>
5160
5161 <p>Secondly, there are marketing reasons. Life's bad, and so no
5162 politician will ever permit a setup described as "Debian, an universal
5163 operating system, with some really cool educational tools" while they
5164 will be jsut fine with "Skolelinux, a single-purpose solution for your
5165 school network", even if both turn out to be the very same thing (yes,
5166 this is unfair towards the Skolelinux project, and must not be taken
5167 too seriously - you get the idea, anyway).</p>
5168
5169 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5170 Edu?</strong></p>
5171
5172 <p>I have not been involved with Skolelinux long enough to really
5173 answer this question in a fair way. Thus, please allow me to put it in
5174 other words: "What do you expect from Skolelinux to keep liking it?" I
5175 can list a few points about that:</p>
5176
5177 <ul>
5178
5179  <li>always strive to get all things integrated into Debian upstream
5180  <li>be open to discussion about changes and the like, even with newcomers
5181  <li>be helpful at being helpful ;)
5182
5183 </ul>
5184
5185 <p>I'm really sorry I cannot say much more about that :(!</p>
5186
5187 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5188
5189 <p>First of all, all software I use is free and open. I have abandoned
5190 all non-free software (except for firmware on my darned phone) this
5191 year.</p>
5192
5193 <p>I run Debian GNU/Linux on all PC systems I use. On that, I mostly
5194 run text tools. I use
5195 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/mksh.htm">mksh</a> as shell,
5196 <a href="https://www.mirbsd.org/jupp.htm">jupp</a> as very advanced
5197 text editor (I even got the developer to help me write a script/macro
5198 based full-featured student management software with the two),
5199 <a href="http://mcabber.com/">mcabber</a> for XMPP and
5200 <a href="http://www.irssi.org/">irssi</a> for IRC. For that overly
5201 coloured world called the WWW, I use
5202 <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/">Iceweasel
5203 (Firefox)</a>. Oh, and <a href="http://www.mutt.org/">mutt</a> for
5204 e-mail.</p>
5205
5206 <p>However, while I am personally aware of the fact that text tools
5207 are more efficient and powerful than anything else, I also use (or at
5208 least operate) some tools that are suitable to bring open source to
5209 kids. One of these things is <a href="http://jappix.org/">Jappix</a>,
5210 which I already introduced to some kids even before they got aware of
5211 Facebook, making them see for themselves that they do not need
5212 Facebook now ;).</p>
5213
5214 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5215 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5216
5217 <p>Well, that's a two-sided thing. One side is what I believe, and one
5218 side is what I have experienced.</p>
5219
5220 <p>I believe that the right strategy is showing them the benefits. But
5221 that won't work out as long as the acceptance of free alternatives
5222 grows globally. What I mean is that if all the kids are almost forced
5223 to use Windows, Facebook, Skype, you name it at home, they will not
5224 see why they would want to use alternatives at school. I have seen
5225 students take seat in front of a fully-functional, modern Debian
5226 desktop that could do anything their Windows at home could do, and
5227 they jsut refused to use it because "Linux sucks". It is something
5228 that makes the council of our city spend around 600000 € to buy
5229 software - not including hardware, mind you - for operating school
5230 networks, and for installing a system that, as has been proved, does
5231 not work. For those of you readers who are good at maths, have you
5232 already found out how many lives could have been saved with that money
5233 if we had instead used it to bring education to parts of the world
5234 that need it? I have, and found it to be nothing less dramatic than
5235 plain criminal.</p>
5236
5237 <p>That said, the only feasible way appears to be the bottom up
5238 method. We have to bring free software to kids and parents. I have
5239 founded an association named
5240 <a href="https://www.teckids.org">Teckids</a> here in Germany that does
5241 just that. We organise several events for kids and adolescents in the
5242 area of free and open source software, for example the
5243 <a href="http://kids.froscon.org">FrogLabs</a>, which share staff with
5244 Teckids and are the youth programme of
5245 <a href="http://www.froscon.org">the Free and Open Source Software
5246 Conference (FrOSCon)</a>. We do a lot more than most other conferences
5247 - this year, we first offered the FrogLabs as a holiday camp for kids
5248 aged 10 to 16. It was a huge success, with approx. 30 kids taking part
5249 and learning with and about free software through a whole weekend. All
5250 of us had a lot of fun, and the results were really exciting.</p>
5251
5252 <p>Apart from that, we are preparing a campaign that is supposed to bring
5253 the message of free alternatives to stuff kids use every day to them and
5254 their parents, e.g. the use of Jabber / Jappix instead of Facebook and
5255 Skype. To make that possible, we are planning to get together a team of
5256 clever kids who understand very well what their peers need and can bring
5257 it across to them. So we will have a peer-driven network of adolescents
5258 who teach each other and collect feedback from the community of minors.
5259 We then take that feedback and our own experience to work closely with
5260 open source projects, such as Skolelinux or Jappix, at improving their
5261 software in a way that makes it more and more attractive for the target
5262 group. At least I hope that we will have good cooperation with
5263 Skolelinux in the future ;)!</p>
5264
5265 <p>So in conclusion, what I believe is that, if it weren't for the world
5266 being so bad, it should be very clear to the political decision makers
5267 that the only way to go nowadays is free software for various reasons,
5268 but I have learnt that the only way that seems to work is bottom up.</p>
5269
5270 <!--
5271
5272 >  * Who should be interviewed with this questions in the future?
5273
5274 That's probably the hardest question of them all, as I do not know the
5275 community. However, I would be willing to do the following:
5276
5277  <li>Run an interview with a German headteacher who is very open to
5278    free software, and also prefers it, but cannot really use it because
5279    of the decision makers above;
5280  <li>Run interviews with some kids, both with and without previous
5281    knowledge about free software
5282
5283 If that is wanted, just let me know ;).
5284
5285 -->
5286
5287       </div>
5288       <div class="tags">
5289
5290
5291         Tags: <a href="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>.
5292
5293
5294       </div>
5295     </div>
5296     <div class="padding"></div>
5297
5298     <div class="entry">
5299       <div class="title">
5300         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Klaus_Knopper.html">Debian Edu interview: Klaus Knopper</a>
5301       </div>
5302       <div class="date">
5303          6th December 2013
5304       </div>
5305       <div class="body">
5306         <p>It has been a while since I managed to publish the last interview,
5307 but the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5308 Skolelinux</a> community is still going strong, and yesterday we even
5309 had a new school administrator show up on
5310 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a> to share
5311 his success story with installing Debian Edu at their school.  This
5312 time I have been able to get some helpful comments from the creator of
5313 Knoppix, Klaus Knopper, who was involved in a Skolelinux project in
5314 Germany a few years ago.</p>
5315
5316 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
5317
5318 <p>I am Klaus Knopper.  I have a master degree in electrical
5319 engineering, and is currently professor in information management at
5320 the university of applied sciences Kaiserslautern / Germany and
5321 freelance Open Source software developer and consultant.</p>
5322
5323 <p>All of this is pretty much of the work I spend my days with. Apart
5324 from teaching, I'm also conducting some more or less experimental
5325 projects like the <a href="http://www.knoppix.org">Knoppix GNU/Linux live
5326 system</a> (Debian-based like Skolelinux),
5327 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-adriane/index-en.html">ADRIANE</a>
5328 (a blind-friendly talking desktop system) and
5329 <a href="http://www.knopper.net/linbo/index-en.html">LINBO</a>
5330 (Linux-based network boot console, a fast remote install and repair
5331 system supporting various operating systems).</p>
5332
5333 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
5334 project?</strong></p>
5335
5336 <p>The credit for this have to go to Kurt Gramlich, who is the German
5337 coordinator for Skolelinux.  We were looking for an all-in-one open
5338 source community-supported distribution for schools, and Kurt
5339 introduced us to Skolelinux for this purpose.</p>
5340
5341 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5342 Edu?</strong></p>
5343
5344 <ul>
5345   <li>Quick installation,</li>
5346   <li>works (almost) out of the box,</li>
5347   <li>contains many useful software packages for teaching and learning,</li>
5348   <li>is a purely community-based distro and not controlled by a
5349     single company,</li>
5350   <li>has a large number of supporters and teachers who share their
5351     experience and problem solutions.</li>
5352 </ul>
5353
5354 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
5355 Edu?</strong></p>
5356
5357 <ul>
5358   <li>Skolelinux is - as we had to learn - not easily upgradable to
5359   the next version.  Opposed to its genuine Debian base, upgrading to
5360   a new version means a full new installation from scratch to get it
5361   working again reliably.
5362
5363   <li>Skolelinux is based on Debian/stable, and therefore always a
5364   little outdated in terms of program versions compared to Edubuntu or
5365   similar educational Linux distros, which rather use Debian/testing
5366   as their base.
5367
5368   <li>Skolelinux has some very self-opinionated and stubborn default
5369   configuration which in my opinion adds unnecessary complexity and is
5370   not always suitable for a schools needs, the preset network
5371   configuration is actually a core definition feature of Skolelinux
5372   and not easy to change, so schools sometimes have to change their
5373   network configuration to make it "Skolelinux-compatible".
5374
5375   <li>Some proposed extensions, which were made available as
5376   contribution, like secure examination mode and lecture material
5377   distribution and collection, were not accepted into the mainline
5378   Skolelinux development and are now not easy to maintain in the
5379   future because of Skolelinux somewhat undeterministic update
5380   schemes.</li>
5381
5382   <li>Skolelinux has only a very tiny number of base developers
5383   compared to Debian.</li>
5384
5385 </ul>
5386
5387 <p>For these reasons and experience from our project, I would now
5388 rather consider using plain Debian for schools next time, until
5389 Skolelinux is more closely integrated into Debian and becomes
5390 upgradeable without reinstallation.</p>
5391
5392 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
5393
5394 <p>GNU/Linux with LXDE desktop, bash for interactive dialog and
5395 programming, texlive for documentation and correspondence,
5396 occasionally LibreOffice for document format conversion. Various
5397 programming languages for teaching.</p>
5398
5399 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
5400 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
5401
5402 <p>Strong arguments are</p>
5403
5404 <ul>
5405
5406   <li>Knowledge is free, and so should be methods and tools for
5407     teaching and learning.</li>
5408
5409   <li>Students can learn with and use the same software at school, at
5410     home, and at their working place without running into license or
5411     conversion problems.</li>
5412
5413   <li>Closed source or proprietary software hides knowledge rather
5414     than exposing it, and proprietary software vendors try to bind
5415     customers to certain products.  But teachers need to teach
5416     science, not products.</li>
5417
5418   <li>If you have everything you for daily work as open source, what
5419     would you need proprietary software for?</li>
5420
5421 </ul>
5422
5423       </div>
5424       <div class="tags">
5425
5426
5427         Tags: <a href="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>.
5428
5429
5430       </div>
5431     </div>
5432     <div class="padding"></div>
5433
5434     <div class="entry">
5435       <div class="title">
5436         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnadsnett_for_alle__a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo__take_shape.html">Dugnadsnett for alle, a wireless community network in Oslo, take shape</a>
5437       </div>
5438       <div class="date">
5439         30th November 2013
5440       </div>
5441       <div class="body">
5442         <p>If you want the ability to electronically communicate directly with
5443 your neighbors and friends using a network controlled by your peers in
5444 stead of centrally controlled by a few corporations, or would like to
5445 experiment with interesting network technology, the
5446 <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">Dugnasnett for alle i Oslo</a>
5447 might be project for you.  39 mesh nodes are currently being planned,
5448 in the freshly started initiative from NUUG and Hackeriet to create a
5449 wireless community network.  The work is inspired by
5450 <a href="http://freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a>,
5451 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan
5452 Network</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roofnet">Roofnet</a>
5453 and other successful mesh networks around the globe.  Two days ago we
5454 held a workshop to try to get people started on setting up their own
5455 mesh node, and there we decided to create a new mailing list
5456 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/dugnadsnett">dugnadsnett
5457 (at) nuug.no</a> and IRC channel
5458 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#dugnadsnett.no">#dugnadsnett.no</a> to
5459 coordinate the work.  See also the NUUG blog post
5460 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/E_postliste_og_IRC_kanal_for_Dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">announcing
5461 the mailing list and IRC channel</a>.</p>
5462
5463       </div>
5464       <div class="tags">
5465
5466
5467         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5468
5469
5470       </div>
5471     </div>
5472     <div class="padding"></div>
5473
5474     <div class="entry">
5475       <div class="title">
5476         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
5477       </div>
5478       <div class="date">
5479         24th November 2013
5480       </div>
5481       <div class="body">
5482         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
5483 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
5484 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
5485 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
5486 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
5487 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
5488 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
5489 is working on.  I checked the
5490 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
5491 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
5492 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
5493 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
5494 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
5495 These are the release notes:</p>
5496
5497 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
5498
5499 <ul>
5500
5501   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
5502    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
5503    up.</li>
5504
5505   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
5506
5507   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
5508    Matthias Klose.</li>
5509
5510   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
5511    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
5512
5513   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
5514    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
5515    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
5516
5517 </ul>
5518
5519 <p>You can
5520 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
5521 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
5522 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
5523 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
5524 include a testsuite check.</p>
5525
5526       </div>
5527       <div class="tags">
5528
5529
5530         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5531
5532
5533       </div>
5534     </div>
5535     <div class="padding"></div>
5536
5537     <div class="entry">
5538       <div class="title">
5539         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/All_drones_should_be_radio_marked_with_what_they_do_and_who_they_belong_to.html">All drones should be radio marked with what they do and who they belong to</a>
5540       </div>
5541       <div class="date">
5542         21st November 2013
5543       </div>
5544       <div class="body">
5545         <p>Drones, flying robots, are getting more and more popular.  The most
5546 know ones are the killer drones used by some government to murder
5547 people they do not like without giving them the chance of a fair
5548 trial, but the technology have many good uses too, from mapping and
5549 forest maintenance to photography and search and rescue.  I am sure it
5550 is just a question of time before "bad drones" are in the hands of
5551 private enterprises and not only state criminals but petty criminals
5552 too.  The drone technology is very useful and very dangerous.  To have
5553 some control over the use of drones, I agree with Daniel Suarez in his
5554 TED talk
5555 "<a href="https://archive.org/details/DanielSuarez_2013G">The kill
5556 decision shouldn't belong to a robot</a>", where he suggested this
5557 little gem to keep the good while limiting the bad use of drones:</p>
5558
5559 <blockquote>
5560
5561 <p>Each robot and drone should have a cryptographically signed
5562 I.D. burned in at the factory that can be used to track its movement
5563 through public spaces. We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on
5564 aircraft. This is no different. And every citizen should be able to
5565 download an app that shows the population of drones and autonomous
5566 vehicles moving through public spaces around them, both right now and
5567 historically. And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
5568 to detect rogue drones, and instead of sending killer drones of their
5569 own up to shoot them down, they should notify humans to their
5570 presence. And in certain very high-security areas, perhaps civic
5571 drones would snare them and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.</p>
5572
5573 <p>But notice, this is more an immune system than a weapons system. It
5574 would allow us to avail ourselves of the use of autonomous vehicles
5575 and drones while still preserving our open, civil society.</p>
5576
5577 </blockquote>
5578
5579 <p>The key is that <em>every citizen</em> should be able to read the
5580 radio beacons sent from the drones in the area, to be able to check
5581 both the government and others use of drones.  For such control to be
5582 effective, everyone must be able to do it.  What should such beacon
5583 contain?  At least formal owner, purpose, contact information and GPS
5584 location.  Probably also the origin and target position of the current
5585 flight.  And perhaps some registration number to be able to look up
5586 the drone in a central database tracking their movement.  Robots
5587 should not have privacy.  It is people who need privacy.</p>
5588
5589       </div>
5590       <div class="tags">
5591
5592
5593         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
5594
5595
5596       </div>
5597     </div>
5598     <div class="padding"></div>
5599
5600     <div class="entry">
5601       <div class="title">
5602         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_wireless_community_network_in_Oslo_.html">Lets make a wireless community network in Oslo!</a>
5603       </div>
5604       <div class="date">
5605         13th November 2013
5606       </div>
5607       <div class="body">
5608         <p>Today NUUG and Hackeriet announced
5609 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Bli_med___bygge_dugnadsnett_for_alle_i_Oslo.shtml">our
5610 plans to join forces and create a wireless community network in
5611 Oslo</a>.  The workshop to help people get started will take place
5612 Thursday 2013-11-28, but we already are collecting the geolocation of
5613 people joining forces to make this happen.  We have
5614 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/oslo-nodes.geojson">9
5615 locations plotted on the map</a>, but we will need more before we have
5616 a connected mesh spread across Oslo.  If this sound interesting to
5617 you, please join us at the workshop.  If you are too impatient to wait
5618 15 days, please join us on the IRC channel
5619 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nuug">#nuug on irc.freenode.net</a>
5620 right away. :)</p>
5621
5622       </div>
5623       <div class="tags">
5624
5625
5626         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5627
5628
5629       </div>
5630     </div>
5631     <div class="padding"></div>
5632
5633     <div class="entry">
5634       <div class="title">
5635         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Running_TP_Link_MR3040_as_a_batman_adv_mesh_node_using_openwrt.html">Running TP-Link MR3040 as a batman-adv mesh node using openwrt</a>
5636       </div>
5637       <div class="date">
5638         10th November 2013
5639       </div>
5640       <div class="body">
5641         <p>Continuing my research into mesh networking, I was recommended to
5642 use TP-Link 3040 and 3600 access points as mesh nodes, and the pair I
5643 bought arrived on Friday.  Here are my notes on how to set up the
5644 MR3040 as a mesh node using
5645 <a href="http://www.openwrt.org/">OpenWrt</a>.</p>
5646
5647 <p>I started by following the instructions on the OpenWRT wiki for
5648 <a href="http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3040">TL-MR3040</a>,
5649 and downloaded
5650 <a href="http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin">the
5651 recommended firmware image</a>
5652 (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-mr3040-v2-squashfs-factory.bin) and
5653 uploaded it into the original web interface.  The flashing went fine,
5654 and the machine was available via telnet on the ethernet port.  After
5655 logging in and setting the root password, ssh was available and I
5656 could start to set it up as a batman-adv mesh node.</p>
5657
5658 <p>I started off by reading the instructions from
5659 <a href="http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php?title=Antoine's_Research">Wireless
5660 Africa</a>, which had quite a lot of useful information, but
5661 eventually I followed the recipe from the Open Mesh wiki for
5662 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Batman-adv-openwrt-config">using
5663 batman-adv on OpenWrt</a>.  A small snag was the fact that the
5664 <tt>opkg install kmod-batman-adv</tt> command did not work as it
5665 should.  The batman-adv kernel module would fail to load because its
5666 dependency crc16 was not already loaded.  I
5667 <a href="https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/14452">reported the bug</a> to
5668 the openwrt project and hope it will be fixed soon.  But the problem
5669 only seem to affect initial testing of batman-adv, as configuration
5670 seem to work when booting from scratch.</p>
5671
5672 <p>The setup is done using files in /etc/config/.  I did not bridge
5673 the Ethernet and mesh interfaces this time, to be able to hook up the
5674 box on my local network and log into it for configuration updates.
5675 The following files were changed and look like this after modifying
5676 them:</p>
5677
5678 <p><tt>/etc/config/network</tt></p>
5679
5680 <pre>
5681
5682 config interface 'loopback'
5683         option ifname 'lo'
5684         option proto 'static'
5685         option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
5686         option netmask '255.0.0.0'
5687
5688 config globals 'globals'
5689         option ula_prefix 'fdbf:4c12:3fed::/48'
5690
5691 config interface 'lan'
5692         option ifname 'eth0'
5693         option type 'bridge'
5694         option proto 'dhcp'
5695         option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
5696         option netmask '255.255.255.0'
5697         option hostname 'tl-mr3040'
5698         option ip6assign '60'
5699
5700 config interface 'mesh'
5701         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5702         option mtu '1528'
5703         option proto 'batadv'
5704         option mesh 'bat0'
5705 </pre>
5706
5707 <p><tt>/etc/config/wireless</tt></p>
5708 <pre>
5709
5710 config wifi-device 'radio0'
5711         option type 'mac80211'
5712         option channel '11'
5713         option hwmode '11ng'
5714         option path 'platform/ar933x_wmac'
5715         option htmode 'HT20'
5716         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
5717         list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
5718         list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
5719         list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
5720         option disabled '0'
5721
5722 config wifi-iface 'wmesh'
5723         option device 'radio0'
5724         option ifname 'adhoc0'
5725         option network 'mesh'
5726         option encryption 'none'
5727         option mode 'adhoc'
5728         option bssid '02:BA:00:00:00:01'
5729         option ssid 'meshfx@hackeriet'
5730 </pre>
5731 <p><tt>/etc/config/batman-adv</tt></p>
5732 <pre>
5733
5734 config 'mesh' 'bat0'
5735         option interfaces 'adhoc0'
5736         option 'aggregated_ogms'
5737         option 'ap_isolation'
5738         option 'bonding'
5739         option 'fragmentation'
5740         option 'gw_bandwidth'
5741         option 'gw_mode'
5742         option 'gw_sel_class'
5743         option 'log_level'
5744         option 'orig_interval'
5745         option 'vis_mode'
5746         option 'bridge_loop_avoidance'
5747         option 'distributed_arp_table'
5748         option 'network_coding'
5749         option 'hop_penalty'
5750
5751 # yet another batX instance
5752 # config 'mesh' 'bat5'
5753 #       option 'interfaces' 'second_mesh'
5754 </pre>
5755
5756 <p>The mesh node is now operational.  I have yet to test its range,
5757 but I hope it is good.  I have not yet tested the TP-Link 3600 box
5758 still wrapped up in plastic.</p>
5759
5760       </div>
5761       <div class="tags">
5762
5763
5764         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
5765
5766
5767       </div>
5768     </div>
5769     <div class="padding"></div>
5770
5771     <div class="entry">
5772       <div class="title">
5773         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_init_d_boot_script_example_for_rsyslog.html">Debian init.d boot script example for rsyslog</a>
5774       </div>
5775       <div class="date">
5776          2nd November 2013
5777       </div>
5778       <div class="body">
5779         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
5780 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
5781 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
5782 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
5783 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
5784
5785 <p><pre>
5786 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
5787 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
5788 # Provides:          rsyslog
5789 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
5790 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
5791 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
5792 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
5793 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
5794 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
5795 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
5796 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
5797 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
5798 ### END INIT INFO
5799 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
5800 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
5801 </pre></p>
5802
5803 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
5804 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
5805 info/comments.</p>
5806
5807 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
5808 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
5809
5810 <p><pre>
5811 #!/bin/sh
5812
5813 # Define LSB log_* functions.
5814 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
5815 # and status_of_proc is working.
5816 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
5817
5818 #
5819 # Function that starts the daemon/service
5820
5821 #
5822 do_start()
5823 {
5824         # Return
5825         #   0 if daemon has been started
5826         #   1 if daemon was already running
5827         #   2 if daemon could not be started
5828         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
5829                 || return 1
5830         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
5831                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
5832                 || return 2
5833         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
5834         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
5835         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
5836 }
5837
5838 #
5839 # Function that stops the daemon/service
5840 #
5841 do_stop()
5842 {
5843         # Return
5844         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
5845         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
5846         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
5847         #   other if a failure occurred
5848         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5849         RETVAL="$?"
5850         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
5851         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
5852         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
5853         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
5854         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
5855         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
5856         # sleep for some time.
5857         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
5858         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
5859         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
5860         rm -f $PIDFILE
5861         return "$RETVAL"
5862 }
5863
5864 #
5865 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
5866 #
5867 do_reload() {
5868         #
5869         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
5870         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
5871         # then implement that here.
5872         #
5873         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
5874         return 0
5875 }
5876
5877 SCRIPTNAME=$1
5878 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
5879 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
5880 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
5881     script="$1"
5882     shift
5883     . $script
5884 else
5885     exit 0
5886 fi
5887
5888 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
5889 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
5890
5891 # Exit if the package is not installed
5892 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
5893
5894 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
5895 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
5896
5897 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
5898 . /lib/init/vars.sh
5899
5900 case "$1" in
5901   start)
5902         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
5903         do_start
5904         case "$?" in
5905                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5906                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5907         esac
5908         ;;
5909   stop)
5910         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
5911         do_stop
5912         case "$?" in
5913                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
5914                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
5915         esac
5916         ;;
5917   status)
5918         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
5919         ;;
5920   #reload|force-reload)
5921         #
5922         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
5923         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
5924         #
5925         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
5926         #do_reload
5927         #log_end_msg $?
5928         #;;
5929   restart|force-reload)
5930         #
5931         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
5932         # 'force-reload' alias
5933         #
5934         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
5935         do_stop
5936         case "$?" in
5937           0|1)
5938                 do_start
5939                 case "$?" in
5940                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
5941                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
5942                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
5943                 esac
5944                 ;;
5945           *)
5946                 # Failed to stop
5947                 log_end_msg 1
5948                 ;;
5949         esac
5950         ;;
5951   *)
5952         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
5953         exit 3
5954         ;;
5955 esac
5956
5957 :
5958 </pre></p>
5959
5960 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
5961 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
5962 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
5963 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
5964
5965 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
5966 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
5967 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
5968 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
5969 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
5970
5971       </div>
5972       <div class="tags">
5973
5974
5975         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>.
5976
5977
5978       </div>
5979     </div>
5980     <div class="padding"></div>
5981
5982     <div class="entry">
5983       <div class="title">
5984         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Browser_plugin_for_SPICE__spice_xpi__uploaded_to_Debian.html">Browser plugin for SPICE (spice-xpi) uploaded to Debian</a>
5985       </div>
5986       <div class="date">
5987          1st November 2013
5988       </div>
5989       <div class="body">
5990         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
5991 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
5992 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
5993 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
5994 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
5995 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
5996 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
5997 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
5998 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
5999 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6000 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6001 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6002
6003 <p>The source is now available from
6004 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary">http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/spice-xpi.git;a=summary</a>.</p>
6005
6006       </div>
6007       <div class="tags">
6008
6009
6010         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6011
6012
6013       </div>
6014     </div>
6015     <div class="padding"></div>
6016
6017     <div class="entry">
6018       <div class="title">
6019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Teaching_vmdebootstrap_to_create_Raspberry_Pi_SD_card_images.html">Teaching vmdebootstrap to create Raspberry Pi SD card images</a>
6020       </div>
6021       <div class="date">
6022         27th October 2013
6023       </div>
6024       <div class="body">
6025         <p>The
6026 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6027 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6028 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6029 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6030 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6031 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6032 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6033 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6034 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6035 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6036 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6037 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6038
6039 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6040 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6041 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6042 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6043 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6044 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6045 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6046 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6047 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6048 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6049 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6050 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6051 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6052 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6053 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6054 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6055 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6056 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6057 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6058 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6059 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6060 available from
6061 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6062 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6063
6064 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6065 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6066 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6067 list:</p>
6068
6069 <p><pre>
6070 #!/bin/sh
6071 set -e # Exit on first error
6072 rootdir="$1"
6073 cd "$rootdir"
6074 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6075 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6076 EOF
6077 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6078 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6079 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6080     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6081 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6082 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6083 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6084 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6085 </pre></p>
6086
6087 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6088 to build the image:</p>
6089
6090 <pre>
6091 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6092     --variant minbase \
6093     --arch armel \
6094     --distribution jessie \
6095     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6096     --image test.img \
6097     --size 600M \
6098     --bootsize 64M \
6099     --boottype vfat \
6100     --log-level debug \
6101     --verbose \
6102     --no-kernel \
6103     --no-extlinux \
6104     --root-password raspberry \
6105     --hostname raspberrypi \
6106     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6107     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6108     --package netbase \
6109     --package git-core \
6110     --package binutils \
6111     --package ca-certificates \
6112     --package wget \
6113     --package kmod
6114 </pre></p>
6115
6116 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6117 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6118 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6119 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6120 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6121 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6122 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6123
6124 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6125 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6126 build dependency list.</p>
6127
6128 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6129 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6130 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6131 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6132
6133       </div>
6134       <div class="tags">
6135
6136
6137         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>.
6138
6139
6140       </div>
6141     </div>
6142     <div class="padding"></div>
6143
6144     <div class="entry">
6145       <div class="title">
6146         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">A Raspberry Pi based batman-adv Mesh network node</a>
6147       </div>
6148       <div class="date">
6149         21st October 2013
6150       </div>
6151       <div class="body">
6152         <p>The last few days I have been experimenting with
6153 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki">the
6154 batman-adv mesh technology</a>.  I want to gain some experience to see
6155 if it will fit <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the
6156 Freedombox project</a>, and together with my neighbors try to build a
6157 mesh network around the park where I live.  Batman-adv is a layer 2
6158 mesh system ("ethernet" in other words), where the mesh network appear
6159 as if all the mesh clients are connected to the same switch.</p>
6160
6161 <p>My hardware of choice was the Linksys WRT54GL routers I had lying
6162 around, but I've been unable to get them working with batman-adv.  So
6163 instead, I started playing with a
6164 <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a>, and tried to
6165 get it working as a mesh node.  My idea is to use it to create a mesh
6166 node which function as a switch port, where everything connected to
6167 the Raspberry Pi ethernet plug is connected (bridged) to the mesh
6168 network.  This allow me to hook a wifi base station like the Linksys
6169 WRT54GL to the mesh by plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, and allow
6170 non-mesh clients to hook up to the mesh.  This in turn is useful for
6171 Android phones using <a href="http://servalproject.org/">the Serval
6172 Project</a> voip client, allowing every one around the playground to
6173 phone and message each other for free.  The reason is that Android
6174 phones do not see ad-hoc wifi networks (they are filtered away from
6175 the GUI view), and can not join the mesh without being rooted.  But if
6176 they are connected using a normal wifi base station, they can talk to
6177 every client on the local network.</p>
6178
6179 <p>To get this working, I've created a debian package
6180 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node">meshfx-node</a>
6181 and a script
6182 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/blob/master/build-rpi-mesh-node">build-rpi-mesh-node</a>
6183 to create the Raspberry Pi boot image.  I'm using Debian Jessie (and
6184 not Raspbian), to get more control over the packages available.
6185 Unfortunately a huge binary blob need to be inserted into the boot
6186 image to get it booting, but I'll ignore that for now.  Also, as
6187 Debian lack support for the CPU features available in the Raspberry
6188 Pi, the system do not use the hardware floating point unit.  I hope
6189 the routing performance isn't affected by the lack of hardware FPU
6190 support.</p>
6191
6192 <p>To create an image, run the following with a sudo enabled user
6193 after inserting the target SD card into the build machine:</p>
6194
6195 <p><pre>
6196 % wget -O build-rpi-mesh-node \
6197     https://raw.github.com/petterreinholdtsen/meshfx-node/master/build-rpi-mesh-node
6198 % sudo bash -x ./build-rpi-mesh-node > build.log 2>&1
6199 % dd if=/root/rpi/rpi_basic_jessie_$(date +%Y%m%d).img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M
6200 %
6201 </pre></p>
6202
6203 <p>Booting with the resulting SD card on a Raspberry PI with a USB
6204 wifi card inserted should give you a mesh node.  At least it does for
6205 me with a the wifi card I am using. The default mesh settings are the
6206 ones used by the Oslo mesh project at Hackeriet, as I mentioned in
6207 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">an
6208 earlier blog post about this mesh testing</a>.</p>
6209
6210 <p>The mesh node was not horribly expensive either.  I bought
6211 everything over the counter in shops nearby.  If I had ordered online
6212 from the lowest bidder, the price should be significantly lower:</p>
6213
6214 <p><table>
6215
6216 <tr><th>Supplier</th><th>Model</th><th>NOK</th></tr>
6217 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi model B</td><td>349.90</td></tr>
6218 <tr><td>Teknikkmagasinet</td><td>Raspberry Pi type B case</td><td>99.90</td></tr>
6219 <tr><td>Lefdal</td><td>Jensen Air:Link 25150</td><td>295.-</td></tr>
6220 <tr><td>Clas Ohlson</td><td>Kingston 16 GB SD card</td><td>199.-</td></tr>
6221 <tr><td>Total cost</td><td></td><td>943.80</td></tr>
6222
6223 </table></p>
6224
6225 <p>Now my mesh network at home consist of one laptop in the basement
6226 connected to my production network, one Raspberry Pi node on the 1th
6227 floor that can be seen by my neighbor across the park, and one
6228 play-node I use to develop the image building script.  And some times
6229 I hook up my work horse laptop to the mesh to test it.  I look forward
6230 to figuring out what kind of latency the batman-adv setup will give,
6231 and how much packet loss we will experience around the park. :)</p>
6232
6233       </div>
6234       <div class="tags">
6235
6236
6237         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6238
6239
6240       </div>
6241     </div>
6242     <div class="padding"></div>
6243
6244     <div class="entry">
6245       <div class="title">
6246         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot_moved_to_github.html">Perl library to control the Spykee robot moved to github</a>
6247       </div>
6248       <div class="date">
6249         19th October 2013
6250       </div>
6251       <div class="body">
6252         <p>Back in 2010, I created a Perl library to talk to
6253 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spykee">the Spykee robot</a>
6254 (with two belts, wifi, USB and Linux) and made it available from my
6255 web page.  Today I concluded that it should move to a site that is
6256 easier to use to cooperate with others, and moved it to github.  If
6257 you got a Spykee robot, you might want to check out
6258 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/libspykee-perl">the
6259 libspykee-perl github repository</a>.</p>
6260
6261       </div>
6262       <div class="tags">
6263
6264
6265         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>.
6266
6267
6268       </div>
6269     </div>
6270     <div class="padding"></div>
6271
6272     <div class="entry">
6273       <div class="title">
6274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Good_causes__Debian_Outreach_Program_for_Women__EFF_documenting_the_spying_and_Open_access_in_Norway.html">Good causes: Debian Outreach Program for Women, EFF documenting the spying and Open access in Norway</a>
6275       </div>
6276       <div class="date">
6277         15th October 2013
6278       </div>
6279       <div class="body">
6280         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6281 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6282 these. :)</p>
6283
6284 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6285 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6286 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6287 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6288 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6289 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6290 hope you will to. :)</p>
6291
6292 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6293 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6294 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6295 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6296 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6297
6298 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6299 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6300 statement under the heading
6301 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6302 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6303 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6304 too.</p>
6305
6306       </div>
6307       <div class="tags">
6308
6309
6310         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
6311
6312
6313       </div>
6314     </div>
6315     <div class="padding"></div>
6316
6317     <div class="entry">
6318       <div class="title">
6319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oslo_community_mesh_network___with_NUUG_and_Hackeriet_at_Hausmania.html">Oslo community mesh network - with NUUG and Hackeriet at Hausmania</a>
6320       </div>
6321       <div class="date">
6322         11th October 2013
6323       </div>
6324       <div class="body">
6325         <p>Wireless mesh networks are self organising and self healing
6326 networks that can be used to connect computers across small and large
6327 areas, depending on the radio technology used.  Normal wifi equipment
6328 can be used to create home made radio networks, and there are several
6329 successful examples like
6330 <a href="http://www.freifunk.net/">Freifunk</a> and
6331 <a href="http://www.awmn.net/">Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network</a>
6332 (see
6333 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region#Greece">wikipedia
6334 for a large list</a>) around the globe.  To give you an idea how it
6335 work, check out the nice overview of the Kiel Freifunk community which
6336 can be seen from their
6337 <a href="http://freifunk.in-kiel.de/ffmap/nodes.html">dynamically
6338 updated node graph and map</a>, where one can see how the mesh nodes
6339 automatically handle routing and recover from nodes disappearing.
6340 There is also a small community mesh network group in Oslo, Norway,
6341 and that is the main topic of this blog post.</p>
6342
6343 <p>I've wanted to check out mesh networks for a while now, and hoped
6344 to do it as part of my involvement with the <a
6345 href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG member organisation</a> community, and
6346 my recent involvement in
6347 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the Freedombox project</a>
6348 finally lead me to give mesh networks some priority, as I suspect a
6349 Freedombox should use mesh networks to connect neighbours and family
6350 when possible, given that most communication between people are
6351 between those nearby (as shown for example by research on Facebook
6352 communication patterns).  It also allow people to communicate without
6353 any central hub to tap into for those that want to listen in on the
6354 private communication of citizens, which have become more and more
6355 important over the years.</p>
6356
6357 <p>So far I have only been able to find one group of people in Oslo
6358 working on community mesh networks, over at the hack space
6359 <a href="http://hackeriet.no/">Hackeriet</a> at Husmania.  They seem to
6360 have started with some Freifunk based effort using OLSR, called
6361 <a href="http://oslo.freifunk.net/index.php?title=Main_Page">the Oslo
6362 Freifunk project</a>, but that effort is now dead and the people
6363 behind it have moved on to a batman-adv based system called
6364 <a href="http://meshfx.org/trac">meshfx</a>.  Unfortunately the wiki
6365 site for the Oslo Freifunk project is no longer possible to update to
6366 reflect this fact, so the old project page can't be updated to point to
6367 the new project.  A while back, the people at Hackeriet invited people
6368 from the Freifunk community to Oslo to talk about mesh networks.  I
6369 came across this video where Hans Jørgen Lysglimt interview the
6370 speakers about this talk (from
6371 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kd7CLkhSY">youtube</a>):</p>
6372
6373 <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N2Kd7CLkhSY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6374
6375 <p>I mentioned OLSR and batman-adv, which are mesh routing protocols.
6376 There are heaps of different protocols, and I am still struggling to
6377 figure out which one would be "best" for some definitions of best, but
6378 given that the community mesh group in Oslo is so small, I believe it
6379 is best to hook up with the existing one instead of trying to create a
6380 completely different setup, and thus I have decided to focus on
6381 batman-adv for now.  It sure help me to  know that the very cool
6382 <a href="http://www.servalproject.org/">Serval project in Australia</a>
6383 is using batman-adv as their meshing technology when it create a self
6384 organizing and self healing telephony system for disaster areas and
6385 less industrialized communities.  Check out this cool video presenting
6386 that project (from
6387 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qNfzJCQOA">youtube</a>):</p>
6388
6389 <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/30qNfzJCQOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
6390
6391 <p>According to the wikipedia page on
6392 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network">Wireless
6393 mesh network</a> there are around 70 competing schemes for routing
6394 packets across mesh networks, and OLSR, B.A.T.M.A.N. and
6395 B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are protocols used by several free software
6396 based community mesh networks.</p>
6397
6398 <p>The batman-adv protocol is a bit special, as it provide layer 2
6399 (as in ethernet ) routing, allowing ipv4 and ipv6 to work on the same
6400 network.  One way to think about it is that it provide a mesh based
6401 vlan you can bridge to or handle like any other vlan connected to your
6402 computer.  The required drivers are already in the Linux kernel at
6403 least since Debian Wheezy, and it is fairly easy to set up.  A
6404 <a href="http://www.open-mesh.org/projects/batman-adv/wiki/Quick-start-guide">good
6405 introduction</a> is available from the Open Mesh project.  These are
6406 the key settings needed to join the Oslo meshfx network:</p>
6407
6408 <p><table>
6409 <tr><th>Setting</th><th>Value</th></tr>
6410 <tr><td>Protocol / kernel module</td><td>batman-adv</td></tr>
6411 <tr><td>ESSID</td><td>meshfx@hackeriet</td></tr>
6412 <td>Channel / Frequency</td><td>11 / 2462</td></tr>
6413 <td>Cell ID</td><td>02:BA:00:00:00:01</td>
6414 </table></p>
6415
6416 <p>The reason for setting ad-hoc wifi Cell ID is to work around bugs
6417 in firmware used in wifi card and wifi drivers.  (See a nice post from
6418 VillageTelco about
6419 "<a href="http://tiebing.blogspot.no/2009/12/ad-hoc-cell-splitting-re-post-original.html">Information
6420 about cell-id splitting, stuck beacons, and failed IBSS merges!</a>
6421 for details.)  When these settings are activated and you have some
6422 other mesh node nearby, your computer will be connected to the mesh
6423 network and can communicate with any mesh node that is connected to
6424 any of the nodes in your network of nodes. :)</p>
6425
6426 <p>My initial plan was to reuse my old Linksys WRT54GL as a mesh node,
6427 but that seem to be very hard, as I have not been able to locate a
6428 firmware supporting batman-adv.  If anyone know how to use that old
6429 wifi access point with batman-adv these days, please let me know.</p>
6430
6431 <p>If you find this project interesting and want to join, please join
6432 us on IRC, either channel
6433 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#oslohackerspace">#oslohackerspace</a>
6434 or <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#nuug">#nuug</a> on
6435 irc.freenode.net.</p>
6436
6437 <p>While investigating mesh networks in Oslo, I came across an old
6438 research paper from the university of Stavanger and Telenor Research
6439 and Innovation called
6440 <a href="http://folk.uio.no/paalee/publications/netrel-egeland-iswcs-2008.pdf">The
6441 reliability of wireless backhaul mesh networks</a> and elsewhere
6442 learned that Telenor have been experimenting with mesh networks at
6443 Grünerløkka in Oslo.  So mesh networks are also interesting for
6444 commercial companies, even though Telenor discovered that it was hard
6445 to figure out a good business plan for mesh networking and as far as I
6446 know have closed down the experiment.  Perhaps Telenor or others would
6447 be interested in a cooperation?</p>
6448
6449 <p><strong>Update 2013-10-12</strong>: I was just
6450 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2013-October/005900.html">told
6451 by the Serval project developers</a> that they no longer use
6452 batman-adv (but are compatible with it), but their own crypto based
6453 mesh system.</p>
6454
6455       </div>
6456       <div class="tags">
6457
6458
6459         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
6460
6461
6462       </div>
6463     </div>
6464     <div class="padding"></div>
6465
6466     <div class="entry">
6467       <div class="title">
6468         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_7_1_install_and_overview_video_from_Marcelo_Salvador.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu 7.1 install and overview video from Marcelo Salvador</a>
6469       </div>
6470       <div class="date">
6471          8th October 2013
6472       </div>
6473       <div class="body">
6474         <p>The other day I was pleased and surprised to discover that Marcelo
6475 Salvador had published a
6476 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-GgpdqgLFc">video on
6477 Youtube</a> showing how to install the standalone Debian Edu /
6478 Skolelinux profile.  This is the profile intended for use at home or
6479 on laptops that should not be integrated into the provided network
6480 services (no central home directory, no Kerberos / LDAP directory etc,
6481 in other word a single user machine).  The result is 11 minutes long,
6482 and show some user applications (seem to be rather randomly picked).
6483 Missed a few of my favorites like celestia, planets and chromium
6484 showing the <a href="http://www.zygotebody.com/">Zygote Body 3D model
6485 of the human body</a>, but I guess he did not know about those or find
6486 other programs more interesting. :) And the video do not show the
6487 advantages I believe is one of the most valuable featuers in Debian
6488 Edu, its central school server making it possible to run hundreds of
6489 computers without hard drives by installing one central
6490 <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP server</a>.</p>
6491
6492 <p>Anyway, check out the video, embedded below and linked to above:</p>
6493
6494 <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w-GgpdqgLFc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
6495
6496 <p>Are there other nice videos demonstrating Skolelinux?  Please let
6497 me know. :)</p>
6498
6499       </div>
6500       <div class="tags">
6501
6502
6503         Tags: <a href="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>.
6504
6505
6506       </div>
6507     </div>
6508     <div class="padding"></div>
6509
6510     <div class="entry">
6511       <div class="title">
6512         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Finally__Debian_Edu_Wheezy_is_released_today_.html">Finally, Debian Edu Wheezy is released today!</a>
6513       </div>
6514       <div class="date">
6515         29th September 2013
6516       </div>
6517       <div class="body">
6518         <p>A few hours ago, the announcement for the first stable release of
6519 Debian Edu Wheezy went out from the Debian publicity team.  The
6520 complete announcement text can be found at
6521 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130928">the Debian News
6522 section</a>, translated to several languages.  Please check it out.</p>
6523
6524 <p>There is one minor known problem that we will fix very soon.  One
6525 can not install a amd64 Thin Client Server using PXE, as the /var/
6526 partition is too small.  A workaround is to extend the partition (use
6527 lvresize + resize2fs in tty 2 while installing).</p>
6528
6529       </div>
6530       <div class="tags">
6531
6532
6533         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6534
6535
6536       </div>
6537     </div>
6538     <div class="padding"></div>
6539
6540     <div class="entry">
6541       <div class="title">
6542         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Videos_about_the_Freedombox_project___for_inspiration_and_learning.html">Videos about the Freedombox project - for inspiration and learning</a>
6543       </div>
6544       <div class="date">
6545         27th September 2013
6546       </div>
6547       <div class="body">
6548         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6549 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6550 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6551 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6552
6553 <ul>
6554
6555 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6556 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6557
6558 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6559 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6560
6561 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6562 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6563 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6564 (Youtube)</li>
6565
6566 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6567 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6568
6569 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6570 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6571
6572 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6573 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6574 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6575
6576 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6577 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6578 (Youtube)</li>
6579
6580 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6581 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6582
6583 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6584 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6585
6586 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6587 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6588 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6589
6590 </ul>
6591
6592 <p>A larger list is available from
6593 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6594 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6595
6596 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6597 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6598 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6599 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6600 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6601 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6602 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6603 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6604 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6605 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6606 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6607
6608       </div>
6609       <div class="tags">
6610
6611
6612         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6613
6614
6615       </div>
6616     </div>
6617     <div class="padding"></div>
6618
6619     <div class="entry">
6620       <div class="title">
6621         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_and_probably_last_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Wheezy.html">Third and probably last beta release of Debian Edu Wheezy</a>
6622       </div>
6623       <div class="date">
6624         16th September 2013
6625       </div>
6626       <div class="body">
6627         <p>The third wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6628 today.  This is the release announcement from Holger Levsen:</p>
6629
6630 <blockquote>
6631 <p>Hi,</p>
6632
6633 <p>it is my pleasure to announce the third beta release (beta 2 for
6634 short) of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
6635 Skolelinux</a> based on Debian Wheezy!</p>
6636
6637 <p>Please test these images extensivly, if no new problems are found
6638 we plan to do this final Debian Edu Wheezy release this coming
6639 weekend.  We are not aware of any major problems or blockers in beta2,
6640 if you find something, please notify us immediately!</p>
6641
6642 <p>(More about the remaining steps for the Edu Wheezy release in
6643 another mail to the edu list tonight or tomorrow...)</p>
6644
6645 <p>Noteworthy changes and software updates for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b2
6646 compared to beta1:</p>
6647
6648 <ul>
6649
6650 <li>The KDE proxy setup has been adjusted to use the provided wpad.dat. This
6651 also gets Chromium to use this proxy.</li>
6652 <li>Install kdepim-groupware with KDE desktops to make sure korganizer
6653 understand ical/dav sources.</li>
6654 <li>Increased default maximum size of /var/spool/squid and /skole/backup on the
6655 main server.</li>
6656 <li>A source DVD image containing all source packages is now available as well.</li>
6657 <li>Updates for chromium (29.0.1547.57-1~deb7u1), imagemagick
6658 (6.7.7.10-5+deb7u2), php5 (5.4.4-14+deb7u4), libmodplug
6659 (0.8.8.4-3+deb7u1+git20130828), tiff (4.0.2-6+deb7u2), linux-image
6660 (3.2.0-4-486_3.2.46-1+deb7u1).</li>
6661
6662 </ul>
6663
6664 <p>Where to get it:</p>
6665
6666 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6667
6668 <ul>
6669 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
6670 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso</a></li>
6671 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-CD.iso .</li>
6672 </ul>
6673
6674 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is:  3a1c89f4666df80eebcd46c5bf5fedb866f9472f</p>
6675
6676 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use
6677 <ul>
6678 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
6679 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso</a></li>
6680 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-USB.iso .</li>
6681 </ul>
6682
6683 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 702d1718548f401c74bfa6df9f032cc3ee16597e</p>
6684
6685 <p>The Source DVD image has the filename
6686 debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b2-source-DVD.iso and the SHA1SUM
6687 089eed8b3f962db47aae1f6a9685e9bb2fa30ca5 and is available the same way
6688 as the other isos.</p>
6689
6690 <p>How to report bugs</p>
6691
6692 <p>For information how to report bugs please see
6693 <br><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
6694
6695
6696 <p>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</p>
6697
6698 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
6699 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
6700 configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
6701 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
6702 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
6703 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
6704 initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
6705 machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
6706 provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
6707 centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
6708 services.  The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
6709 packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
6710 can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6711
6712 <p>This is the seventh test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
6713 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
6714 Squeeze release.</p>
6715
6716 <p>Notes for upgrades from Alpha Prereleases</p>
6717
6718 <p>Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6719 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6720 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6721 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6722 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined on the mailing list. (2)
6723 Accept the new version of gosa.conf and replace both contained admin
6724 password placeholders with the password hashes found in the old one
6725 (backup copy!). In both cases all users need to change their password
6726 to make sure a password is set for CIFS access to their home
6727 directory.</p>
6728
6729
6730 <p>cheers,
6731 <br>        Holger</p>
6732 </blockquote>
6733
6734       </div>
6735       <div class="tags">
6736
6737
6738         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6739
6740
6741       </div>
6742     </div>
6743     <div class="padding"></div>
6744
6745     <div class="entry">
6746       <div class="title">
6747         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recipe_to_test_the_Freedombox_project_on_amd64_or_Raspberry_Pi.html">Recipe to test the Freedombox project on amd64 or Raspberry Pi</a>
6748       </div>
6749       <div class="date">
6750         10th September 2013
6751       </div>
6752       <div class="body">
6753         <p>I was introduced to the
6754 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6755 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6756 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6757 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6758 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6759 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6760 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6761 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6762
6763 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6764 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6765 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6766 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6767 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6768
6769 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6770 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6771 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6772 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6773 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6774 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6775 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6776 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6777 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6778 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6779 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6780 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6781 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6782 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6783 missing in Debian).</p>
6784
6785 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6786 scripts
6787 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6788 and a administrative web interface
6789 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6790 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6791 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6792 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6793 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6794 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6795 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6796 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6797 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6798 this is really working yet, see
6799 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6800 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6801 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6802 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6803 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6804 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6805 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6806
6807 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6808 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6809 at.</p>
6810
6811 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6812
6813 <ol>
6814
6815 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6816 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6817 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6818 to the Debian installer:<p>
6819 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6820
6821 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6822 install on.</li>
6823
6824 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
6825 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
6826
6827 </ol>
6828
6829 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
6830
6831 <ol>
6832
6833 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
6834 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
6835 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
6836 <pre>
6837 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
6838 </pre></li>
6839 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
6840 <pre>
6841 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
6842    apt-key add -
6843 apt-get update
6844 apt-get install freedombox-setup
6845 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
6846 </pre></li>
6847 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
6848
6849 </ol>
6850
6851 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
6852 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
6853 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
6854 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
6855 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
6856
6857 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
6858 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
6859 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
6860 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
6861
6862 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
6863 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
6864 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
6865 irc.debian.org and the
6866 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
6867 mailing list</a>.</p>
6868
6869 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
6870 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
6871 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
6872 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
6873 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
6874 default password is 'secret'.</p>
6875
6876       </div>
6877       <div class="tags">
6878
6879
6880         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6881
6882
6883       </div>
6884     </div>
6885     <div class="padding"></div>
6886
6887     <div class="entry">
6888       <div class="title">
6889         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_release__beta_1__of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second beta release (beta 1) of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
6890       </div>
6891       <div class="date">
6892         22nd August 2013
6893       </div>
6894       <div class="body">
6895         <p>The second wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
6896 today, slightly delayed because of some bugs in the initial Windows
6897 integration fixes .  This is the release announcement:</p>
6898
6899 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b1 released 2013-08-22</strong></p>
6900
6901 <p>These are the release notes for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6902 7.1+edu0~b1, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
6903
6904 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
6905
6906 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
6907 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
6908 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
6909 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
6910 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
6911 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
6912 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
6913 the main server from CD or USB stick all other machines can be
6914 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
6915 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
6916 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
6917 desktop contains
6918 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
6919 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
6920 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
6921 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
6922
6923 <p>This is the sixth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically this
6924 is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the Squeeze
6925 release.</p>
6926
6927 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
6928 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
6929 release. Both alpha and beta0 based installations should reinstall or
6930 deal with gosa.conf manually; there are two options: (1) Keep
6931 gosa.conf and edit this file as outlined
6932 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/08/msg00127.html">on
6933 the mailing list</a>. (2) Accept the new version of gosa.conf and
6934 replace both contained admin password placeholders with the password
6935 hashes found in the old one (backup copy!). In both cases every user
6936 need to change their their password to make sure a password is set for
6937 CIFS access to their home directory.</p>
6938
6939 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
6940
6941 <ul>
6942
6943 <li>Added ssh askpass packages to default installation, to ensure ssh
6944     work also without a attached tty.</li>
6945 <li>Add the command-not-found package to the default installation to
6946     make it easier to figure out where to find missing command line
6947     tools. Please note, that the command 'update-command-not-found'
6948     has to be run as root to actually make it useful (internet access
6949     required).</li>
6950
6951 </ul>
6952
6953 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
6954
6955 <ul>
6956
6957 <li>Adjusted the USB stick ISO image build to include every tool
6958 needed for desktop=xfce installations.</li>
6959 <li>Adjust thin-client-server task to work when installing from USB
6960 stick ISO image.</li>
6961 <li>Made new grub artwork (changed png from indexed to RGB format).</li>
6962 <li>Minor cleanup in the CUPS setup.</li>
6963 <li>Make sure that bootstrapping of the Samba domain really happens
6964     during installation of the main server and adjust SID handling to
6965     cope with this.</li>
6966 <li>Make Samba passwords changeable (again) via GOsa².</li>
6967 <li>Fix generation of LM and NT password hashes via GOsa² to avoid
6968     empty password hashes.</li>
6969 <li>Adapted Samba machine domain joining to latest change in the
6970     smbldap-tools Perl package, fixing bugs blocking Windows machines
6971     from joining the Samba domain.</li>
6972
6973 </ul>
6974
6975 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
6976
6977 <ul>
6978
6979 <li>KDE fails to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
6980     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
6981 <li>Chromium also fails to use the proxy when using the KDE desktop
6982     (using the KDE configuration).</li>
6983
6984 </ul>
6985
6986 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
6987
6988 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
6989
6990 <ul>
6991
6992 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
6993
6994 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso</a></li>
6995
6996 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-CD.iso .</li>
6997
6998 </ul>
6999
7000 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 1e357f80b55e703523f2254adde6d78b
7001 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 7157f9be5fd27c7694d713c6ecfed61c3edda3b2</p>
7002
7003 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7004
7005 <ul>
7006
7007 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
7008 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso</a></li>
7009 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b1-USB.iso .</li>
7010
7011 </ul>
7012
7013 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 7a8408ead59cf7e3cef25afb6e91590b
7014 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: f1817c031f02790d5edb3bfa0dcf8451088ad119</p>
7015
7016
7017 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7018
7019 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7020
7021       </div>
7022       <div class="tags">
7023
7024
7025         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7026
7027
7028       </div>
7029     </div>
7030     <div class="padding"></div>
7031
7032     <div class="entry">
7033       <div class="title">
7034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_180_SSD_disk_with_Lenovo_firmware_can_not_use_Intel_firmware.html">Intel 180 SSD disk with Lenovo firmware can not use Intel firmware</a>
7035       </div>
7036       <div class="date">
7037         18th August 2013
7038       </div>
7039       <div class="body">
7040         <p>Earlier, I reported about
7041 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
7042 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
7043 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
7044 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
7045 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
7046 currently on the disk.</p>
7047
7048 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
7049 <a href="https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3472&DwnldID=18363&ProductFamily=Solid-State+Drives+and+Caching&ProductLine=Intel%c2%ae+High+Performance+Solid-State+Drive&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+SSD+520+Series+(180GB%2c+2.5in+SATA+6Gb%2fs%2c+25nm%2c+MLC)&lang=eng">issdfut_2.0.4.iso</a>
7050 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
7051 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
7052 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
7053 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
7054 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
7055 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
7056 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
7057 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
7058 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
7059 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
7060 the broken disks.</p>
7061
7062       </div>
7063       <div class="tags">
7064
7065
7066         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7067
7068
7069       </div>
7070     </div>
7071     <div class="padding"></div>
7072
7073     <div class="entry">
7074       <div class="title">
7075         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/90_percent_done_with_the_Norwegian_draft_translation_of_Free_Culture.html">90 percent done with the Norwegian draft translation of Free Culture</a>
7076       </div>
7077       <div class="date">
7078          2nd August 2013
7079       </div>
7080       <div class="body">
7081         <p>It has been a while since my last update.  Since last summer, I
7082 have worked on a Norwegian
7083 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
7084 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
7085 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright
7086 law.  Yesterday, I finally broken the 90% mark, when counting the
7087 number of strings to translate.  Due to real life constraints, I have
7088 not had time to work on it since March, but when the summer broke out,
7089 I found time to work on it again.  Still lots of work left, but the
7090 first draft is nearing completion.  I created a graph to show the
7091 progress of the translation:</p>
7092
7093 <p><img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png"></p>
7094
7095 <p>When the first draft is done, the translated text need to be
7096 proof read, and the remaining formatting problems with images and SVG
7097 drawings need to be fixed.  There are probably also some index entries
7098 missing that need to be added.  This can be done by comparing the
7099 index entries listed in the SiSU version of the book, or comparing the
7100 English docbook version with the paper version.  Last, the colophon
7101 page with ISBN numbers etc need to be wrapped up before the release is
7102 done.  I should also figure out how to get correct Norwegian sorting
7103 of the index pages.  All docbook tools I have tried so far (xmlto,
7104 docbook-xsl, dblatex) get the order of symbols and the special
7105 Norwegian letters ÆØÅ wrong.</p>
7106
7107 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
7108 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
7109 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
7110 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
7111 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
7112 around?  There are also some legal terms that are unfamiliar to me.
7113 If you want to help, please get in touch with me, and check out the
7114 project files currently available from
7115 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
7116
7117 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
7118 the updated
7119 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
7120 and
7121 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
7122 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
7123 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
7124 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
7125
7126       </div>
7127       <div class="tags">
7128
7129
7130         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>.
7131
7132
7133       </div>
7134     </div>
7135     <div class="padding"></div>
7136
7137     <div class="entry">
7138       <div class="title">
7139         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_beta_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First beta release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7140       </div>
7141       <div class="date">
7142         27th July 2013
7143       </div>
7144       <div class="body">
7145         <p>The first wheezy based beta release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7146 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7147
7148 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~b0 released
7149 2013-07-27</strong></p>
7150
7151 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7152 7.1+edu0~b0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7153
7154 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7155
7156 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7157 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7158 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7159 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7160 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7161 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7162 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7163 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7164 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7165 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7166 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7167 desktop contains
7168 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7169 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7170 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7171 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7172
7173 <p>This is the fifth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7174 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7175 Squeeze release.</p>
7176
7177 <p>ALERT: Alpha based installations should reinstall or downgrade the
7178 versions of gosa and libpam-mklocaluser to the ones used in this beta
7179 release.</p>
7180
7181 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7182
7183 <ul>
7184
7185 <li>Switched roaming workstation profiles from wicd to network-manager
7186    for network configuration, as wicd didn't work any more.</li>
7187 <li>Changed version numbers of patched gosa and libpam-mklocaluser
7188    packages to make sure our locally patched versions will be replaced
7189    by the official packages when they are released from Debian. Those
7190    installing alpha version need to reinstall or manually downgrade gosa
7191    and libpam-mklocaluser.</li>
7192 <li>Added bluetooth tools to the default desktop (bluedevil, blueman).</li>
7193 <li>Added tools for sharing the desktop on KDE (krdc, krfb).</li>
7194 <li>Added valgrind to the default installation for easier debugging of
7195    crash bugs.</li>
7196
7197 </ul>
7198
7199 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7200
7201 <ul>
7202
7203 <li>Fixed artwork package to work with gnome, no longer break
7204    desktop=gnome installations.</li>
7205 <li>Adjusted installer to now work when forced to use a proxy with the
7206    netinst CD.</li>
7207 <li>Fixed code detecting and setting/loading hardware specific
7208    setup/firmware to work more robust out of the box.</li>
7209 <li>Adjusted Kerberos setup to detect realm and server settings at
7210    install time instead of dynamically at run time. This avoid a crash
7211    with krb5-auth-dialog on diskless workstations without a DNS name.</li>
7212 <li>Worked around misfeature in network-manager not calling the dhclient
7213    exit hooks, causing automatic proxy configuration and automatic host
7214    name setting at run time to work again.</li>
7215 <li>Fixed feature setting the default Iceweasel start page from URL
7216    fetched from LDAP, to allow schools to set the global default by
7217    updating the dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no LDAP object.</li>
7218 <li>Changed default host name on all networked machines to be unique
7219    (generated from MAC or reverse DNS) after boot.</li>
7220 <li>Adjusted partition sizes to make sure they are big enough.</li>
7221
7222 </ul>
7223
7224 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7225
7226 <ul>
7227
7228 <li>Grub is missing the new artwork.</li>
7229 <li>KDE fail to understand the wpad.dat file provided, causing it to
7230     not use the http proxy as it should.</li>
7231 <li>Chromium also fail to use the proxy.</li>
7232
7233 </ul>
7234
7235 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7236
7237 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7238
7239 <ul>
7240
7241 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7242
7243 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso</a></li>
7244
7245 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-CD.iso .</li>
7246
7247 </ul>
7248
7249 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 55d5de9765b6dccd5d9ec33cf1a07109
7250 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 996a1d9517740e4d627d100de2d12b23dd545a3f</p>
7251
7252 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7253
7254 <ul>
7255
7256 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7257 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso</a></li>
7258 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~b0-USB.iso .</li>
7259
7260 </ul>
7261
7262 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: d8f0818c51a78d357de794066f289f69
7263 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 49185ca354e8d0543240423746924f76a6cee733</p>
7264
7265
7266 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7267
7268 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
7269
7270       </div>
7271       <div class="tags">
7272
7273
7274         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7275
7276
7277       </div>
7278     </div>
7279     <div class="padding"></div>
7280
7281     <div class="entry">
7282       <div class="title">
7283         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">How to fix a Thinkpad X230 with a broken 180 GB SSD disk</a>
7284       </div>
7285       <div class="date">
7286         17th July 2013
7287       </div>
7288       <div class="body">
7289         <p>Today I switched to
7290 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
7291 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
7292 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
7293 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">180
7294 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
7295 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
7296 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
7297 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
7298 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
7299 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
7300 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
7301 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
7302 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
7303 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
7304 station from now on.</p>
7305
7306 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
7307 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
7308 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
7309 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
7310 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
7311 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
7312 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
7313 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
7314 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
7315 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
7316 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
7317 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
7318
7319 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
7320 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
7321 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
7322 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
7323 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
7324 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
7325 parameters are tuned:</p>
7326
7327 <ul>
7328
7329 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
7330     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
7331
7332 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
7333     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
7334     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
7335
7336 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
7337     systems.</li>
7338
7339 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
7340     /etc/fstab.</li>
7341
7342 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
7343
7344 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
7345     cron.daily).</li>
7346
7347 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
7348     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
7349
7350 </ul>
7351
7352 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
7353 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
7354 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
7355 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
7356 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
7357 from getting the data on the disk (see
7358 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
7359 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
7360 right thing to do.</p>
7361
7362 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
7363 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
7364 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
7365
7366 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
7367 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
7368 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
7369 instead of during my work.</p>
7370
7371 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
7372 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
7373
7374 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
7375 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
7376 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
7377
7378 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
7379 there.</p>
7380
7381 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
7382 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
7383 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
7384 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
7385 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
7386 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
7387 back.</p>
7388
7389       </div>
7390       <div class="tags">
7391
7392
7393         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7394
7395
7396       </div>
7397     </div>
7398     <div class="padding"></div>
7399
7400     <div class="entry">
7401       <div class="title">
7402         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Intel_SSD_520_Series_180_GB_with_Lenovo_firmware_still_lock_up_from_sustained_writes.html">Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB with Lenovo firmware still lock up from sustained writes</a>
7403       </div>
7404       <div class="date">
7405         10th July 2013
7406       </div>
7407       <div class="body">
7408         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
7409 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
7410 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
7411 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
7412 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
7413 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
7414 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
7415 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
7416
7417 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
7418 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
7419 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
7420 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
7421 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
7422 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
7423 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
7424 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
7425 lock up when I download a new
7426 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
7427 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
7428 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
7429
7430 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7431 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
7432 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7433 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
7434 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7435 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7436
7437 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
7438 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
7439 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
7440 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
7441 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
7442 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
7443
7444 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
7445 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
7446 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
7447 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
7448 exist).</p>
7449
7450       </div>
7451       <div class="tags">
7452
7453
7454         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7455
7456
7457       </div>
7458     </div>
7459     <div class="padding"></div>
7460
7461     <div class="entry">
7462       <div class="title">
7463         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/July_13th__Debian_Ubuntu_BSP_and_Skolelinux_Debian_Edu_developer_gathering_in_Oslo.html">July 13th: Debian/Ubuntu BSP and Skolelinux/Debian Edu developer gathering in Oslo</a>
7464       </div>
7465       <div class="date">
7466          9th July 2013
7467       </div>
7468       <div class="body">
7469         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
7470 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
7471 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
7472 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
7473 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7474 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
7475 Bitraf</a>.</p>
7476
7477 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
7478 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
7479 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
7480 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
7481 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
7482
7483       </div>
7484       <div class="tags">
7485
7486
7487         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>.
7488
7489
7490       </div>
7491     </div>
7492     <div class="padding"></div>
7493
7494     <div class="entry">
7495       <div class="title">
7496         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230?</a>
7497       </div>
7498       <div class="date">
7499          5th July 2013
7500       </div>
7501       <div class="body">
7502         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7503 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7504 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7505 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7506 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7507 ended up picking a
7508 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7509 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7510 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7511 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7512 on that below.</p>
7513
7514 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7515 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7516 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7517 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7518 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7519 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7520 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7521 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7522 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7523
7524 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7525 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7526 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7527 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7528 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7529 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7530 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7531
7532 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7533 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7534
7535 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7536 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7537 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7538 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7539 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7540 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7541 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7542 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7543 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7544 kernel developers as
7545 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7546 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7547 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7548 Lenovo forums, both for
7549 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7550 2012-11-10</a> and for
7551 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/x230-SATA-errors-with-180GB-Intel-520-SSD-under-heavy-write-load/m-p/1068147">X230
7552 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7553 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7554 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7555 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7556 There is even a
7557 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7558 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7559 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7560
7561 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7562 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7563 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7564 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7565 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7566 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7567 fixed. :)</p>
7568
7569       </div>
7570       <div class="tags">
7571
7572
7573         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7574
7575
7576       </div>
7577     </div>
7578     <div class="padding"></div>
7579
7580     <div class="entry">
7581       <div class="title">
7582         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230.html">The Thinkpad is dead, long live the Thinkpad X230</a>
7583       </div>
7584       <div class="date">
7585          4th July 2013
7586       </div>
7587       <div class="body">
7588         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7589 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7590 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7591 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7592 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7593 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7594 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7595 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7596 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7597
7598 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7599 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7600 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7601 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7602 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7603 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7604 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7605
7606 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7607 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7608 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7609 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7610 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7611 new laptop now. :)</p>
7612
7613 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7614
7615       </div>
7616       <div class="tags">
7617
7618
7619         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7620
7621
7622       </div>
7623     </div>
7624     <div class="padding"></div>
7625
7626     <div class="entry">
7627       <div class="title">
7628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fourth_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu_Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Fourth alpha release of Debian Edu/Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
7629       </div>
7630       <div class="date">
7631          3rd July 2013
7632       </div>
7633       <div class="body">
7634         <p>The fourth wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
7635 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
7636
7637 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.1+edu0~alpha3 released
7638 2013-07-03</strong></p>
7639
7640 <p>These are the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7641 7.1+edu0~alpha3, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
7642
7643 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
7644
7645 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
7646 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
7647 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
7648 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
7649 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
7650 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
7651 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
7652 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
7653 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
7654 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
7655 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
7656 desktop contains
7657 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
7658 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
7659 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
7660 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
7661
7662 <p>This is the fourth test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
7663 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
7664 Squeeze release.</p>
7665
7666 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
7667 <ul>
7668   <li>Dropped ispell dictionaries from our default installation.</li>
7669   <li>Dropped menu-xdg from the KDE desktop option, to drop the Debian
7670     submenu.  It was not included with Gnome, LXDE or Xfce, so this
7671     brings KDE in line with the others.</li>
7672   <li>Dropped xdrawchem, xjig and xsok from our default installation as
7673     they don't have a desktop menu entry and thus won't show up in the
7674     menu now that menu-xdg was removed.</li>
7675   <li>Removed the killer system to kill left behind processes on
7676     multi-user machines, as it was no longer able to understand when a
7677     X display was in use and killed the processes of the active users
7678     too.</li>
7679   <li>Dropped the golearn (from goplay) package as the debtags in wheezy
7680     are too few to make the package useful.</li>
7681 </ul>
7682 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
7683 <ul>
7684   <li>Updated artwork matching http://wiki.debian.org/DebianArt/Themes/Joy
7685   <li>Multi-arch i386/amd64 USB stick ISO available.</li>
7686   <li>Got rid of ispell/wordlist related debconf questions that showed
7687     up for some language options.</li>
7688   <li>Switched to using http.debian.net as APT source by default.</li>
7689   <li>Fixed proxy configuration on Main Server installations.</li>
7690   <li>Changed LTSP setup to ask dpkg to use force-unsafe-io the same way
7691     d-i is doing it.</li>
7692   <li>Made sure root and user passwords were not left behind in the
7693     debconf database after installation on Main Server installations.</li>
7694   <li>Made Roaming Workstation dynamic setup more robust and added draft
7695     script setup-ad-client to hook a Roaming Workstation up to a
7696     Active Directory server instead of a Debian Edu Main Server.</li>
7697   <li>Update system to install needed firmware packages during
7698     installation, to work properly in Wheezy.</li>
7699   <li>Update system to handle hardware quirks (debian-edu-hwsetup).</li>
7700   <li>Corrected PXE installation setup to properly pass selected desktop
7701     and keymap settings to PXE installation clients.</li>
7702   <li>LTSP diskless workstations use sshfs by default, allowing them to
7703     work without adding them to DNS and NIS netgroups for NFS access.</li>
7704 </ul>
7705 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
7706 <ul>
7707   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
7708     available yet (698840).</li>
7709   <li>Artwork not enabled for all desktops.</li>
7710 </ul>
7711 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
7712
7713 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
7714 <ul>
7715   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
7716   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso</a></li>
7717   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-CD.iso .</li>
7718 </ul>
7719
7720 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 2b161a99d2a848c376d8d04e3854e30c
7721 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 498922e9c508c0a7ee9dbe1dfe5bf830d779c3c8</p>
7722
7723 <p>To download the multiarch USB stick ISO release you can use</p>
7724 <ul>
7725   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
7726   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso</a></li>
7727   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.1+edu0~a3-USB.iso .</li>
7728 </ul>
7729
7730 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 25e808e403a4c15dbef1d13c37d572ac
7731 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 15ecfc93eb6b4f453b7eb0bc04b6a279262d9721</p>
7732
7733 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
7734
7735 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
7736
7737       </div>
7738       <div class="tags">
7739
7740
7741         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7742
7743
7744       </div>
7745     </div>
7746     <div class="padding"></div>
7747
7748     <div class="entry">
7749       <div class="title">
7750         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_locate_and_install_required_firmware_packages_on_Debian__Isenkram_0_4_.html">Automatically locate and install required firmware packages on Debian (Isenkram 0.4)</a>
7751       </div>
7752       <div class="date">
7753         25th June 2013
7754       </div>
7755       <div class="body">
7756         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7757 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7758 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7759 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7760 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7761 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7762 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7763 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7764 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7765 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7766 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7767
7768 <p><pre>
7769 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7770 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7771 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7772 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7773 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7774 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7775 firmware-ipw2x00
7776 firmware-ipw2x00
7777 Preconfiguring packages ...
7778 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7779 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7780 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7781 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7782 #
7783 </pre></p>
7784
7785 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7786 printed instead:</p>
7787
7788 <p><pre>
7789 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7790 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7791 #
7792 </pre></p>
7793
7794 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7795 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7796
7797 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7798 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7799 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7800 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7801 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7802 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7803 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7804 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7805 machine.</p>
7806
7807 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7808 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7809 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7810 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7811 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7812 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7813
7814       </div>
7815       <div class="tags">
7816
7817
7818         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
7819
7820
7821       </div>
7822     </div>
7823     <div class="padding"></div>
7824
7825     <div class="entry">
7826       <div class="title">
7827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_value_of_a_good_distro_wide_test_suite___.html">The value of a good distro wide test suite...</a>
7828       </div>
7829       <div class="date">
7830         22nd June 2013
7831       </div>
7832       <div class="body">
7833         <p>In the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
7834 Skolelinux</a> project, we include a post-installation test suite,
7835 which check that services are running, working, and return the
7836 expected results.  It runs automatically just after the first boot on
7837 test installations (using test ISOs), but not on production
7838 installations (using non-test ISOs).  It test that the LDAP service is
7839 operating, Kerberos is responding, DNS is replying, file systems are
7840 online resizable, etc, etc.  And it check that the PXE service is
7841 configured, which is the topic of this post.</p>
7842
7843 <p>The last week I've fixed the DVD and USB stick ISOs for our Debian
7844 Edu Wheezy release.  These ISOs are supposed to be able to install a
7845 complete system without any Internet connection, but for that to
7846 happen all the needed packages need to be on them.  Thanks to our test
7847 suite, I discovered that we had forgotten to adjust our PXE setup to
7848 cope with the new names and paths used by the netboot d-i packages.
7849 When Internet connectivity was available, the installer fall back to
7850 using wget to fetch d-i boot images, but when offline it require
7851 working packages to get it working.  And the packages changed name
7852 from debian-installer-6.0-netboot-$arch to
7853 debian-installer-7.0-netboot-$arch, we no longer pulled in the
7854 packages during installation.  Without our test suite, I suspect we
7855 would never have discovered this before release.  Now it is fixed
7856 right after we got the ISOs operational.</p>
7857
7858 <p>Another by-product of the test suite is that we can ask system
7859 administrators with problems getting Debian Edu to work, to run the
7860 test suite using <tt>/usr/sbin/debian-edu-test-install</tt> and see if
7861 any errors are detected.  This usually pinpoint the subsystem causing
7862 the problem.</p>
7863
7864 <p>If you want to help us help kids learn how to share and create,
7865 please join us on
7866 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
7867 irc.debian.org</a> and the
7868 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@</a> mailing
7869 list.</p>
7870
7871       </div>
7872       <div class="tags">
7873
7874
7875         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
7876
7877
7878       </div>
7879     </div>
7880     <div class="padding"></div>
7881
7882     <div class="entry">
7883       <div class="title">
7884         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Victor_Ni_u.html">Debian Edu interview: Victor Nițu</a>
7885       </div>
7886       <div class="date">
7887         17th June 2013
7888       </div>
7889       <div class="body">
7890         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
7891 Skolelinux</a> distribution have users and contributors all around the
7892 globe.  And a while back, an enterprising young man showed up on
7893 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">our IRC channel
7894 #debian-edu</a> and started asking questions about how Debian Edu
7895 worked.  We answered as good as we could, and even convinced him to
7896 help us with translations.  And today I managed to get an interview
7897 with him, to learn more about him.</p>
7898
7899 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
7900
7901 <p>I'm a 25 year old free software enthusiast, living in Romania,
7902 which is also my country of origin. Back in 2009, at a New Year's Eve
7903 party, I had a very nice <strike>beer</strike> discussion with a
7904 friend, when we realized we have no organised Debian community in our
7905 country. A few days later, we put together the infrastructure for such
7906 community and even gathered a nice Debian-ish crowd. Since then, I
7907 began my quest as a free software hacker and activist and I am
7908 constantly trying to cover as much ground as possible on that
7909 field.</p>
7910
7911 <p>A few years ago I founded a small web development company, which
7912 provided me the flexible schedule I needed so much for my
7913 activities. For the last 13 months, I have been the Technical Director
7914 of <a href="http://ceata.org/">Fundația Ceata</a>, which is a free
7915 software activist organisation endorsed by the FSF and the FSFE, and
7916 the only one we have in our country.</p>
7917
7918 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
7919 project?</strong></p>
7920
7921 <p>The idea of participating in the Debian Edu project was a surprise
7922 even to me, since I never used it before I began getting involved in
7923 it. This year I had a great opportunity to deliver a talk on
7924 educational software, and I knew immediately where to look. It was a
7925 love at first sight, since I was previously involved with some of the
7926 technologies the project incorporates, and I rapidly found a lot of
7927 ways to contribute.</p>
7928
7929 <p>My first contributions consisted in translating the installer and
7930 configuration dialogs, then I found some bugs to squash (I still
7931 haven't fixed them yet though), and I even got my eyes on some other
7932 areas where I can prove myself helpful. Since the appetite for free
7933 software in my country is pretty low, I'll be happy to be the first
7934 one around here advocating for the project's adoption in educational
7935 environments, and maybe even get my hands dirty in creating a flavour
7936 for our own needs. I am not used to make very advanced plannings, so
7937 from now on, time will tell what I'll be doing next, but I think I
7938 have a pretty consistent starting point.</p>
7939
7940 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
7941 Edu?</strong></p>
7942
7943 <p>Not a long time ago, I was in the position of configuring and
7944 maintaining a LDAP server on some Debian derivative, and I must say it
7945 took me a while. A long time ago, I was maintaining a bigger
7946 Samba-powered infrastructure, and I must say I spent quite a lot of
7947 time on it. I have similar stories about many of the services included
7948 with Skolelinux, and the main advantage I see about it is the
7949 out-of-the box availability of them, making it quite competitive when
7950 it comes to managing a school's network, for example.</p>
7951
7952 <p>Of course, there is more to say about Skolelinux than the
7953 availability of the software included, its flexibility in various
7954 scenarios is something I can't wait to experiment "into the wild" (I
7955 only played with virtual machines so far). And I am sure there is a
7956 lot more I haven't discovered yet about it, being so new within the
7957 project.</p>
7958
7959 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
7960 Edu?</strong></p>
7961
7962 <p>As usual, when it comes to Debian Blends, I see as the biggest
7963 disadvantage the lack of a numerous team dedicated to the
7964 project. Every day I see the same names in the changelogs, and I have
7965 a constantly fear of the bus factor in this story.  I'd like to see
7966 Debian Edu advertised more as an entry point into the Debian
7967 ecosystem, especially amongst newcomers and students. IMHO there are a
7968 lot low-hanging fruits in terms of bug squashing, and enough
7969 opportunities to get the feeling of the Debian Project's dynamics. Not
7970 to mention it's a very fun blend to work on!</p>
7971
7972 <p>Derived from the previous statement, is the delay in catching up
7973 with the main Debian release and documentation. This is common though
7974 to all blends and derivatives, but it's an issue we can all work
7975 on.</p>
7976
7977 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
7978
7979 <p>I can hardly imagine myself spending a day without Vim, since my
7980 daily routine covers writing code and hacking configuration files. I
7981 am a fan of the Awesome window manager (but I also like the
7982 Enlightenment project a lot!),
7983 <a href="http://www.claws-mail.org/‎">Claws Mail</a> due to its ease of
7984 use and very configurable behaviour. Recently I fell in love with
7985 <a href="https://launchpad.net/redshift">Redshift</a>, which helps me
7986 get through the night without headaches. Of course, there is much more
7987 stuff in this bag, but I'll need a blog on my own for doing this!</p>
7988
7989 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
7990 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
7991
7992 <p>Well, on this field, I cannot do much more than experiment right
7993 now. So, being far from having a recipe for success, I can only assume
7994 that:</p>
7995
7996 <ul>
7997
7998 <li>schools would like to get rid of proprietary software</li>
7999
8000 <li>students will love the openness of the system, and will want to
8001     experiment with it - maybe we need to harvest the native curiosity
8002     of teenagers more?</li>
8003
8004 <li>there is no "right one" when it comes to strategies, but it would
8005     be useful to have some success stories published somewhere, so
8006     other can get some inspiration from them (I know I'd promote
8007     them!)</li>
8008
8009 <li>more active promotion - talks, conferences, even small school
8010     lectures can do magical things if they encounter at least one
8011     person interested. Who knows who that person might be? ;-)</li>
8012
8013 </ul>
8014
8015 <p>I also see some problems in getting Skolelinux into schools; for
8016 example, in our country we have a great deal of corruption issues, so
8017 it might be hard(er) to fight against proprietary solutions. Also,
8018 people who relied on commercial software for all their lives, would be
8019 very hard to convert against their will.</p>
8020
8021       </div>
8022       <div class="tags">
8023
8024
8025         Tags: <a href="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>.
8026
8027
8028       </div>
8029     </div>
8030     <div class="padding"></div>
8031
8032     <div class="entry">
8033       <div class="title">
8034         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jonathan_Carter.html">Debian Edu interview: Jonathan Carter</a>
8035       </div>
8036       <div class="date">
8037         12th June 2013
8038       </div>
8039       <div class="body">
8040         <p>There is a certain cross-over between the
8041 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8042 project</a> and <a href="http://www.edubuntu.org/">the Edubuntu
8043 project</a>, and for example the LTSP packages in Debian are a joint
8044 effort between the projects.  One person with a foot in both camps is
8045 Jonathan Carter, which I am now happy to present to you.</p>
8046
8047 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8048
8049 <p>I'm a South-African free software geek who lives in Cape Town. My
8050 days vary quite a bit since I'm involved in too many things. As I'm
8051 getting older I'm learning how to focus a bit more :)</p>
8052
8053 <p>I'm also an Edubuntu contributor and I love when there are
8054 opportunities for the Edubuntu and Debian Edu projects to benefit from
8055 each other.</p>
8056
8057 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8058 project?</strong></p>
8059
8060 <p>I've been somewhat familiar with the project before, but I think my
8061 first direct exposure to the project was when I met Petter
8062 [Reinholdtsen] and Knut [Yrvin] at the Edubuntu summit in 2005 in
8063 London. They provided great feedback that helped the bootstrapping of
8064 Edubuntu. Back then Edubuntu (and even Ubuntu) was still very new and
8065 it was great getting input from people who have been around longer. I
8066 was also still very excitable and said yes to everything and to this
8067 day I have a big todo list backlog that I'm catching up with. I think
8068 over the years the relationship between Edubuntu and Debian-Edu has
8069 been gradually improving, although I think there's a lot that we could
8070 still improve on in terms of working together on packages. I'm sure
8071 we'll get there one day.</p>
8072
8073 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8074 Edu?</strong></p>
8075
8076 <p>Debian itself already has so many advantages. I could go on about
8077 it for pages, but in essence I love that it's a very honest project
8078 that puts its users first with no hidden agendas and also produces
8079 very high quality work.</p>
8080
8081 <p>I think the advantage of Debian Edu is that it makes many common
8082 set-up tasks simpler so that administrators can get up and running
8083 with a lot less effort and frustration. At the same time I think it
8084 helps to standardise installations in schools so that it's easier for
8085 community members and commercial suppliers to support.</p>
8086
8087 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8088 Edu?</strong></p>
8089
8090 <p>I had to re-type this one a few times because I'm trying to
8091 separate "disadvantages" from "areas that need improvement" (which is
8092 what I originally rambled on about)</p>
8093
8094 <p>The biggest disadvantage I can think of is lack of manpower. The
8095 project could do so much more if there were more good contributors. I
8096 think some of the problems are external too. Free software and free
8097 content in education is a no-brainer but it takes some time to catch
8098 on. When you've been working with the same proprietary eco-system for
8099 years and have gotten used to it, it can be hard to adjust to some
8100 concepts in the free software world. It would be nice if there were
8101 more Debian Edu consultants across the world. I'd love to be one
8102 myself but I'm already so over-committed that it's just not possible
8103 currently.</p>
8104
8105 <p>I think the best short-term solution to that large-scale problem is
8106 for schools to be pro-active and share their experiences and grow
8107 their skills in-house. I'm often saddened to see how much money
8108 educational institutions spend on 3rd party solutions that they don't
8109 have access to after the service has ended and they could've gotten so
8110 much more value otherwise by being more self-sustainable and
8111 autonomous.</p>
8112
8113 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8114
8115 <p>My main laptop dual-boots between Debian and Windows 7. I was
8116 Windows free for years but started dual-booting again last year for
8117 some games which help me focus and relax (Starcraft II in
8118 particular). Gaming support on Linux is improving in leaps and bounds
8119 so I suppose I'll soon be able to regain that disk space :)</p>
8120
8121 <p>Besides that I rely on Icedove, Chromium, Terminator, Byobu, irssi,
8122 git, Tomboy, KVM, VLC and LibreOffice. Recently I've been torn on
8123 which desktop environment I like and I'm taking some refuge in Xfce
8124 while I figure that out. I like tools that keep things simple. I enjoy
8125 Python and shell scripting. I went to an Arduino workshop recently and
8126 it was awesome seeing how easy and simple the IDE software was to get
8127 up and running in Debian compared to the users running Windows and OS
8128 X.</p>
8129
8130 <p>I also use mc which some people frown upon slightly. I got used to
8131 using Norton Commander in the early 90's and it stuck (I think the
8132 people who sneer at it is just jealous that they don't know how to use
8133 it :p)
8134
8135 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8136 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8137
8138 <p>I think trying to force it is unproductive. I also think that in
8139 many cases it's appropriate for schools to use non-free systems and I
8140 don't think that there's any particular moral or ethical problem with
8141 that.</p>
8142
8143 <p>I do think though that free software can already solve so so many
8144 problems in educational institutions and it's just a shame not taking
8145 advantage of that.</p>
8146
8147 <p>I also think that some curricula need serious review. For example,
8148 some areas of the world rely heavily on very specific versions of MS
8149 Office, teaching students to parrot menu items instead of learning the
8150 general concepts. I think that's very unproductive because firstly, MS
8151 Office's interface changes drastically every few years and on top of
8152 that it also locks in a generation to a product that might not be the
8153 best solution for them.</p>
8154
8155 <p>To answer your question, I believe that the right strategy is to
8156 educate and inform, giving someone the information they require to
8157 make a decision that would work for them.</p>
8158
8159       </div>
8160       <div class="tags">
8161
8162
8163         Tags: <a href="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>.
8164
8165
8166       </div>
8167     </div>
8168     <div class="padding"></div>
8169
8170     <div class="entry">
8171       <div class="title">
8172         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_the_Linux_black_screen_of_death_on_machines_with_Intel_HD_video.html">Fixing the Linux black screen of death on machines with Intel HD video</a>
8173       </div>
8174       <div class="date">
8175         11th June 2013
8176       </div>
8177       <div class="body">
8178         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
8179 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
8180 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
8181 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
8182 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
8183 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
8184 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
8185 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
8186 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
8187 i915 driver used by the
8188 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8189 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
8190
8191 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
8192 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
8193 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
8194 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
8195 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
8196
8197 <pre>
8198 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
8199 update-initramfs -u -k all
8200 </pre>
8201
8202 <p>Since March 2012 there is
8203 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
8204 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
8205 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
8206 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
8207 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
8208 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
8209 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
8210 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
8211 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
8212 number.</p>
8213
8214 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
8215 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
8216
8217 <p><pre>
8218 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
8219     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
8220     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
8221  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
8222  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
8223     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
8224  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
8225     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
8226  Latency: 0
8227  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
8228  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
8229  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
8230  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
8231  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
8232  Capabilities: <access denied>
8233  Kernel driver in use: i915
8234 </pre></p>
8235
8236 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
8237
8238 <p><pre>
8239 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
8240        ...
8241         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
8242         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
8243        ...
8244 }
8245 </pre></p>
8246
8247 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
8248 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
8249 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
8250 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
8251 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
8252 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
8253 yet shown up in
8254 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
8255 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
8256 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
8257 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
8258 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
8259 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
8260
8261 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
8262 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
8263 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
8264 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
8265 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
8266 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
8267 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
8268 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
8269 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
8270 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
8271 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
8272 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
8273
8274 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
8275 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
8276 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
8277 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
8278 backlight.</p>
8279
8280       </div>
8281       <div class="tags">
8282
8283
8284         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8285
8286
8287       </div>
8288     </div>
8289     <div class="padding"></div>
8290
8291     <div class="entry">
8292       <div class="title">
8293         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Third alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8294       </div>
8295       <div class="date">
8296         10th June 2013
8297       </div>
8298       <div class="body">
8299         <p>The third wheezy based alpha release of Debian Edu was wrapped up
8300 today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8301
8302 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha2 released
8303 2013-06-10</strong></p>
8304
8305 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8306 alpha2, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
8307
8308 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8309
8310 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
8311 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
8312 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
8313 network. Immediately after installation a school server running all
8314 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
8315 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
8316 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
8317 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
8318 installed via the network. The provided school server provides LDAP
8319 database and Kerberos authentication service, centralized home
8320 directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other services. The
8321 desktop contains
8322 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">more
8323 than 60 educational software packages</a> and more are available from
8324 the Debian archive, and schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE
8325 and Xfce desktop environment.</p>
8326
8327 <p>This is the third test release based on Debian Wheezy. Basically
8328 this is an updated and slightly improved version compared to the
8329 Squeeze release.</p>
8330
8331 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8332
8333 <ul>
8334
8335 <li>Iceweasel was updated from 10 to 17. (DSA 2699-1)
8336 <li>Updated libxv (DSA-2674), libxvmc (DSA-2675), libxfixes (DSA-2676), libxrender (DSA-2677), mesa (DSA-2678), xserver-xorg-video-openchrome (DSA-2679), libxt (DSA-2680), libxcursor (DSA-2681), libxext (DSA-2682), libxi (DSA-2683), libxrandr (DSA-2684), libxp (DSA-2685), libxcb (DSA-2686), libfs (DSA-2687), libxres (DSA-2688), libxtst (DSA-2689), libxxf86dga (DSA-2690), libxinerama (DSA-2691), libxxf86vm (DSA-2692), libx11 (DSA-2693), chromium-browser (DSA-2695), gnutls26 (DSA-2697), wireshark (DSA-2700), krb5 (DSA-2701), telepathy-gabble (DSA-2702) and subversion (DSA-2703).
8337 <li>Switched xrdp on thin client servers to use tightvncserver instead of xvnc4.
8338 <li>Now install software oscilloscope xoscope by default.
8339 <li>Now install music tools gtick, lingot and pianobooster by default.
8340
8341 </ul>
8342
8343 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
8344
8345 <ul>
8346
8347 <li>The subnet-change script is now able to change all files needing a change on the main-server when changing the IP network used.
8348 <li>Updated translation of the installation.
8349 <li>New Romanian translation.
8350 <li>Fix security problem causing root and first user password to no longer show up in /var/cache/debconf/templates.dat.
8351 <li>Fix roaming workstation setup (Closed in libpam-mklocaluser/0.8, libpam-mklocaluser/0.8~deb7u1: #706753: libpam-mklocaluser: Fail to create local user during first login).
8352 <li>Made roaming workstation setup more robust in non-Debian Edu environments.
8353 <li>New script debian-edu-bless to transform a Debian installation to a Debian Edu profile.
8354 <li>Adjust Iceweasel setup to improve performance when $HOME is on NFS.
8355 <li>More testsuite tests.
8356 <li>Make automatic proxy configuration more robust.
8357 <li>Adjust GOsa² GUI configuration.
8358
8359 <li>Update thin client and diskless workstation setup to work with
8360 LTSP in Wheezy.</li>
8361
8362 <li>Diskless workstations now run out of the box -- no need to set
8363 them up with GOsa².</li>
8364
8365 <li>Update IMAP server setup. </li>
8366
8367 <li>Fix login into Skolelinux Backup Tool (Closed in
8368 slbackup-php/0.4.4-1: #700257: slbackup-php: Fails to submit correctly
8369 entered password). </li>
8370
8371 </ul>
8372
8373 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
8374
8375 <ul>
8376
8377 <li>DVD binary and source images are not yet ready.</li>
8378
8379 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
8380 available yet (Open in gosa/2.7.4-4: #698840: gosa-plugin-ldapmanager:
8381 missing import feature).</li>
8382
8383 <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others). </li>
8384
8385 <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons (Closed: #502192: menu-xdg: invents
8386 own icon names instead of using existing). This will remain
8387 unfixed.</li>
8388
8389 </ul>
8390
8391 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
8392
8393 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
8394
8395 <ul>
8396
8397 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8398
8399 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso</a></li>
8400
8401 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu-7.0+edu0~a2-CD.iso .</li>
8402
8403 </ul>
8404
8405 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 27bbcace407743382f3c42c08dbe8178
8406 <br>The SHA1SUM of this image is: e35f7d7908566cd3075375b3721fa10ee420d419</p>
8407
8408 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
8409
8410 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a>
8411
8412       </div>
8413       <div class="tags">
8414
8415
8416         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8417
8418
8419       </div>
8420     </div>
8421     <div class="padding"></div>
8422
8423     <div class="entry">
8424       <div class="title">
8425         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_there_a_PHP_expert_in_the_building___Debian_Edu_need_help_.html">Is there a PHP expert in the building?  Debian Edu need help!</a>
8426       </div>
8427       <div class="date">
8428          5th June 2013
8429       </div>
8430       <div class="body">
8431         <p>Here is a call for help from the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project.
8432 We have two problems blocking the release of the Wheezy version we
8433 hope to get released soon.  The two problems require some with PHP
8434 skills, and we seem to lack anyone with both time and PHP skills in
8435 the project:
8436
8437 <ol>
8438
8439 <li>It is impossible to log into the slbackup web interface
8440   (slbackup-php) using the root user and password.  This is
8441   <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">BTS report #700257</a>.
8442   This used to work, but stopped working some time since Squeeze.
8443   Perhaps some obsolete PHP feature was used?</li>
8444
8445 <li>It is not possible to "mass import" user lists in Gosa, neither
8446   using ldif nor using CSV files.  The feature was disabled after a
8447   major rewrite of Gosa, and need to be ported to the new system.
8448   This is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">BTS report
8449   #698840</a>.</li>
8450
8451 </ol>
8452
8453 <p>If you can help us, please join us on IRC
8454 (<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu on
8455 irc.debian.org</a>) and provide patches via the BTS.</p>
8456
8457       </div>
8458       <div class="tags">
8459
8460
8461         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8462
8463
8464       </div>
8465     </div>
8466     <div class="padding"></div>
8467
8468     <div class="entry">
8469       <div class="title">
8470         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__C_dric_Boutillier.html">Debian Edu interview: Cédric Boutillier</a>
8471       </div>
8472       <div class="date">
8473          4th June 2013
8474       </div>
8475       <div class="body">
8476         <p>It has been a while since my last English
8477 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
8478 interview last November.  But the developers and translators are still
8479 pulling along to get the Wheezy based release out the door, and this
8480 time I managed to get an interview from one of the French translators
8481 in the project, Cédric Boutillier.</p>
8482
8483 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
8484
8485 <p>I am 34 year old. I live near Paris, France. I am an assistant
8486 professor in probability theory. I spend my daytime teaching
8487 mathematics at the university and doing fundamental research in
8488 probability in connexion with combinatorics and statistical physics.</p>
8489
8490 <p>I have been involved in the Debian project for a couple of years
8491 and became Debian Developer a few months ago. I am working on Ruby
8492 packaging, publicity and translation.</p>
8493
8494 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
8495 project?</strong></p>
8496
8497 <p>I came to the Debian Edu project after a call for translation of
8498 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Manuals">the
8499 Debian Edu manual</a> for the release of Debian Edu Squeeze. Since
8500 then, I have been working on updating the French translation of the
8501 manual.
8502
8503 <p>I had the opportunity to make an installation of Debian Edu in a
8504 virtual machine when I was preparing localised version of some screen
8505 shots for the manual. I was amazed to see it worked out of the box and
8506 how comprehensive the list of software installed by default was.</p>
8507
8508 <p>What amazed me was the complete network infrastructure directly
8509 ready to use, which can and the nice administration interface provided
8510 by <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa²</a>.  What pleased
8511 me also was the fact that among the software installed by default,
8512 there were many "traditional" educative software to learn languages,
8513 to count, to program... but also software to develop creativity and
8514 artistic skills with music (<a href="http://ardour.org/">Ardour</a>,
8515 <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>) and
8516 movies/animation (I was especially thinking of
8517 <a href="http://linuxstopmotion.sourceforge.net/">Stopmotion</a>).</p>
8518
8519 <p>I am following the development of Debian Edu and am hanging out on
8520 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>.
8521 Unfortunately, I don't much time to get more involved in this
8522 beautiful project.</p>
8523
8524 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8525 Edu?</strong></p>
8526
8527 <p>For me, the main advantages of Skolelinux/Debian Edu are its
8528 community of experts and its precise documentation, as well as the
8529 fact that it provides a solution ready to use.</p>
8530
8531 <p>I would add also the fact that it is based on the rock solid Debian
8532 distribution, which ensures stability and provides a huge collection
8533 of educational free software.</p>
8534
8535 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
8536 Edu?</strong></p>
8537
8538 <p>Maybe the lack of manpower to do lobbying on the
8539 project. Sometimes, people who need to take decisions concerning IT do
8540 not have all the elements to evaluate properly free software
8541 solutions. The fact that support by a company may be difficult to find
8542 is probably a problem if the school does not have IT personnel.</p>
8543
8544 <p>One can find support from a company by looking at
8545 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Help/ProfessionalHelp">the
8546 wiki dokumentation</a>, where some countries already have a number of
8547 companies providing support for Debian Edu, like Germany or
8548 Norway. This list is easy to find readily from the manual. However,
8549 for other countries, like France, the list is empty. I guess that
8550 consultants proposing support for Debian would be able to provide some
8551 support for Debian Edu as well.</p>
8552
8553 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
8554
8555 <p>I am using the KDE Plasma Desktop. But the pieces of software I use
8556 most runs in a terminal: Mutt and OfflineIMAP for emails, latex for
8557 scientific documents, mpd for music. VIM is my editor of choice.  I am
8558 also using the mathematical software
8559 <a href="http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about‎">Scilab</a> and
8560 <a href="http://www.sagemath.org/index.html‎">Sage</a> (built from
8561 source as not completely packaged for Debian, yet).
8562
8563 <p><strong>Do you have any suggestions for teachers interested in
8564 using the free software in Debian to teach mathematics and
8565 statistics?</strong></p>
8566
8567 <p>I do not have any "nice" recommendations for statistics. At our
8568 university, we use both <a href="http://www.r-project.org/‎">R</a> and
8569 Scilab to teach statistics and probabilistic simulations. For
8570 geometry, there are nice programs:</p>
8571
8572 <ul>
8573
8574 <li><a href="http://www.drgeo.eu/">drgeo</a> and
8575 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/kig‎">kig</a> to do
8576 constructions in planar geometry
8577
8578 <li><a href="http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/download/kali.html">kali</a>
8579 to discover symmetry groups (the so-called wallpapers and frieze
8580 groups), although the interface looks a bit old.</li>
8581
8582 </ul>
8583
8584 <p>I like also
8585 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/applications/all/cantor">cantor</a>, which
8586 provides a uniform interface to SciLab, Sage,
8587 <a href="http://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Octave‎">Octave</a>, etc...</p>
8588
8589 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
8590 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
8591
8592 <p>My suggestions would be to</p>
8593
8594 <ul>
8595
8596 <li>advertise the reduction of costs when free software is used.</li>
8597
8598 <li>communicate about the quality of free software projects, using
8599     well known examples like Firefox, ThunderBird and
8600     OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.</li>
8601
8602 <li>advertise the living and strong community around the project.</li>
8603
8604 <li>show that it is not more difficult to use than any other
8605     system.</li>
8606
8607 </ul>
8608
8609       </div>
8610       <div class="tags">
8611
8612
8613         Tags: <a href="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>.
8614
8615
8616       </div>
8617     </div>
8618     <div class="padding"></div>
8619
8620     <div class="entry">
8621       <div class="title">
8622         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">Educational applications included in Debian Edu / Skolelinux (the screenshot collection :-)</a>
8623       </div>
8624       <div class="date">
8625          1st June 2013
8626       </div>
8627       <div class="body">
8628         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
8629 Skolelinux</a>, there are quite a lot of educational software.
8630 Created to help teachers teach, and pupils learn.  We have tried to
8631 tag them all using debtags use::learning and role::program, and using
8632 the debtags I was happy to be able to create a collage of the
8633 educational software packages installed by default, sorted by the
8634 debtag field.  Here it is.  Click on a image to learn more about the
8635 program.</p>
8636
8637 <!-- for f in $(debtags tagcat|grep field::|awk '{print $2}'); do   echo; echo "<p><strong>$f</strong></p>"; echo "<p>";   (     for p in $(debtags search --names "use::learning && interface::x11 && role::program && $f"); do img="<img src='http://screenshots.debian.net/thumbnail/$p' alt='$p'>"; if dpkg -s $p > /dev/null 2>&1; then           echo "<a href='http://packages.qa.debian.org/$p'>$img</a>"; fi;     done;   ) | LANG=C sort; echo "</p>"; done -->
8638
8639 <p><strong>field::arts</strong></p>
8640 <p>
8641 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=audacity'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/audacity.png' alt='audacity'></a>
8642 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8643 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=denemo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/denemo.png' alt='denemo'></a>
8644 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=freebirth'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/freebirth.png' alt='freebirth'></a>
8645 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8646 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gimp'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gimp.png' alt='gimp'></a>
8647 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=hydrogen'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/hydrogen.png' alt='hydrogen'></a>
8648 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lilypond'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lilypond.png' alt='lilypond'></a>
8649 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=lmms'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/lmms.png' alt='lmms'></a>
8650 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rosegarden'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rosegarden.png' alt='rosegarden'></a>
8651 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scribus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scribus.png' alt='scribus'></a>
8652 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=solfege'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/solfege.png' alt='solfege'></a>
8653 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stopmotion'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stopmotion.png' alt='stopmotion'></a>
8654 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxpaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxpaint.png' alt='tuxpaint'></a>
8655 </p>
8656
8657 <p><strong>field::astronomy</strong></p>
8658 <p>
8659 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=celestia-gnome'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/celestia-gnome.png' alt='celestia-gnome'></a>
8660 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpredict'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gpredict.png' alt='gpredict'></a>
8661 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kstars'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kstars.png' alt='kstars'></a>
8662 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=planets'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/planets.png' alt='planets'></a>
8663 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=stellarium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/stellarium.png' alt='stellarium'></a>
8664 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
8665 </p>
8666
8667 <p><strong>field::biology:structural</strong></p>
8668 <p>
8669 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
8670 </p>
8671
8672 <p><strong>field::chemistry</strong></p>
8673 <p>
8674 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=atomix'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/atomix.png' alt='atomix'></a>
8675 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=chemtool'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/chemtool.png' alt='chemtool'></a>
8676 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=easychem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/easychem.png' alt='easychem'></a>
8677 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gchempaint'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gchempaint.png' alt='gchempaint'></a>
8678 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gdis'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gdis.png' alt='gdis'></a>
8679 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ghemical'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ghemical.png' alt='ghemical'></a>
8680 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gperiodic'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gperiodic.png' alt='gperiodic'></a>
8681 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalzium'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalzium.png' alt='kalzium'></a>
8682 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=pymol'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/pymol.png' alt='pymol'></a>
8683 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=viewmol'>[viewmol]</a>
8684 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xdrawchem'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xdrawchem.png' alt='xdrawchem'></a>
8685 </p>
8686
8687 <p><strong>field::electronics</strong></p>
8688 <p>
8689 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8690 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gpsim'>[gpsim]</a>
8691 </p>
8692
8693 <p><strong>field::geography</strong></p>
8694 <p>
8695 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kgeography'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kgeography.png' alt='kgeography'></a>
8696 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=marble'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/marble.png' alt='marble'></a>
8697 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xplanet'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xplanet.png' alt='xplanet'></a>
8698 </p>
8699
8700 <p><strong>field::linguistics</strong></p>
8701 <p>
8702 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8703 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kanagram'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kanagram.png' alt='kanagram'></a>
8704 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=khangman'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/khangman.png' alt='khangman'></a>
8705 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=klettres'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/klettres.png' alt='klettres'></a>
8706 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=parley'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/parley.png' alt='parley'></a>
8707 </p>
8708
8709 <p><strong>field::mathematics</strong></p>
8710 <p>
8711 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8712 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=drgeo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/drgeo.png' alt='drgeo'></a>
8713 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8714 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geogebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/geogebra.png' alt='geogebra'></a>
8715 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=geomview'>[geomview]</a>
8716 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=grace'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/grace.png' alt='grace'></a>
8717 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphmonkey'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphmonkey.png' alt='graphmonkey'></a>
8718 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=graphthing'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/graphthing.png' alt='graphthing'></a>
8719 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kalgebra'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kalgebra.png' alt='kalgebra'></a>
8720 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kbruch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kbruch.png' alt='kbruch'></a>
8721 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kig'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kig.png' alt='kig'></a>
8722 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=kmplot'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/kmplot.png' alt='kmplot'></a>
8723 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=mathwar'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/mathwar.png' alt='mathwar'></a>
8724 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=rocs'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/rocs.png' alt='rocs'></a>
8725 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
8726 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=tuxmath'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/tuxmath.png' alt='tuxmath'></a>
8727 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=xabacus'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/xabacus.png' alt='xabacus'></a>
8728 </p>
8729
8730 <p><strong>field::physics</strong></p>
8731 <p>
8732 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8733 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=step'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/step.png' alt='step'></a>
8734 </p>
8735
8736 <p><strong>field::TODO</strong></p>
8737 <p>
8738 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=blinken'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/blinken.png' alt='blinken'></a>
8739 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=cgoban'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/cgoban.png' alt='cgoban'></a>
8740 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=childsplay'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/childsplay.png' alt='childsplay'></a>
8741 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gcompris'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gcompris.png' alt='gcompris'></a>
8742 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnuchess'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnuchess.png' alt='gnuchess'></a>
8743 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gnugo'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gnugo.png' alt='gnugo'></a>
8744 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=gtans'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/gtans.png' alt='gtans'></a>
8745 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=ktouch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/ktouch.png' alt='ktouch'></a>
8746 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=librecad'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/librecad.png' alt='librecad'></a>
8747 <a href='http://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=names&exact=1&suite=all&section=all&keywords=scratch'><img src='http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-06-01-debian-edu-apps/scratch.png' alt='scratch'></a>
8748 </p>
8749
8750 <p>In total, 61 applications.  3 of them lacked screen shots on
8751 <a href="http://screenshot.debian.net">screenshot.debian.net</a>.  If
8752 you know of some packages we should install by default, please let us
8753 know on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu
8754 on irc.debian.org</a>, or our
8755 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">mailing list
8756 debian-edu@</a>.</p>
8757
8758       </div>
8759       <div class="tags">
8760
8761
8762         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8763
8764
8765       </div>
8766     </div>
8767     <div class="padding"></div>
8768
8769     <div class="entry">
8770       <div class="title">
8771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8.html">How to install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8</a>
8772       </div>
8773       <div class="date">
8774         27th May 2013
8775       </div>
8776       <div class="body">
8777         <p>Two days ago, I asked
8778 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">how
8779 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
8780 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
8781 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
8782 and Windows 8.</p>
8783
8784 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
8785 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
8786 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
8787 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
8788 enough to tell.</p>
8789
8790 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
8791 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
8792 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
8793 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
8794 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
8795 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
8796 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
8797 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
8798 to follow.</p>
8799
8800 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
8801 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
8802 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
8803 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
8804 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
8805 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
8806 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
8807 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
8808
8809 <p>I've updated the
8810 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
8811 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
8812 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
8813 machine.</p>
8814
8815 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
8816 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
8817
8818       </div>
8819       <div class="tags">
8820
8821
8822         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8823
8824
8825       </div>
8826     </div>
8827     <div class="padding"></div>
8828
8829     <div class="entry">
8830       <div class="title">
8831         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_can_I_install_Linux_on_a_Packard_Bell_Easynote_LV_preinstalled_with_Windows_8_.html">How can I install Linux on a Packard Bell Easynote LV preinstalled with Windows 8?</a>
8832       </div>
8833       <div class="date">
8834         25th May 2013
8835       </div>
8836       <div class="body">
8837         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
8838 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
8839 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
8840 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
8841 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
8842 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
8843
8844 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
8845 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
8846 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
8847 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
8848 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
8849 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
8850 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
8851 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
8852 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
8853 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
8854
8855 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
8856 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
8857 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
8858 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
8859 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
8860 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
8861
8862 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
8863 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
8864 on new Laptops?</p>
8865
8866       </div>
8867       <div class="tags">
8868
8869
8870         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
8871
8872
8873       </div>
8874     </div>
8875     <div class="padding"></div>
8876
8877     <div class="entry">
8878       <div class="title">
8879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_transform_a_Debian_based_system_to_a_Debian_Edu_installation.html">How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation</a>
8880       </div>
8881       <div class="date">
8882         17th May 2013
8883       </div>
8884       <div class="body">
8885         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
8886 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
8887 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
8888 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
8889 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
8890 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
8891 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
8892 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
8893 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
8894 donate some money</a>.
8895
8896 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
8897 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
8898 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
8899 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
8900 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
8901
8902 <p>The script,
8903 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/branches/wheezy/debian-edu-config/share/debian-edu-config/tools/debian-edu-bless?view=markup">debian-edu-bless<a/>
8904 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
8905 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
8906 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
8907
8908 <ol>
8909
8910 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
8911 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
8912 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
8913     our configuration.</li>
8914 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
8915     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
8916     according to the profile specified in the config above,
8917     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
8918 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
8919     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
8920 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
8921
8922 </ol>
8923
8924 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
8925 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
8926 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
8927 the needed packages.</p>
8928
8929 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
8930 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
8931 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
8932 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
8933 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
8934 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
8935
8936 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
8937 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
8938 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
8939
8940 <p><pre>
8941 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
8942 DESKTOP="lxde"
8943 </pre></p>
8944
8945 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
8946 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
8947 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
8948 boot.</p>
8949
8950       </div>
8951       <div class="tags">
8952
8953
8954         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>.
8955
8956
8957       </div>
8958     </div>
8959     <div class="padding"></div>
8960
8961     <div class="entry">
8962       <div class="title">
8963         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">Second alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
8964       </div>
8965       <div class="date">
8966         14th May 2013
8967       </div>
8968       <div class="body">
8969         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
8970 project</a> is making great progress and made its second Wheezy based
8971 release today.  This is the release announcement:</p>
8972
8973 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu 7.0.0 alpha1 released
8974 2013-05-14</strong></p>
8975
8976 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux 7.0.0 edu
8977 alpha1, based on <a href="http://www.debian.org">Debian</a> with
8978 codename "Wheezy".</p>
8979
8980 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
8981
8982 <p>Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based
8983 on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
8984 configured school network. Immediatly after installation a school
8985 server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
8986 waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
8987 Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
8988 initial installation of the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all
8989 other machines can be installed via the network.</p>
8990
8991 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
8992 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
8993 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
8994
8995 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
8996 <ul>
8997   <li>Install freemind (0.9.0) by default, and stop installing vym by
8998     default.</li>
8999   <li>Install chromium (26.0.1410.43) by default.</li>
9000   <li>Install goplay (0.5-1.1) to make golearn available by default.</li>
9001   <li>Updated support for Japanese input methods, now based on
9002     ibus-anthy.</li>
9003 </ul>
9004
9005 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9006 <ul>
9007
9008   <li>Switched default file system from ext3 to ext4 for speed and
9009     reliability improvements.</li>
9010   <li>Got rid of unwanted winbind daemon and PAM setup activated because
9011     of <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706434">706434</a>.</li>
9012   <li>Extended and improved the testsuite tests to detect more possible
9013     problems.</li>
9014   <li>Corrected proxy handling to not set http_proxy to a bogus
9015     direct:// URL.</li>
9016   <li>Corrected proxy setup for diskless workstations.</li>
9017   <li>Corrected PXE setup to use our updated udebs during installation.</li>
9018   <li>Made installation handling of low entropy level more robust.</li>
9019   <li>Create larger partitions for Roaming workstations and Thin client
9020     servers, to make room for all the software installed.</li>
9021   <li>Fix bug in Roaming workstation PAM setup, making it impossible to
9022     log in (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/706753">706753</a>).</li>
9023 </ul>
9024
9025 <p><strong>Known issues</strong></p>
9026 <ul>
9027
9028   <li>IP resolution for the local hostname give useless IPv6 address
9029     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/705900">705900</a>).  Only install
9030     libnss-myhostname on roaming workstations until it is fixed.</li>
9031   <li>DVD images are not yet ready.</li>
9032   <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv)
9033     available yet (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698840">698840</a>).</li>
9034   <li>Missing artwork for the KDE desktop (and probably a few others).</li>
9035   <li>KDE Debian submenu lacks icons.</li>
9036   <li>LXDE menu lacks entry for changing GOsa password
9037     (website). Installing gosa-desktop will be an option.</li>
9038   <li>Backup configuration via web interface is impossible due to
9039     password submission problem
9040     (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/700257">700257</a>).</li>
9041
9042 </ul>
9043
9044 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9045
9046 <p>To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use</p>
9047 <ul>
9048
9049   <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
9050   <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</a></li>
9051   <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso debian-edu~7.0+edu0~a1-CD.iso</li>
9052
9053 </ul>
9054
9055 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: 685ed76c1aa8e44b12d3fde21faf450b</p>
9056
9057 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 6c874de157024da13e115bab29c068080a11ec4c</p>
9058
9059 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9060
9061 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9062
9063       </div>
9064       <div class="tags">
9065
9066
9067         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9068
9069
9070       </div>
9071     </div>
9072     <div class="padding"></div>
9073
9074     <div class="entry">
9075       <div class="title">
9076         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian__the_Linux_distribution_of_choice_for_LEGO_designers_.html">Debian, the Linux distribution of choice for LEGO designers?</a>
9077       </div>
9078       <div class="date">
9079         11th May 2013
9080       </div>
9081       <div class="body">
9082         <P>In January,
9083 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
9084 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
9085 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
9086 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
9087 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
9088 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
9089 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
9090 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
9091 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
9092 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
9093 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
9094 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
9095
9096 <p><table>
9097 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/brickos">brickos</a></td><td>alternative OS for LEGO Mindstorms RCX. Supports development in C/C++</td></tr>
9098 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
9099 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libnxt">libnxt</a></td><td>utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NX</td></tr>
9100 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
9101 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
9102 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
9103 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt">python-nxt</a></td><td>python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot</td></tr>
9104 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/python-nxt-filer">python-nxt-filer</a></td><td>simple GUI to manage files on a LEGO Mindstorms NXT</td></tr>
9105 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/scratch">scratch</a></td><td>easy to use programming environment for ages 8 and up</td></tr>
9106 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
9107 </table></p>
9108
9109 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
9110 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
9111 available in experimental.</p>
9112
9113 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
9114 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
9115 for LEGO designers.</p>
9116
9117       </div>
9118       <div class="tags">
9119
9120
9121         Tags: <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>.
9122
9123
9124       </div>
9125     </div>
9126     <div class="padding"></div>
9127
9128     <div class="entry">
9129       <div class="title">
9130         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Wheezy_is_out___and_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_should_soon_follow___newinwheezy.html">Debian Wheezy is out - and Debian Edu / Skolelinux should soon follow! #newinwheezy</a>
9131       </div>
9132       <div class="date">
9133          5th May 2013
9134       </div>
9135       <div class="body">
9136         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
9137 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
9138 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
9139 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
9140 soon.</p>
9141
9142 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
9143 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
9144 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
9145 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
9146 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
9147 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
9148 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
9149 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
9150 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
9151 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
9152 Edu.</a>
9153
9154 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
9155 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
9156 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
9157 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
9158 follow.<p>
9159
9160       </div>
9161       <div class="tags">
9162
9163
9164         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>.
9165
9166
9167       </div>
9168     </div>
9169     <div class="padding"></div>
9170
9171     <div class="entry">
9172       <div class="title">
9173         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_alpha_release_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Debian_Wheezy.html">First alpha release of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Debian Wheezy</a>
9174       </div>
9175       <div class="date">
9176         26th April 2013
9177       </div>
9178       <div class="body">
9179         <p>The Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is still going strong and made
9180 its first Wheezy based release today.  This is the release
9181 announcement:</p>
9182
9183 <p><strong>New features for Debian Edu ~7.0.0 alpha0 released
9184 2013-04-26</strong></p>
9185
9186 <p>This is the release notes for for Debian Edu / Skolelinux ~7.0.0
9187 edu alpha0, based on Debian with codename "Wheezy".</p>
9188
9189 <p><strong>About Debian Edu and Skolelinux</strong></p>
9190
9191 <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu, also known as
9192 Skolelinux</a>, is a Linux distribution based on Debian providing an
9193 out-of-the box environment of a completely configured school
9194 network. Immediatly after installation a school server running all
9195 services needed for a school network is set up just waiting for users
9196 and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable Web-UI. A netbooting
9197 environment is prepared using PXE, so after initial installation of
9198 the main server from CD, DVD or USB stick all other machines can be
9199 installed via the network.</p>
9200
9201 <p>This is the first test release based on Wheezy (which currently is
9202 not released yet). Basically this is an updated and slightly improved
9203 version compared to the Squeeze release.</p>
9204
9205 <p><strong>Software updates</strong></p>
9206
9207 <ul>
9208 <li>Everything which is new in Debian Wheezy, eg:
9209   <ul>
9210      <li>Linux kernel 3.2.x</li>
9211      <li>Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.8.4, GNOME 3.4, and LXDE 4
9212          (KDE is installed by default; to choose GNOME or LXDE: see
9213          manual.)</li>
9214      <li>Web browser Iceweasel 10 ESR</li>
9215      <li>LibreOffice 3.5.4</li>
9216      <li>LTSP 5.4.2</li>
9217      <li>GOsa 2.7.4</li>
9218      <li>CUPS print system 1.5.3</li>
9219      <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 12.01</li>
9220      <li>Music creator Rosegarden 12.04</li>
9221      <li>Image editor Gimp 2.8.2</li>
9222      <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.1</li>
9223      <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.11.3</li>
9224      <li>Scratch visual programming environment 1.4.0.6</li>
9225      <li>New version of debian-installer from Debian Wheezy, see
9226          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation
9227          manual</a> for more details.</li>
9228      <li>Debian Wheezy includes about 37000 packages available for
9229          installation.</li>
9230      <li>More information about Debian Wheezy 7.0 is provided in the
9231          <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/releasenotes">release notes</a> and the <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/installmanual">installation manual</a>.</li>
9232   </ul></li>
9233 </ul>
9234
9235 <p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
9236 <ul>
9237 <li>The (<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy">English</a>) Debian Edu Wheezy Manual is fully translated to
9238     German, French, Italian and Danish. Partly translated versions exist
9239     for Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.</li>
9240 </ul>
9241
9242 <p><Strong>LDAP related changes</strong></p>
9243 <ul>
9244 <li>Slight changes to some objects and acls to have more types to
9245     choose from when adding systems in GOsa. Now systems can be of type
9246     server, workstation, printer, terminal or netdevice.</li>
9247 </ul>
9248
9249 <p><strong>Other changes</strong></p>
9250 <ul>
9251 <li>LTSP clients start as diskless workstation / thin client can be
9252     configured via command line argument -- or individually adding an
9253     entry in lts.conf or LDAP.<li>
9254 <li>GOsa gui: Now some options that seemed to be available, but are non
9255     functional, are greyed out (or are not clickable). Some tabs are
9256     completely hidden to the end user, others even to the GOsa admin.</li>
9257 </ul>
9258
9259 <p><strong>Regressions</strong></p>
9260 <ul>
9261 <li>No mass import of user account data in GOsa (ldif or csv) available
9262     yet.</li>
9263 </ul>
9264
9265 <p><strong>No updated artwork</strong></p>
9266
9267 <ul>
9268 <li>Updated artwork which is visible during installation, in the login
9269     screen and as desktop wallpaper is still missing or the same as we
9270     had for our Squeeze based release.</li>
9271 </ul>
9272
9273 <p><strong>Where to get it</strong></p>
9274
9275 To download the multiarch netinstall CD release you can use
9276 <ul>
9277 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9278 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</a></li>
9279 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/wheezy/</li>
9280 </ul>
9281
9282 <p>The MD5SUM of this image is: c5e773ddafdaa4f48c409c682f598b6c</p>
9283
9284 <p>The SHA1SUM of this image is: 25934fabb9b7d20235499a0a51f08ce6c54215f2</p>
9285
9286 <p><strong>How to report bugs</strong></p>
9287
9288 <p><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a></p>
9289
9290       </div>
9291       <div class="tags">
9292
9293
9294         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9295
9296
9297       </div>
9298     </div>
9299     <div class="padding"></div>
9300
9301     <div class="entry">
9302       <div class="title">
9303         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_developer_gathering_in_2013_take_place_in_Trondheim.html">First Debian Edu / Skolelinux developer gathering in 2013 take place in Trondheim</a>
9304       </div>
9305       <div class="date">
9306         16th April 2013
9307       </div>
9308       <div class="body">
9309         <p>This years first <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux /
9310 Debian Edu</a> developer gathering take place the coming weekend in Trondheim.
9311 Details about the gathering can be found
9312 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2013-04-19-21-Trondheim">on
9313 the FRiSK wiki</a>.  The dates are 19-21th of April 2013, and online
9314 participation for those unable to make it in person is very welcome,
9315 and I plan to participate online myself as I could not leave Oslo this
9316 weekend.</p>
9317
9318 <p>The focus of the gathering is to work on the web pages and project
9319 infrastructure, and to continue the work on the Wheezy based Debian
9320 Edu release.</p>
9321
9322 <p>See you on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-edu">IRC, #debian-edu on irc.debian.org,</a> then?</p>
9323
9324       </div>
9325       <div class="tags">
9326
9327
9328         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9329
9330
9331       </div>
9332     </div>
9333     <div class="padding"></div>
9334
9335     <div class="entry">
9336       <div class="title">
9337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_0_2_finally_in_the_Debian_archive.html">Isenkram 0.2 finally in the Debian archive</a>
9338       </div>
9339       <div class="date">
9340          3rd April 2013
9341       </div>
9342       <div class="body">
9343         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
9344 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
9345 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
9346 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
9347
9348 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
9349 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
9350 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
9351 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
9352 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
9353 BTS. :)</p>
9354
9355       </div>
9356       <div class="tags">
9357
9358
9359         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
9360
9361
9362       </div>
9363     </div>
9364     <div class="padding"></div>
9365
9366     <div class="entry">
9367       <div class="title">
9368         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Change_the_font__save_the_world__and_save_some_money_in_the_process_.html">Change the font, save the world (and save some money in the process)</a>
9369       </div>
9370       <div class="date">
9371         26th March 2013
9372       </div>
9373       <div class="body">
9374         <p>Would you like to help the environment and save money at the same
9375 time, without much sacrifice?  A small step could be to change the
9376 font you use when printing.</p>
9377
9378 <p>Three years ago,
9379 <a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/04/last-year-printer-comparison-website/">Ars
9380 Technica</a> reported how the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
9381 changed their default front from
9382 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial">Arial</a> to
9383 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Gothic">Century
9384 Gothic</a> to save money.  The Century Gothic font uses 30% less toner
9385 than Arial to print the same text.  In other word, you could cut your
9386 toner costs by 30% (or actually, increase your toner supply life time
9387 by more than 30%), by simply changing the default font used in your
9388 prints.</p>
9389
9390 <p>But it is not quite obvious how much one will save by switching.
9391 The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay said it used $100,000 per year
9392 on ink and toner cartridges, according to
9393 <a href="http://www.twincities.com/ci_14833097">a report from
9394 TwinCities.com</a>, and expected to save between $5,000 and $10,000
9395 per year by asking staff and students to use a different font.  Not
9396 all PDFs and documents are created internally, and those from external
9397 sources will most likely still use a different font.  Also, the
9398 Century Gothic font is slightly wider than Arial, and thus might use
9399 more sheets of paper to print the same text, so the total saving
9400 depend on the documents printed.</p>
9401
9402 <p>But it is definitely something to consider, if you want to reduce
9403 the amount of trash, decrease the amount of toner used in the world,
9404 and save some money in the process.</p>
9405
9406 <p>Update 2013-04-10: If you want to know how much ink/toner could be
9407 saved when switching between fonts, Inkfarm got a
9408 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/What-the-Font">service to calculate the
9409 difference between font pairs</a>.  They also
9410 <a href="http://www.inkfarm.com/Recommended-Ink-Saving-Fonts---">recommend
9411 which fonts to use</a> to save ink.  Check it out. :) While updating
9412 this blog post, I also came across a blog post from InkCloners,
9413 <a href="http://inkcloners.com/blog/ink-cartridges/change-fonts-to-save-ink-costs/">listing
9414 the fonts they recommend</a>, with Centory Gothic at the top.</p>
9415
9416       </div>
9417       <div class="tags">
9418
9419
9420         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9421
9422
9423       </div>
9424     </div>
9425     <div class="padding"></div>
9426
9427     <div class="entry">
9428       <div class="title">
9429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_a_short_story_using_docbook_for_PDF__HTML_and_EPUB.html">Typesetting a short story using docbook for PDF, HTML and EPUB</a>
9430       </div>
9431       <div class="date">
9432         24th March 2013
9433       </div>
9434       <div class="body">
9435         <p>A few days ago, during a discussion in
9436 <a href="http://www.efn.no/">EFN</a> about interesting books to read
9437 about copyright and the data retention directive, a suggestion to read
9438 the 1968 short story Kodémus by
9439 <a href="http://web2.gyldendal.no/toraage/">Tore Åge Bringsværd</a>
9440 came up.  The text was only available in old paper books, and thus not
9441 easily available for current and future generations.  Some of the
9442 people participating in the discussion contacted the author, and
9443 reported back 2013-03-19 that the author was OK with releasing the
9444 short story using a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative
9445 Commons</a> license.  The text was quickly scanned and OCR-ed, and we
9446 were ready to start on the editing and typesetting.</p>
9447
9448 <p>As I already had some experience formatting text in my project to
9449 provide a Norwegian version of the Free Culture book by Lawrence
9450 Lessig, I chipped in and set up a
9451 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> processing framework to
9452 generate PDF, HTML and EPUB version of the short story.  The tools to
9453 transform DocBook to different formats are already in my Linux
9454 distribution of choice, <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>, so
9455 all I had to do was to use the
9456 <a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a>,
9457 <a href="http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current/epub/README">dbtoepub</a>
9458 and <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/">xmlto</a> tools to do the
9459 conversion.  After a few days, we decided to replace dblatex with
9460 xsltproc/fop (aka
9461 <a href="http://wiki.docbook.org/DocBookXslStylesheets">docbook-xsl</a>),
9462 to get the copyright information to show up in the PDF and to get a
9463 nicer &lt;variablelist&gt; typesetting, but that is just a minor
9464 technical detail.</p>
9465
9466 <p>There were a few challenges, of course.  We want to typeset the
9467 short story to look like the original, and that require fairly good
9468 control over the layout.  The original short story have three
9469 parts/scenes separated by a single horizontally centred star (*), and
9470 the paragraphs do not contain only flowing text, but dialogs and text
9471 that started on a new line in the middle of the paragraph.</p>
9472
9473 <p>I initially solved the first challenge by using a paragraph with a
9474 single star in it, ie &lt;para&gt;*&lt;/para&gt;, but it made sure a
9475 placeholder indicated where the scene shifted.  This did not look too
9476 good without the centring.  The next approach was to create a new
9477 preprocessor directive &lt;?newscene?&gt;, mapping to "&lt;hr/&gt;"
9478 for HTML and "&lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;&lt;fo:leader
9479 leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;&lt;/fo:block&gt;"
9480 for FO/PDF output (did not try to implement this in dblatex, as we had
9481 switched at this time).  The HTML XSL file looked like this:</p>
9482
9483 <p><blockquote><pre>
9484 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9485 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9486   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9487     &lt;hr/&gt;
9488   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9489 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9490 </pre></blockquote></p>
9491
9492 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9493
9494 <p><blockquote><pre>
9495 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9496 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9497   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('newscene')"&gt;
9498     &lt;fo:block text-align="center"&gt;
9499       &lt;fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" rule-thickness="0.5pt"/&gt;
9500     &lt;/fo:block&gt;
9501   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9502 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9503 </pre></blockquote></p>
9504
9505 <p>Finally, I came across the &lt;bridgehead&gt; tag, which seem to be
9506 a good fit for the task at hand, and I replaced &lt;?newscene?&gt;
9507 with &lt;bridgehead&gt;*&lt;/bridgehead&gt;.  It isn't centred, but we
9508 can fix it with some XSL rule if the current visual layout isn't
9509 enough.</p>
9510
9511 <p>I did not find a good DocBook compliant way to solve the
9512 linebreak/paragraph challenge, so I ended up creating a new processor
9513 directive &lt;?linebreak?&gt;, mapping to &lt;br/&gt; in HTML, and
9514 &lt;fo:block/&gt; in FO/PDF.  I suspect there are better ways to do
9515 this, and welcome ideas and patches on github.  The HTML XSL file now
9516 look like this:</p>
9517
9518 <p><blockquote><pre>
9519 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9520 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
9521   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9522     &lt;br/&gt;
9523   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9524 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9525 </pre></blockquote></p>
9526
9527 <p>And the FO/PDF XSL file looked like this:</p>
9528
9529 <p><blockquote><pre>
9530 &lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
9531 &lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'
9532   xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format"&gt;
9533   &lt;xsl:template match="processing-instruction('linebreak)"&gt;
9534     &lt;fo:block/&gt;
9535   &lt;/xsl:template&gt;
9536 &lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
9537 </pre></blockquote></p>
9538
9539 <p>One unsolved challenge is our wish to expose different ISBN numbers
9540 per publication format, while keeping all of them in some conditional
9541 structure in the DocBook source.  No idea how to do this, so we ended
9542 up listing all the ISBN numbers next to their format in the colophon
9543 page.</p>
9544
9545 <p>If you want to check out the finished result, check out the
9546 <a href="https://github.com/sickel/kodemus">source repository at
9547 github</a>
9548 (<a href="https://github.com/EFN/kodemus">future/new/official
9549 repository</a>).  We expect it to be ready and announced in a few
9550 days.</p>
9551
9552       </div>
9553       <div class="tags">
9554
9555
9556         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
9557
9558
9559       </div>
9560     </div>
9561     <div class="padding"></div>
9562
9563     <div class="entry">
9564       <div class="title">
9565         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux_6_got_a_video_review_from_Pcwizz.html">Skolelinux 6 got a video review from Pcwizz</a>
9566       </div>
9567       <div class="date">
9568         17th March 2013
9569       </div>
9570       <div class="body">
9571         <p>Via
9572 <a href="https://twitter.com/pcwizz/status/313044373262716930">twitter</a>
9573 I just discovered that <a href="http://pcwizz.net/">Pcwizz</a> have
9574 done a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzTZ61Pcuc">video
9575 review</a> on Youtube of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
9576 / Debian Edu</a> version 6.  He installed the standalone profile and
9577 the video show a walk-through of of the menu content, demonstration of
9578 a few programs and his view of our distribution.</p>
9579
9580 <p>There is also some really nice quotes (transcribed by me, might
9581 have heard wrong).  While looking thought the Graphics menu:</p>
9582
9583 <blockquote>
9584 "Basically everything you ever need in a school environment."
9585 </blockquote>
9586
9587 <p>And as a general evaluation of the entire distribution:</p>
9588
9589 <blockquote>
9590 "So, yeah, a bit bloated.  It kept all the Debian stuff in there, just
9591 to keep it nice and GNU.  So, I do not want to go on about it, but
9592 lets give it 7 out of 10.  I am not going to use it.  That is because
9593 I am not deploying a school network.  There may be some mythical
9594 feature to help you deploy Skolelinux on a school network."
9595 </blockquote>
9596
9597 <p>To bad he did not test the server profile, and discovered the PXE
9598 installation option.  It make it possible to install only the main
9599 server from CD, and the rest of the machines via the net, and might be
9600 considered the mythical feature he talk about. :)</p>
9601
9602 <p>While looking through the menus, there is also this funny comment
9603 about the part of the K menu generated from the Debian menu subsystem:
9604
9605 <blockquote>
9606 "[The K menu] have a special Debian section for software that no-one
9607 is going to look at, because it contain lots of junky stuff that you
9608 actually don't need in the education distribution, but have just been
9609 included because it isn't stripped out for some reason."
9610 </blockquote>
9611
9612 <p>I guess it is yet another argument for merging the Debian menu and
9613 Gnome/KDE desktop menu entries into
9614 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/DebianMenuUsingDesktopEntries">one
9615 consistent menu system</a> instead of two incomplete and partly
9616 inconsistent menu systems.</p>
9617
9618 <p>The entire video is available below for those accepting iframe
9619 embedding:</p>
9620
9621 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wPzTZ61Pcuc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
9622
9623       </div>
9624       <div class="tags">
9625
9626
9627         Tags: <a href="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>.
9628
9629
9630       </div>
9631     </div>
9632     <div class="padding"></div>
9633
9634     <div class="entry">
9635       <div class="title">
9636         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_update_released.html">First Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze update released</a>
9637       </div>
9638       <div class="date">
9639          8th March 2013
9640       </div>
9641       <div class="body">
9642         <p>Last Sunday, 2013-03-03,, Holger Levsen announced the first update
9643 of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
9644 based on Debian Squeeze.  This is the first update since
9645 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
9646 initial release 2012-03-11</a>.  This is the
9647 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2013/03/msg00000.html">release
9648 announcement email from Holger</a>:</p>
9649
9650 <blockquote><p>Hi,</p>
9651
9652 <p>it's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Debian
9653 Edu 6.0.7+r1 ("Debian Edu Squeeze").</p>
9654
9655 <p>Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 is an incremental update to Debian Edu
9656 6.0.4+r0, containing all the changes between Debian 6.0.4 and 6.0.7 as
9657 well Debian Edu specific bugfixes and enhancements. See below (in this
9658 mail) for the full list of (edu) changes.  Please see
9659 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311">http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311</a>
9660 for more information on "Debian Edu Squeeze".</p>
9661
9662 <p>Images are available for download at
9663 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/</a></p>
9664
9665 <p>md5sums:
9666 <br>1fe79eb4f0f9ae1c58fc318e26cc1e2e  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9667 <br>a6ddd924a8bd9a1b5ca122e8fe1c34ec  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9668 <br>ac6c72cd7925ccec51bfbf58e2a7c69c  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9669
9670 <p>sha1sums:
9671 <br>a4b58233b672a99c7df8dc24fb6de3327654a5c3  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-CD.iso
9672 <br>9b524915e0ff2aa793f13d93123e5bd2bab2dbaa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-DVD.iso
9673 <br>43997614893fc5e9e59ad6ce066b05d07fd836fa  debian-edu-6.0.7+r1-source-DVD.iso</p>
9674
9675 <p>These images are suitable for amd64+i386.</p>
9676
9677 <p>Changes for Debian Edu 6.0.7+r1 Codename "Squeeze", released
9678 2013-03-03:</p>
9679
9680 <ul>
9681   <li>sitesummary was updated from 0.1.3 to 0.1.8
9682   <ul>
9683         <li>Make Nagios configuration more robust and efficient</li>
9684         <li>Comply with 3.X kernel</li>
9685   </ul></li>
9686   <li>debian-edu-doc from 1.4~20120310~6.0.4+r0 to 1.4~20130228~6.0.7+r1
9687   <ul>
9688         <li>Minor updates from the wiki</li>
9689         <li>Danish translation now complete</li>
9690   </ul></li>
9691   <li>debian-edu-config from 1.453 to 1.455
9692      <ul>
9693         <li>Fix /etc/hosts for LTSP diskless workstations. Closes: #699880</li>
9694         <li>Make ltsp_local_mount script work for multiple devices.</li>
9695         <li>Correct Kerberos user policy: don't expire password after 2 days.
9696                 Closes: #664596</li>
9697         <li>Handle '#' characters in the root or first users password.
9698                 Closes: #664976</li>
9699         <li>Fixes for gosa-sync:
9700            <ul>
9701                 <li>Don't fail if password contains "</li>
9702                 <li>Don't disclose new password string in syslog</li>
9703            </ul></li>
9704         <li>Fixes for gosa-create:
9705            <ul>
9706                 <li>Invalidate libnss cache before applying changes</li>
9707                 <li>Multiple failures during mass user import into GOsa²</li>
9708                 <li>gosa-netgroups plugin: don't erase entries of attribute type
9709                          "memberNisNetgroup". Closes: #687256</li>
9710                 <li>First user now uses the same Kerberos policy as all other users</li>
9711            </ul></li>
9712         <li>Add Danish web page</li>
9713     </ul>
9714   <li>debian-edu-install from 1.528 to 1.530
9715     <ul>
9716         <li>Improve preseeding support and documentation</li>
9717     </ul></li>
9718 </ul>
9719
9720 <p>End-user documentation in English is available at
9721 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/</a>
9722 - translations to French, Italian, Danish and German are available in
9723 the debian-edu-doc package. (Other languages could use your help!)</p>
9724
9725 <p>If you want to contribute to Debian Edu, please join our
9726 mailinglist
9727 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/">debian-edu@lists.debian.org</a>!
9728 </p></blockquote>
9729
9730 <p>I am very happy to see the fruits of a year of hard work. :)</p>
9731
9732       </div>
9733       <div class="tags">
9734
9735
9736         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
9737
9738
9739       </div>
9740     </div>
9741     <div class="padding"></div>
9742
9743     <div class="entry">
9744       <div class="title">
9745         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikanalen___Complete_TV_station_organised_using_the_web.html">Frikanalen - Complete TV station organised using the web</a>
9746       </div>
9747       <div class="date">
9748          3rd March 2013
9749       </div>
9750       <div class="body">
9751         <p>Do you want to set up your own TV station, schedule videos and
9752 broadcast them on the air?  Using free software?  With video on demand
9753 support using
9754 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9755 open standards</a>?  Included a web based video stream as well?  And
9756 administrate it all in your web browser from anywhere in the world?  A
9757 few years now the Norwegian public access TV-channel
9758 <a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a> have been building a
9759 system to do just this.  The source code for the solution is licensed
9760 using the GNU LGPL, and
9761 <a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from github</a>.</p>
9762
9763 <p>The idea is simple.  You upload a video file over the web, and
9764 attach meta information to the file.  You select a time slot in the
9765 program schedule, and when the time come it is played on the air and
9766 in the web stream.  It is also made available in a video on demand
9767 solution for anyone to see it also outside its scheduled time.  All
9768 you need to run a TV station - using your web browser.</p>
9769
9770 <p>There are several parts to this web based solution.  I'll mention
9771 the three most important ones.  The first part is the database of
9772 videos and the schedule.  This is written in Django and include a REST
9773 API.  The current database is SQLite, but the plan is to migrate it to
9774 PostgreSQL.  At the moment this system can be tested on
9775 <a href="http://beta.frikanalen.tv/">beta.frikanalen.tv</a>.  The
9776 second part is the video playout, taking the schedule information from
9777 the database and providing a video stream to broadcast.  This is done
9778 using <a href="http://www.casparcg.com/">CasparCG from SVT</a> and
9779 <a href="http://www.mltframework.org/">Media Lovin' Toolkit</a>.  Video
9780 signal distribution is handled using
9781 <a href="http://www.ob-encoder.com/">Open Broadcast Encoder</a>.  The
9782 third part is the converter, handling the transformation of uploaded
9783 video files to a format useful for broadcasting, streaming and video
9784 on demand.  It is still very much work in progress, so it is not yet
9785 decided what it will end up using.  Note that the source of the latter
9786 two parts are not yet pushed to github.  The lead author want to clean
9787 them up a bit more first.</p>
9788
9789 <p>The development is coordinated on the
9790 <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23frikanalen">#frikanalen IRC
9791 channel</a> (irc.freenode.net), and discussed on
9792 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/frikanalen">the
9793 frikanalen mailing list</a>. The lead developer is Benjamin Bruheim
9794 (phed on IRC).  Anyone is welcome to participate in the
9795 development.</p>
9796
9797       </div>
9798       <div class="tags">
9799
9800
9801         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
9802
9803
9804       </div>
9805     </div>
9806     <div class="padding"></div>
9807
9808     <div class="entry">
9809       <div class="title">
9810         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dr__Richard_Stallman__founder_of_Free_Software_Foundation__give_a_talk_in_Oslo_March_1st_2013.html">Dr. Richard Stallman, founder of Free Software Foundation, give a talk in Oslo March 1st 2013</a>
9811       </div>
9812       <div class="date">
9813         27th February 2013
9814       </div>
9815       <div class="body">
9816         <p>Dr. <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a>,
9817 founder of <a href="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>,
9818 is giving <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">a
9819 talk in Oslo March 1st 2013 17:00 to 19:00</a>.  The event is public
9820 and organised by <a href="">Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG)</a>
9821 (where I am the chair of the board) and
9822 <a href="http://www.friprog.no/">The Norwegian Open Source Competence
9823 Center</a>.  The title of the talk is «The Free Software Movement and
9824 GNU», with this description:
9825
9826 <p><blockquote>
9827 The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to
9828 cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement
9829 developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the
9830 kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.
9831 </blockquote></p>
9832
9833 <p>The meeting is open for everyone.  Due to space limitations, the
9834 doors opens for NUUG members at 16:15, and everyone else at 16:45.  I
9835 am really curious how many will show up.  See
9836 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20130301-rms/">the event
9837 page</a> for the location details.</p>
9838
9839       </div>
9840       <div class="tags">
9841
9842
9843         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
9844
9845
9846       </div>
9847     </div>
9848     <div class="padding"></div>
9849
9850     <div class="entry">
9851       <div class="title">
9852         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Frikart___Free_Garmin_maps_for_European_countries_based_on_OpenStreetmap.html">Frikart - Free Garmin maps for European countries based on OpenStreetmap</a>
9853       </div>
9854       <div class="date">
9855         15th February 2013
9856       </div>
9857       <div class="body">
9858         <p>If you, like me, want an updated a map for your Garmin GPS, there is
9859 now a great source of free maps available from
9860 <a href="http://www.frikart.no/garmin/index.html">Frikart</a>.  To
9861 download a map, just click on the country you are interested in, and
9862 download the map type you want.  There are 8 different maps available,
9863 using different colours and data selection.  Pick one of Roadmap, Topo
9864 Summer, Topo Winter, Roadmap II, Topo Summer II, Topo Winter II,
9865 "Trails - overlay map" and "Cross country - overlay map" (see the web
9866 page for descriptions).</p>
9867
9868 <p>The maps are updated weekly, so if you find something wrong in the
9869 map you can just edit the
9870 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> map source
9871 (anyone can contribute) and fetch a fixed map a week later. :)</p>
9872
9873       </div>
9874       <div class="tags">
9875
9876
9877         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>.
9878
9879
9880       </div>
9881     </div>
9882     <div class="padding"></div>
9883
9884     <div class="entry">
9885       <div class="title">
9886         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">"Electronic" paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</a>
9887       </div>
9888       <div class="date">
9889         12th February 2013
9890       </div>
9891       <div class="body">
9892         <p>Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
9893 <a href="http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura">solution promoted
9894 by the Norwegian government</a> require that invoices are sent through
9895 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
9896 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
9897 facilitators.  This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
9898 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers.  My preferred
9899 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
9900 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
9901 protocol like REST or SOAP.  But this might also be overkill, as the
9902 "electronic" information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
9903 using a simple bar code.  My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
9904 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there.  The
9905 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
9906 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard">the vCard format</a>, as
9907 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.</p>
9908
9909 <p>The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
9910 information can be included using such extentions.  For example an
9911 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
9912 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">ask
9913 for donations to the Debian Edu project</a> and thus have bank account
9914 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
9915 fields:</p>
9916
9917 <p><pre>
9918 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9919 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9920 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
9921 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9922 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9923 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9924 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9925 </pre></p>
9926
9927 <p>The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
9928 answer regarding
9929 <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file">how
9930 to put bank account information into a vCard</a>.  For payments in
9931 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
9932 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.</p>
9933
9934 <p>The complete vCard could look like this:</p>
9935
9936 <p><pre>
9937 BEGIN:VCARD
9938 VERSION:2.1
9939 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
9940 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
9941 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
9942 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
9943 REV:20130212T095000Z
9944 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
9945 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
9946 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
9947 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
9948 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
9949 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
9950 END:VCARD
9951 </pre></p>
9952
9953 <p>The resulting QR code created using
9954 <a href="http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/">qrencode</a> would look
9955 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
9956 phone, or for example the <a href="http://zbar.sourceforge.net/">zbar
9957 bar code reader</a> and feed right into the approval and accounting
9958 system.</p>
9959
9960 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png"></p>
9961
9962 <p>The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
9963 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
9964 handling invoices.  I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
9965 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.</p>
9966
9967 <p><strong>Update 2013-02-12 11:30</strong>: Added KID to the proposal
9968 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.</p>
9969
9970       </div>
9971       <div class="tags">
9972
9973
9974         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>.
9975
9976
9977       </div>
9978     </div>
9979     <div class="padding"></div>
9980
9981     <div class="entry">
9982       <div class="title">
9983         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sleep_until_morning___home_automation_for_the_kids.html">Sleep until morning - home automation for the kids</a>
9984       </div>
9985       <div class="date">
9986         10th February 2013
9987       </div>
9988       <div class="body">
9989         <p><img align="left" style="margin-right:25px;" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-10-morning-light.jpeg"></p>
9990
9991 <p>With kids in the house, one challenge is getting them to sleep
9992 during the night and wake up when it is morning.  I mean, when I
9993 believe it is morning, and not two hours earlier.  In our household we
9994 have decided that 07:00 is the turning point, but getting the kids to
9995 sleep until 07:00 is a small challenge every day.  They have adapted
9996 quite well, and rarely wake up at 05:00 any more, but some times wake
9997 up at times like 05:50, 06:15, 06:30 or 06:45, and it is hard to put
9998 the awake one to bed again without disturbing and waking the rest.
9999 And I understand perfectly well that they fail to sleep until 07:00
10000 some times, as there is no way for them to know if it is before or
10001 after the magic moment without coming and asking us parents.</p>
10002
10003 <p>But yesterday I came up with a method to solve this problem.  It
10004 involve home automation.  A few years ago I bought a
10005 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick">Tellstick</a> and RF
10006 switches at the local <a href="http://www.clasohlson.com/">Clas
10007 Ohlson</a> shop, allowing me to control lights and other electrical
10008 gadgets using my Linux server.  When I moved from the old flat to a
10009 small house, I put away all this equipment as most of the lighting in
10010 the house was not using wall sockets and thus not easy to connect to
10011 the gadgets I had.  But recently I bought a
10012 <a href="http://www.telldus.se/products/tellstick_net">Tellstick
10013 Net</a> to be able to read sensor input as well as control power
10014 sockets.  I want to control ovens in the basement to avoid the pipes
10015 to freeze, and monitor the humidity to detect flooding.  The default
10016 setup for Tellstick Net is to be controlled by the vendor web service,
10017 which to me is a security problem, but it is also possible to build
10018 ones own
10019 <a href="http://developer.telldus.com/blog/2012/03/02/help-us-develop-local-access-using-tellstick-net-build-your-own-firmware">firmware
10020 with local access</A> instead of being controlled by a Swedish
10021 company, thanks to the release of the GPL licensed firmware source
10022 code.  I plan to get that running before I let it control anything
10023 important.  But while working on this, one idea to make it easier for
10024 the kids came to me yesterday.  We can set up a night light controlled
10025 by the computer, and turn it automatically on at 07:00.  The kids can
10026 then check the light in the morning to know if they are supposed to
10027 get up or not.  They joined me in setting everything up, and I
10028 repeated the concept several times before bed times to make sure they
10029 remembered to check the light before getting up in the morning.</p>
10030
10031 <p>We tested it this morning, and all the kids stayed in bed until
10032 after 07:00, and every one of them commented on the fact that the
10033 "morning light" was turned on and signalled that the morning had
10034 arrived.  So this look like a success, and I am excited to see how
10035 this develops the next few days. :) I really hope this can allow us
10036 all to sleep a bit longer in the morning.</p>
10037
10038 <p>A nice advantage of this setup is that we can remote control when
10039 to tell the kids to get up.  We do not have to wait until 07:00, and
10040 can also delay it if we want to.</p>
10041
10042       </div>
10043       <div class="tags">
10044
10045
10046         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10047
10048
10049       </div>
10050     </div>
10051     <div class="padding"></div>
10052
10053     <div class="entry">
10054       <div class="title">
10055         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bitcoin_GUI_now_available_from_Debian_unstable__and_Ubuntu_raring_.html">Bitcoin GUI now available from Debian/unstable (and Ubuntu/raring)</a>
10056       </div>
10057       <div class="date">
10058          2nd February 2013
10059       </div>
10060       <div class="body">
10061         <p>My
10062 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
10063 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
10064 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
10065 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
10066 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
10067 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
10068 version too.</p>
10069
10070 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
10071 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
10072 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
10073 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
10074 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
10075 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
10076 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
10077 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
10078
10079 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
10080 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
10081 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
10082 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
10083 it. :)</p>
10084
10085 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
10086 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
10087 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
10088
10089       </div>
10090       <div class="tags">
10091
10092
10093         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>.
10094
10095
10096       </div>
10097     </div>
10098     <div class="padding"></div>
10099
10100     <div class="entry">
10101       <div class="title">
10102         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
10103       </div>
10104       <div class="date">
10105         22nd January 2013
10106       </div>
10107       <div class="body">
10108         <p>Yesterday, I
10109 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
10110 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
10111 pluggable hardware devices, which I
10112 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
10113 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
10114 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
10115 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
10116 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
10117 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
10118 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
10119 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
10120 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
10121 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
10122
10123 <pre>
10124 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
10125 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
10126 </pre>
10127
10128 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
10129 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
10130 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
10131 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
10132
10133 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
10134 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
10135 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
10136 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
10137 word.</p>
10138
10139 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
10140 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
10141 process.</p>
10142
10143 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
10144 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
10145
10146       </div>
10147       <div class="tags">
10148
10149
10150         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10151
10152
10153       </div>
10154     </div>
10155     <div class="padding"></div>
10156
10157     <div class="entry">
10158       <div class="title">
10159         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">First prototype ready making hardware easier to use in Debian</a>
10160       </div>
10161       <div class="date">
10162         21st January 2013
10163       </div>
10164       <div class="body">
10165         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
10166 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
10167 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
10168 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
10169 it, fetch the
10170 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
10171 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
10172 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
10173 autostart script.</p>
10174
10175 <p>The design is simple:</p>
10176
10177 <ul>
10178
10179 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
10180 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
10181
10182 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
10183 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
10184 initially did.</li>
10185
10186 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
10187 the APT database, a database
10188 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
10189 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
10190
10191 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
10192 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
10193 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
10194 package or packages.</li>
10195
10196 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
10197 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
10198
10199 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
10200 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
10201
10202 </ul>
10203
10204 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
10205 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
10206 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
10207 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
10208
10209 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
10210 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
10211 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
10212 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
10213 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
10214
10215 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
10216 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
10217 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
10218 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
10219 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
10220 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
10221 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
10222 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
10223
10224 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
10225 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
10226 '<tt>svn checkout
10227 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
10228 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
10229 devscripts package.</p>
10230
10231 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
10232 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
10233 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
10234 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
10235 instructions</a> for details.</p>
10236
10237       </div>
10238       <div class="tags">
10239
10240
10241         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10242
10243
10244       </div>
10245     </div>
10246     <div class="padding"></div>
10247
10248     <div class="entry">
10249       <div class="title">
10250         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">Thank you Thinkpad X41, for your long and trustworthy service</a>
10251       </div>
10252       <div class="date">
10253         19th January 2013
10254       </div>
10255       <div class="body">
10256         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
10257 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
10258 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
10259 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
10260 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
10261 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
10262 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
10263 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
10264 not a durable solution.
10265
10266 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
10267 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
10268
10269 <ul>
10270
10271 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
10272   than A4).</li>
10273 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
10274 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
10275 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
10276 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
10277 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
10278 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
10279 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
10280 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
10281 size).</li>
10282 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
10283   X.org packages.</li>
10284 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
10285   the time).
10286
10287 </ul>
10288
10289 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
10290 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
10291 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
10292 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
10293 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
10294 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
10295 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
10296 still be useful.</p>
10297
10298 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
10299 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
10300 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
10301 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
10302 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
10303 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
10304
10305       </div>
10306       <div class="tags">
10307
10308
10309         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10310
10311
10312       </div>
10313     </div>
10314     <div class="padding"></div>
10315
10316     <div class="entry">
10317       <div class="title">
10318         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_find_a_browser_plugin_supporting_a_given_MIME_type.html">How to find a browser plugin supporting a given MIME type</a>
10319       </div>
10320       <div class="date">
10321         18th January 2013
10322       </div>
10323       <div class="body">
10324         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
10325 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
10326 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
10327 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
10328 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
10329 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
10330 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
10331
10332 <pre>
10333 #!/usr/bin/python
10334 import sys
10335 import apt
10336 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10337     cache = apt.Cache()
10338     cache.open(None)
10339     thepkgs = []
10340     for pkg in cache:
10341         version = pkg.candidate
10342         if version is None:
10343             version = pkg.installed
10344         if version is None:
10345             continue
10346         record = version.record
10347         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
10348             continue
10349         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
10350         for t in mime_types:
10351             t = t.rstrip().strip()
10352             if t == mimetype:
10353                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
10354     return thepkgs
10355 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
10356 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
10357     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
10358 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
10359 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
10360     print "  %s" %pkg
10361 </pre>
10362
10363 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
10364
10365 <pre>
10366 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
10367 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
10368   gecko-mediaplayer
10369 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
10370 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
10371   browser-plugin-gnash
10372 %
10373 </pre>
10374
10375 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
10376 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
10377 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
10378 anyone working on adding it?</p>
10379
10380 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
10381 request for icweasel support for this feature is
10382 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
10383 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
10384 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
10385 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
10386
10387       </div>
10388       <div class="tags">
10389
10390
10391         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10392
10393
10394       </div>
10395     </div>
10396     <div class="padding"></div>
10397
10398     <div class="entry">
10399       <div class="title">
10400         <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>
10401       </div>
10402       <div class="date">
10403         16th January 2013
10404       </div>
10405       <div class="body">
10406         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
10407 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
10408 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
10409 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
10410 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
10411 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
10412 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
10413 downloaded by the browser.</p>
10414
10415 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
10416 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
10417 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
10418 can be found on the
10419 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
10420 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
10421 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
10422 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
10423 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
10424
10425 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
10426
10427 <pre>
10428   count MIME type
10429   ----- -----------------------
10430      32 text/plain
10431      30 audio/mpeg
10432      29 image/png
10433      28 image/jpeg
10434      27 application/ogg
10435      26 audio/x-mp3
10436      25 image/tiff
10437      25 image/gif
10438      22 image/bmp
10439      22 audio/x-wav
10440      20 audio/x-flac
10441      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10442      18 video/x-ms-asf
10443      18 audio/x-musepack
10444      18 audio/x-mpeg
10445      18 application/x-ogg
10446      17 video/mpeg
10447      17 audio/x-scpls
10448      17 audio/ogg
10449      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10450 </pre>
10451
10452 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
10453
10454 <pre>
10455   count MIME type
10456   ----- -----------------------
10457      33 text/plain
10458      32 image/png
10459      32 image/jpeg
10460      29 audio/mpeg
10461      27 image/gif
10462      26 image/tiff
10463      26 application/ogg
10464      25 audio/x-mp3
10465      22 image/bmp
10466      21 audio/x-wav
10467      19 audio/x-mpegurl
10468      19 audio/x-mpeg
10469      18 video/mpeg
10470      18 audio/x-scpls
10471      18 audio/x-flac
10472      18 application/x-ogg
10473      17 video/x-ms-asf
10474      17 text/html
10475      17 audio/x-musepack
10476      16 image/x-xbitmap
10477 </pre>
10478
10479 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
10480
10481 <pre>
10482   count MIME type
10483   ----- -----------------------
10484      31 text/plain
10485      31 image/png
10486      31 image/jpeg
10487      29 audio/mpeg
10488      28 application/ogg
10489      27 image/gif
10490      26 image/tiff
10491      26 audio/x-mp3
10492      23 audio/x-wav
10493      22 image/bmp
10494      21 audio/x-flac
10495      20 audio/x-mpegurl
10496      19 audio/x-mpeg
10497      18 video/x-ms-asf
10498      18 video/mpeg
10499      18 audio/x-scpls
10500      18 application/x-ogg
10501      17 audio/x-musepack
10502      16 video/x-ms-wmv
10503      16 video/x-msvideo
10504 </pre>
10505
10506 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
10507 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
10508 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
10509 issues.</p>
10510
10511 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
10512 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
10513
10514       </div>
10515       <div class="tags">
10516
10517
10518         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
10519
10520
10521       </div>
10522     </div>
10523     <div class="padding"></div>
10524
10525     <div class="entry">
10526       <div class="title">
10527         <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>
10528       </div>
10529       <div class="date">
10530         15th January 2013
10531       </div>
10532       <div class="body">
10533         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
10534 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
10535 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
10536 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
10537 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
10538 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
10539 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
10540 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
10541 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
10542 packages.</p>
10543
10544 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
10545 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
10546 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
10547 modalias.</p>
10548
10549 <p><blockquote>
10550 Package: package-name
10551 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
10552 </blockquote></p>
10553
10554 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
10555 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
10556
10557 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
10558 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
10559
10560 <p><blockquote>
10561 Package: cheese
10562 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
10563 </blockquote></p>
10564
10565 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
10566 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
10567
10568 <p><blockquote>
10569 Package: pcmciautils
10570 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
10571 </blockquote></p>
10572
10573 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
10574 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
10575
10576 <p><blockquote>
10577 Package: colorhug-client
10578 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
10579 </blockquote></p>
10580
10581 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
10582 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
10583 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
10584
10585 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
10586 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
10587 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
10588 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
10589 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
10590 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
10591 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
10592 Raring.</p>
10593
10594 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
10595 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
10596 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
10597 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
10598 try the
10599 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
10600 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
10601 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
10602 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
10603
10604 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
10605 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
10606
10607 <p><blockquote>
10608 % ./hw-support-lookup
10609 <br>yubikey-personalization
10610 <br>%
10611 </blockquote></p>
10612
10613 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
10614 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
10615
10616 <p><blockquote>
10617 % ./hw-support-lookup
10618 <br>pcmciautils
10619 <br>%
10620 </blockquote></p>
10621
10622 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
10623 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
10624 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
10625
10626 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
10627 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
10628 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
10629 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
10630 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
10631 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
10632 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
10633 see if it work.</p>
10634
10635 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10636 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10637 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10638 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10639
10640       </div>
10641       <div class="tags">
10642
10643
10644         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10645
10646
10647       </div>
10648     </div>
10649     <div class="padding"></div>
10650
10651     <div class="entry">
10652       <div class="title">
10653         <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>
10654       </div>
10655       <div class="date">
10656         14th January 2013
10657       </div>
10658       <div class="body">
10659         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
10660 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
10661 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
10662 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
10663 in
10664 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
10665 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
10666
10667 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
10668
10669 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
10670 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
10671 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
10672 &lt;URL: <a href="http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device">http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26132/how-to-assign-usb-driver-to-device</a> &gt;,
10673 &lt;URL: <a href="http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c">http://code.metager.de/source/history/linux/stable/scripts/mod/file2alias.c</a> &gt; and
10674 &lt;URL: <a href="http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup">http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/dmidecode/dmidecode.c?root=dmidecode&view=markup</a> &gt;.
10675
10676 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
10677 this shell script:</p>
10678
10679 <pre>
10680 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
10681 </pre>
10682
10683 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
10684 using modinfo:</p>
10685
10686 <pre>
10687 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
10688 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
10689 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
10690 %
10691 </pre>
10692
10693 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
10694
10695 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
10696 Bridge memory controller:</p>
10697
10698 <p><blockquote>
10699 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
10700 </blockquote></p>
10701
10702 <p>This represent these values:</p>
10703
10704 <pre>
10705  v   00008086  (vendor)
10706  d   00002770  (device)
10707  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
10708  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
10709  bc  06        (bus class)
10710  sc  00        (bus subclass)
10711  i   00        (interface)
10712 </pre>
10713
10714 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
10715 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
10716 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
10717 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
10718
10719 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
10720 means.</p>
10721
10722 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
10723
10724 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
10725 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
10726
10727 <p><blockquote>
10728 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
10729 </blockquote></p>
10730
10731 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
10732
10733 <pre>
10734  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
10735  p    0001  (device product)
10736  d    0206  (bcddevice)
10737  dc     09  (device class)
10738  dsc    00  (device subclass)
10739  dp     00  (device protocol)
10740  ic     09  (interface class)
10741  isc    00  (interface subclass)
10742  ip     00  (interface protocol)
10743 </pre>
10744
10745 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
10746 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
10747 these alias entries show up:</p>
10748
10749 <p><blockquote>
10750 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
10751 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
10752 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
10753 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
10754 </blockquote></p>
10755
10756 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
10757 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
10758 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
10759
10760 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
10761
10762 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
10763 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
10764
10765 <p><blockquote>
10766 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10767 </blockquote></p>
10768
10769 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
10770
10771 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
10772
10773 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
10774 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
10775 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
10776
10777 <p><blockquote>
10778 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
10779 </blockquote></p>
10780
10781 <p>The values present are</p>
10782
10783 <pre>
10784  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
10785  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
10786  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
10787  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
10788  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
10789  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
10790  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
10791  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
10792  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
10793  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
10794  ct   10             (chassis type)
10795  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
10796 </pre>
10797
10798 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
10799 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
10800
10801 <pre>
10802   3 Desktop
10803   4 Low Profile Desktop
10804   5 Pizza Box
10805   6 Mini Tower
10806   7 Tower
10807   8 Portable
10808   9 Laptop
10809  10 Notebook
10810  11 Hand Held
10811  12 Docking Station
10812  13 All In One
10813  14 Sub Notebook
10814  15 Space-saving
10815  16 Lunch Box
10816  17 Main Server Chassis
10817  18 Expansion Chassis
10818  19 Sub Chassis
10819  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
10820  21 Peripheral Chassis
10821  22 RAID Chassis
10822  23 Rack Mount Chassis
10823  24 Sealed-case PC
10824  25 Multi-system
10825  26 CompactPCI
10826  27 AdvancedTCA
10827  28 Blade
10828  29 Blade Enclosing
10829 </pre>
10830
10831 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
10832 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
10833 claim it is a desktop.</p>
10834
10835 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
10836
10837 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
10838 test machine:</p>
10839
10840 <p><blockquote>
10841 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
10842 </blockquote></p>
10843
10844 <p>The values present are</p>
10845
10846 <pre>
10847   ty  01  (type)
10848   pr  00  (prototype)
10849   id  00  (id)
10850   ex  00  (extra)
10851 </pre>
10852
10853 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
10854 the valid values are.</p>
10855
10856 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
10857
10858 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
10859 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
10860 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
10861 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
10862 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
10863 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
10864 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
10865
10866 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
10867
10868 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
10869 one can use the following shell script:</p>
10870
10871 <pre>
10872   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
10873     echo "$id" ; \
10874     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
10875   done
10876 </pre>
10877
10878 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
10879 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
10880
10881 <pre>
10882   acpi:ACPI0003:
10883     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
10884   acpi:device:
10885   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
10886   acpi:IBM0068:
10887     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
10888     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
10889     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
10890     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
10891   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
10892     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
10893     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
10894     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
10895   [...]
10896 </pre>
10897
10898 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
10899 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
10900 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
10901 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
10902
10903 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
10904 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
10905 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
10906
10907       </div>
10908       <div class="tags">
10909
10910
10911         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
10912
10913
10914       </div>
10915     </div>
10916     <div class="padding"></div>
10917
10918     <div class="entry">
10919       <div class="title">
10920         <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>
10921       </div>
10922       <div class="date">
10923         10th January 2013
10924       </div>
10925       <div class="body">
10926         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
10927 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
10928 Launcher and updated the Debian package
10929 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
10930 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
10931 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
10932 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
10933 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
10934 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
10935 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
10936 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
10937 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
10938 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
10939 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
10940 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
10941 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
10942 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
10943 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
10944
10945       </div>
10946       <div class="tags">
10947
10948
10949         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
10950
10951
10952       </div>
10953     </div>
10954     <div class="padding"></div>
10955
10956     <div class="entry">
10957       <div class="title">
10958         <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>
10959       </div>
10960       <div class="date">
10961          9th January 2013
10962       </div>
10963       <div class="body">
10964         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
10965 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
10966 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
10967 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
10968 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
10969 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
10970 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
10971 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
10972 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
10973 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
10974 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
10975
10976 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
10977 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
10978 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
10979 simple:
10980
10981 <ul>
10982
10983 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
10984   starting when a user log in.</li>
10985
10986 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
10987   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
10988
10989 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
10990   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
10991   packages.</li>
10992
10993 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
10994   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
10995
10996 </ul>
10997
10998 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
10999 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
11000 discover database to find packages and
11001 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
11002 packages.</p>
11003
11004 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
11005 draft package is now checked into
11006 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
11007 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
11008 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
11009 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
11010 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
11011 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
11012 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
11013 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
11014 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
11015 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
11016 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
11017 because of the freeze).</p>
11018
11019 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
11020 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
11021 inserted):</p>
11022
11023 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
11024
11025 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
11026 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
11027 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
11028
11029 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
11030 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
11031 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
11032 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
11033 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
11034 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
11035 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
11036
11037 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
11038 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
11039 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
11040 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
11041 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
11042 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
11043 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
11044 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
11045 not be installed?</p>
11046
11047 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
11048 please send me an email. :)</p>
11049
11050       </div>
11051       <div class="tags">
11052
11053
11054         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram</a>.
11055
11056
11057       </div>
11058     </div>
11059     <div class="padding"></div>
11060
11061     <div class="entry">
11062       <div class="title">
11063         <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>
11064       </div>
11065       <div class="date">
11066          2nd January 2013
11067       </div>
11068       <div class="body">
11069         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
11070 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
11071 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
11072 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
11073 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
11074 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
11075 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
11076 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
11077 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
11078 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
11079
11080 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
11081 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
11082 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
11083
11084       </div>
11085       <div class="tags">
11086
11087
11088         Tags: <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>.
11089
11090
11091       </div>
11092     </div>
11093     <div class="padding"></div>
11094
11095     <div class="entry">
11096       <div class="title">
11097         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11098       </div>
11099       <div class="date">
11100         28th December 2012
11101       </div>
11102       <div class="body">
11103         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
11104 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
11105 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
11106 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
11107 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
11108 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
11109 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
11110 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
11111 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
11112 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
11113 followed by many others. :)</p>
11114
11115 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
11116 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
11117 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
11118 you want to donate to the project.</p>
11119
11120       </div>
11121       <div class="tags">
11122
11123
11124         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11125
11126
11127       </div>
11128     </div>
11129     <div class="padding"></div>
11130
11131     <div class="entry">
11132       <div class="title">
11133         <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>
11134       </div>
11135       <div class="date">
11136         25th December 2012
11137       </div>
11138       <div class="body">
11139         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
11140 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
11141
11142 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
11143 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
11144 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
11145 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
11146 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
11147 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
11148 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
11149 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
11150 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
11151 name.</p>
11152
11153 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
11154 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
11155 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
11156
11157 <blockquote><pre>
11158 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
11159 cd bitcoin
11160 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
11161 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
11162 </pre></blockquote>
11163
11164 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
11165 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
11166 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
11167 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
11168 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
11169 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
11170 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
11171 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
11172 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
11173
11174 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
11175 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
11176 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11177
11178       </div>
11179       <div class="tags">
11180
11181
11182         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>.
11183
11184
11185       </div>
11186     </div>
11187     <div class="padding"></div>
11188
11189     <div class="entry">
11190       <div class="title">
11191         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
11192       </div>
11193       <div class="date">
11194         21st December 2012
11195       </div>
11196       <div class="body">
11197         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
11198 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
11199 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
11200 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
11201 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
11202 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
11203 is now maintained by a
11204 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
11205 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
11206 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
11207 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
11208 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
11209 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
11210 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
11211 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
11212 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
11213 Corallo in a
11214 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
11215 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
11216 Debian package.</p>
11217
11218 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
11219 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
11220 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
11221 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
11222 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
11223 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
11224 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
11225 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
11226 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
11227 new version to unstable.
11228
11229 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
11230 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
11231 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
11232 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
11233 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
11234 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
11235 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
11236 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
11237 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
11238 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
11239 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
11240 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
11241 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
11242 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
11243 have not tested them.</p>
11244
11245 <p>My
11246 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
11247 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
11248 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
11249 years ago, as can be
11250 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
11251 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
11252 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
11253 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
11254 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
11255 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
11256 the same address as last time,
11257 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
11258
11259       </div>
11260       <div class="tags">
11261
11262
11263         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>.
11264
11265
11266       </div>
11267     </div>
11268     <div class="padding"></div>
11269
11270     <div class="entry">
11271       <div class="title">
11272         <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>
11273       </div>
11274       <div class="date">
11275         18th December 2012
11276       </div>
11277       <div class="body">
11278         <p>A few days ago I came across
11279 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
11280 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
11281 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
11282 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
11283 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
11284 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
11285 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
11286 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
11287 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
11288
11289 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
11290 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
11291 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
11292 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
11293
11294 <blockquote><pre>
11295 2004-05-27 Book Store
11296       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
11297       Liabilities:Visa
11298 </pre></blockquote>
11299
11300 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
11301 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
11302 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
11303 Spang</a>,
11304 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
11305 Keen</a>,
11306 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
11307 Cantino</a> and
11308 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
11309 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
11310 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
11311 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
11312 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
11313
11314 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
11315 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
11316 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
11317 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
11318 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
11319
11320 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
11321 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
11322 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
11323 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
11324 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
11325 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
11326 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
11327 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
11328 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
11329
11330       </div>
11331       <div class="tags">
11332
11333
11334         Tags: <a href="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>.
11335
11336
11337       </div>
11338     </div>
11339     <div class="padding"></div>
11340
11341     <div class="entry">
11342       <div class="title">
11343         <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>
11344       </div>
11345       <div class="date">
11346          6th December 2012
11347       </div>
11348       <div class="body">
11349         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
11350 Oslo</a>, we use the
11351 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
11352 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
11353 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
11354 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
11355 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
11356 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
11357 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
11358 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
11359 Python.</p>
11360
11361 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
11362 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
11363 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
11364 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
11365 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
11366 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
11367
11368 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
11369 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
11370 user currently logged in:</p>
11371
11372 <blockquote><pre>
11373 #!/usr/bin/env python
11374 import getpass
11375 import xmlrpclib
11376 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
11377 username = getpass.getuser()
11378 password = getpass.getpass()
11379 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
11380 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
11381 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
11382 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
11383 result = server.logout(sessionid)
11384 print result
11385 </pre></blockquote>
11386
11387 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
11388 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
11389
11390       </div>
11391       <div class="tags">
11392
11393
11394         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>.
11395
11396
11397       </div>
11398     </div>
11399     <div class="padding"></div>
11400
11401     <div class="entry">
11402       <div class="title">
11403         <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>
11404       </div>
11405       <div class="date">
11406         17th November 2012
11407       </div>
11408       <div class="body">
11409         <p>While working on a
11410 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
11411 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
11412 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
11413 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
11414 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
11415 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
11416
11417 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
11418 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
11419 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
11420 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
11421 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
11422 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
11423 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
11424 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
11425 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
11426 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
11427 arguments.</p>
11428
11429 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
11430 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
11431 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
11432 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
11433 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
11434 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
11435 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
11436 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
11437
11438 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
11439 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
11440 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
11441 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
11442 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
11443 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
11444 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
11445 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
11446 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
11447 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
11448 correct right holder.</p>
11449
11450 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
11451 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
11452 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
11453 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
11454 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
11455 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
11456 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
11457 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
11458 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
11459 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
11460 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
11461 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
11462 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
11463 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
11464
11465 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
11466 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
11467 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
11468
11469 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
11470 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
11471
11472       </div>
11473       <div class="tags">
11474
11475
11476         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>.
11477
11478
11479       </div>
11480     </div>
11481     <div class="padding"></div>
11482
11483     <div class="entry">
11484       <div class="title">
11485         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
11486       </div>
11487       <div class="date">
11488         14th November 2012
11489       </div>
11490       <div class="body">
11491         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
11492 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
11493 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
11494 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
11495 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
11496 the people behind the German
11497 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
11498 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
11499 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
11500
11501 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
11502
11503 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
11504 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
11505 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
11506
11507 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
11508 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
11509 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
11510 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
11511 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
11512 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
11513
11514 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
11515 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
11516 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
11517 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
11518 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
11519 relationship management and the communication processes in the
11520 project.</p>
11521
11522 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
11523 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
11524 and a yoga teacher.</p>
11525
11526 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
11527 project?</strong></p>
11528
11529 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
11530
11531 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
11532 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
11533 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
11534 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
11535 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
11536 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
11537 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
11538 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
11539 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
11540 parents.</p>
11541
11542 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
11543 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
11544 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
11545 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
11546 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
11547 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
11548 Germany.</p>
11549
11550 <p>For information about our school project you can read
11551 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
11552 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
11553
11554 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11555 Edu?</strong></p>
11556
11557 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
11558 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
11559
11560 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
11561 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
11562 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
11563 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
11564 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
11565 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
11566 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
11567 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
11568 teachers, parents...</p>
11569
11570 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
11571 Edu?</strong></p>
11572
11573 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
11574 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11575
11576 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
11577 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
11578 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
11579 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
11580 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11581
11582 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
11583 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
11584 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
11585 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
11586 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
11587 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
11588 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
11589
11590 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
11591
11592 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
11593 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
11594 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
11595 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
11596
11597 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
11598 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
11599
11600 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
11601 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
11602 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
11603 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
11604 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
11605
11606 <ul>
11607
11608 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
11609 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
11610 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
11611
11612 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
11613 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
11614 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
11615 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
11616 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
11617 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
11618 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
11619
11620 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
11621 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
11622 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
11623 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
11624
11625 </ul>
11626
11627       </div>
11628       <div class="tags">
11629
11630
11631         Tags: <a href="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>.
11632
11633
11634       </div>
11635     </div>
11636     <div class="padding"></div>
11637
11638     <div class="entry">
11639       <div class="title">
11640         <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>
11641       </div>
11642       <div class="date">
11643          4th November 2012
11644       </div>
11645       <div class="body">
11646         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
11647 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
11648 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
11649 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
11650 see how a member of the bitcoin community
11651 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
11652 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
11653 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
11654 competition.  My thoughts go to the
11655 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
11656 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
11657 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
11658 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
11659 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
11660
11661 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
11662 that the community already seem to have
11663 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
11664 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
11665 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
11666 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
11667 wealth is available.</p>
11668
11669       </div>
11670       <div class="tags">
11671
11672
11673         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>.
11674
11675
11676       </div>
11677     </div>
11678     <div class="padding"></div>
11679
11680     <div class="entry">
11681       <div class="title">
11682         <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>
11683       </div>
11684       <div class="date">
11685         26th October 2012
11686       </div>
11687       <div class="body">
11688         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
11689 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
11690 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
11691 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
11692 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
11693 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
11694 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
11695 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
11696 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
11697 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
11698 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
11699 it every time.</p>
11700
11701 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
11702 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
11703 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
11704 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
11705 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
11706 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
11707 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
11708 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
11709 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
11710 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
11711 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
11712 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
11713
11714 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
11715 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
11716 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
11717 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
11718 article: First the unplanned outage:
11719
11720 <blockquote><pre>
11721 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
11722 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
11723 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
11724 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
11725 Duration:    40 minutes
11726 Scope:       Exchange 2003
11727 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
11728              a cluster failover.
11729
11730 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
11731              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
11732 Technician:  [xxx]
11733 </pre></blockquote>
11734
11735 Next the planned outage:
11736
11737 <blockquote><pre>
11738 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
11739 Severity:    Major (Planned)
11740 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
11741 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
11742 Duration:    10 hours
11743 Scope:       H2 Transport
11744 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
11745              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
11746              4510s.
11747 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
11748              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
11749              connectivity.
11750 Technician:  [xxx]
11751 </pre></blockquote>
11752
11753 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
11754 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
11755 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
11756 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
11757 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
11758 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
11759 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
11760
11761 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
11762 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
11763 university too.  We do register
11764 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
11765 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
11766 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
11767 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
11768 for other sites to consider too?</p>
11769
11770       </div>
11771       <div class="tags">
11772
11773
11774         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix</a>.
11775
11776
11777       </div>
11778     </div>
11779     <div class="padding"></div>
11780
11781     <div class="entry">
11782       <div class="title">
11783         <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>
11784       </div>
11785       <div class="date">
11786         22nd October 2012
11787       </div>
11788       <div class="body">
11789         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
11790 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
11791 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
11792 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
11793 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
11794 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
11795 background information is available in Norwegian from
11796 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
11797 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
11798 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
11799 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
11800 willing to
11801 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
11802 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
11803 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
11804 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
11805 sounded like
11806 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
11807 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
11808 later.</p>
11809
11810 <p>And thought this action is
11811 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
11812 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
11813 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
11814 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
11815 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
11816 rights.</p>
11817
11818 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
11819 unacceptable terms.  For example
11820 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
11821 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
11822 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
11823 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
11824 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
11825
11826 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
11827 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
11828 restored the account of the user, as reported by
11829 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
11830 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
11831 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
11832 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
11833 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
11834 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
11835 reading two opinions from
11836 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
11837 Phipps</a> and
11838 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
11839 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
11840 details about the original story.</p>
11841
11842       </div>
11843       <div class="tags">
11844
11845
11846         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>.
11847
11848
11849       </div>
11850     </div>
11851     <div class="padding"></div>
11852
11853     <div class="entry">
11854       <div class="title">
11855         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
11856       </div>
11857       <div class="date">
11858         18th October 2012
11859       </div>
11860       <div class="body">
11861         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
11862 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
11863 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
11864 across a marvellous drawing by
11865 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
11866 visualising some of what is going on.
11867
11868 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
11869 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
11870
11871 <blockquote>
11872 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
11873 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
11874 </blockquote>
11875
11876 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
11877 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
11878 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
11879 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
11880 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
11881 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
11882
11883       </div>
11884       <div class="tags">
11885
11886
11887         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>.
11888
11889
11890       </div>
11891     </div>
11892     <div class="padding"></div>
11893
11894     <div class="entry">
11895       <div class="title">
11896         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
11897       </div>
11898       <div class="date">
11899         12th October 2012
11900       </div>
11901       <div class="body">
11902         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
11903 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
11904 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
11905 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
11906 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
11907 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
11908 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
11909 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
11910 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
11911 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
11912 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
11913 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
11914 matter".</p>
11915
11916 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
11917 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
11918 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
11919 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
11920 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
11921 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
11922 to argue its side.</p>
11923
11924 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
11925 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
11926 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
11927 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
11928
11929 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
11930 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
11931 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
11932
11933       </div>
11934       <div class="tags">
11935
11936
11937         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>.
11938
11939
11940       </div>
11941     </div>
11942     <div class="padding"></div>
11943
11944     <div class="entry">
11945       <div class="title">
11946         <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>
11947       </div>
11948       <div class="date">
11949          3rd October 2012
11950       </div>
11951       <div class="body">
11952         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
11953 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
11954 the computer science book collection available in his local
11955 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
11956 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
11957 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
11958 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
11959 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
11960 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
11961 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
11962 recently published books.</p>
11963
11964 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
11965 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
11966 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
11967 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
11968 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
11969 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
11970 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
11971 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
11972 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
11973 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
11974 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
11975 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
11976 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
11977 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
11978 for the library that evening.</p>
11979
11980 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
11981 going to know that for example
11982 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
11983 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
11984 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
11985 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
11986 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
11987 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
11988 book right away.</p>
11989
11990       </div>
11991       <div class="tags">
11992
11993
11994         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
11995
11996
11997       </div>
11998     </div>
11999     <div class="padding"></div>
12000
12001     <div class="entry">
12002       <div class="title">
12003         <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>
12004       </div>
12005       <div class="date">
12006         23rd September 2012
12007       </div>
12008       <div class="body">
12009         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
12010 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
12011 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12012 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
12013 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
12014 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
12015
12016 When I started, I
12017 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12018 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
12019 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
12020 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
12021 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
12022 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
12023 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
12024
12025 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12026
12027 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
12028 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
12029 the project files currently available from
12030 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12031
12032 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12033 the updated
12034 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12035 and
12036 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12037 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12038 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12039 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12040
12041       </div>
12042       <div class="tags">
12043
12044
12045         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>.
12046
12047
12048       </div>
12049     </div>
12050     <div class="padding"></div>
12051
12052     <div class="entry">
12053       <div class="title">
12054         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
12055       </div>
12056       <div class="date">
12057         17th September 2012
12058       </div>
12059       <div class="body">
12060         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
12061 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
12062 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
12063 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
12064 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
12065 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
12066 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
12067
12068 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12069
12070 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
12071 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
12072 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
12073 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
12074 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
12075 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
12076 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
12077 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
12078 training is anyway very important</p>
12079
12080 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
12081 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
12082 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
12083 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
12084 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
12085
12086 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12087 project?</strong></p>
12088
12089 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
12090 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
12091 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
12092 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
12093 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
12094 hole.</p>
12095
12096 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12097 Edu?</strong></p>
12098
12099 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
12100 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
12101 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
12102 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
12103 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
12104 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
12105 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
12106 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
12107 hassle.</p>
12108
12109 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12110 Edu?</strong></p>
12111
12112 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
12113 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
12114 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
12115 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
12116 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
12117 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
12118 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
12119 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
12120
12121 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12122
12123 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
12124 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
12125 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
12126 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
12127 has the same...</p>
12128
12129 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
12130 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
12131 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
12132 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
12133
12134 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12135 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12136
12137 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
12138 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
12139 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
12140
12141 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
12142 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
12143 don't.</p>
12144
12145 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
12146 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
12147 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
12148 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
12149 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
12150 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
12151 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
12152
12153       </div>
12154       <div class="tags">
12155
12156
12157         Tags: <a href="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>.
12158
12159
12160       </div>
12161     </div>
12162     <div class="padding"></div>
12163
12164     <div class="entry">
12165       <div class="title">
12166         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
12167       </div>
12168       <div class="date">
12169         15th September 2012
12170       </div>
12171       <div class="body">
12172         <p>After the
12173 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
12174 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
12175 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
12176 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
12177 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
12178 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
12179 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
12180 was
12181 <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
12182 formal working group should be formed.</p>
12183
12184 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
12185 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
12186 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
12187 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
12188 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
12189 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
12190 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
12191 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
12192
12193 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
12194 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
12195 IETF.</p>
12196
12197       </div>
12198       <div class="tags">
12199
12200
12201         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>.
12202
12203
12204       </div>
12205     </div>
12206     <div class="padding"></div>
12207
12208     <div class="entry">
12209       <div class="title">
12210         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
12211       </div>
12212       <div class="date">
12213         12th September 2012
12214       </div>
12215       <div class="body">
12216         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
12217 publication of of
12218 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
12219 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
12220 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
12221 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
12222 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
12223 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
12224 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
12225 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
12226 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
12227 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
12228
12229 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
12230 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
12231 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
12232 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
12233
12234 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
12235 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
12236
12237       </div>
12238       <div class="tags">
12239
12240
12241         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>.
12242
12243
12244       </div>
12245     </div>
12246     <div class="padding"></div>
12247
12248     <div class="entry">
12249       <div class="title">
12250         <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>
12251       </div>
12252       <div class="date">
12253          7th September 2012
12254       </div>
12255       <div class="body">
12256         <p>As I
12257 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
12258 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
12259 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
12260 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
12261 repository for the project</a>.</p>
12262
12263 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
12264 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
12265 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
12266 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
12267
12268 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
12269 PostScript formats at
12270 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
12271 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
12272
12273       </div>
12274       <div class="tags">
12275
12276
12277         Tags: <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>.
12278
12279
12280       </div>
12281     </div>
12282     <div class="padding"></div>
12283
12284     <div class="entry">
12285       <div class="title">
12286         <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>
12287       </div>
12288       <div class="date">
12289         23rd August 2012
12290       </div>
12291       <div class="body">
12292         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
12293 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
12294 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
12295 revisit the great site
12296 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
12297 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
12298 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
12299
12300       </div>
12301       <div class="tags">
12302
12303
12304         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>.
12305
12306
12307       </div>
12308     </div>
12309     <div class="padding"></div>
12310
12311     <div class="entry">
12312       <div class="title">
12313         <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>
12314       </div>
12315       <div class="date">
12316         17th August 2012
12317       </div>
12318       <div class="body">
12319         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
12320 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
12321 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
12322 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
12323 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
12324 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
12325 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
12326 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
12327 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
12328 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
12329 summer I
12330 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
12331 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
12332 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
12333
12334 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
12335 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
12336 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
12337 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
12338 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
12339 progress:</p>
12340
12341 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
12342
12343 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
12344 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
12345 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
12346 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
12347 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
12348 english version of the docbook source.</p>
12349
12350 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
12351 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
12352 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
12353 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
12354 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
12355 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
12356 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
12357 project files currently available from <a
12358 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12359
12360 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
12361 the updated
12362 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
12363 and
12364 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
12365 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
12366 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
12367 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
12368
12369       </div>
12370       <div class="tags">
12371
12372
12373         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>.
12374
12375
12376       </div>
12377     </div>
12378     <div class="padding"></div>
12379
12380     <div class="entry">
12381       <div class="title">
12382         <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>
12383       </div>
12384       <div class="date">
12385         10th August 2012
12386       </div>
12387       <div class="body">
12388         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
12389 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
12390 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
12391 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
12392 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
12393 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
12394 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
12395 case for the language
12396 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
12397 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
12398
12399 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
12400 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
12401 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
12402 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
12403 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
12404
12405 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
12406 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
12407 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
12408 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
12409 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
12410 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
12411 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
12412 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
12413 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
12414 alias for 'nb'.</p>
12415
12416 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
12417 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
12418 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
12419 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
12420 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
12421 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
12422 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
12423 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
12424 at the same time. :(</p>
12425
12426 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
12427 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
12428 processors. :(</p>
12429
12430 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
12431
12432       </div>
12433       <div class="tags">
12434
12435
12436         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>.
12437
12438
12439       </div>
12440     </div>
12441     <div class="padding"></div>
12442
12443     <div class="entry">
12444       <div class="title">
12445         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
12446       </div>
12447       <div class="date">
12448         31st July 2012
12449       </div>
12450       <div class="body">
12451         <p>I tried to send this text to the
12452 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
12453 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
12454 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
12455 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
12456 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
12457 out.</p>
12458
12459 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
12460 learning curve at the moment.</p>
12461
12462 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
12463 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
12464 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
12465 available from
12466 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
12467 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
12468 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
12469 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
12470 Squeeze.</p>
12471
12472 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
12473 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
12474 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
12475 problems.</p>
12476
12477 <ul>
12478
12479 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
12480    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
12481    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
12482    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
12483    index references spanning several pages (See
12484    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
12485    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
12486    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
12487
12488 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
12489    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
12490    #683163</a>).</li>
12491
12492 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
12493    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
12494    footnote and text body, see
12495    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
12496    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
12497    refs listed are not right).</li>
12498
12499 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
12500
12501 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
12502    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
12503
12504 </ul>
12505
12506 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
12507 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
12508 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
12509
12510 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
12511
12512       </div>
12513       <div class="tags">
12514
12515
12516         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>.
12517
12518
12519       </div>
12520     </div>
12521     <div class="padding"></div>
12522
12523     <div class="entry">
12524       <div class="title">
12525         <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>
12526       </div>
12527       <div class="date">
12528         21st July 2012
12529       </div>
12530       <div class="body">
12531         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
12532 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
12533 norwegian version</a> of the book
12534 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
12535 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
12536 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
12537 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
12538 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12539
12540 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
12541 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
12542 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
12543 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
12544 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
12545 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
12546 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
12547 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
12548 print. :)</p>
12549
12550 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
12551 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
12552 language.</p>
12553
12554       </div>
12555       <div class="tags">
12556
12557
12558         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>.
12559
12560
12561       </div>
12562     </div>
12563     <div class="padding"></div>
12564
12565     <div class="entry">
12566       <div class="title">
12567         <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>
12568       </div>
12569       <div class="date">
12570         16th July 2012
12571       </div>
12572       <div class="body">
12573         <p>I am currently working on a
12574 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
12575 to translate</a> the book
12576 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
12577 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
12578 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
12579 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
12580 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
12581 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
12582 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
12583
12584 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
12585 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
12586 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
12587 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
12588 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
12589 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
12590 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
12591 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
12592 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
12593
12594       </div>
12595       <div class="tags">
12596
12597
12598         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>.
12599
12600
12601       </div>
12602     </div>
12603     <div class="padding"></div>
12604
12605     <div class="entry">
12606       <div class="title">
12607         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
12608       </div>
12609       <div class="date">
12610          9th July 2012
12611       </div>
12612       <div class="body">
12613         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12614 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
12615 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
12616 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
12617 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
12618 to adjust and scale the just released
12619 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
12620 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
12621 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
12622
12623 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
12624
12625 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
12626 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
12627 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
12628 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
12629 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
12630 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
12631 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
12632 perspective when working with IT.</p>
12633
12634 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
12635 project?</strong></p>
12636
12637 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
12638 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
12639 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
12640 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
12641 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
12642 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
12643
12644 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12645 Edu?</strong></p>
12646
12647 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
12648 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
12649 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
12650 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
12651 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
12652 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
12653 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
12654 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
12655 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
12656 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
12657 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
12658 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
12659 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
12660 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
12661 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
12662 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
12663 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
12664 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
12665 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
12666 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
12667 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
12668 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
12669 quicker to update.
12670
12671 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
12672 Edu?</strong></p>
12673
12674 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
12675 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
12676 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
12677 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
12678 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
12679 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
12680
12681 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
12682 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
12683 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
12684 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
12685 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
12686 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
12687 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
12688 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
12689 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
12690 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
12691 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
12692 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
12693 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
12694 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
12695 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
12696
12697 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
12698 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
12699 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
12700 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
12701 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
12702 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
12703 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
12704 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
12705
12706 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
12707 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
12708 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
12709 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
12710 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
12711 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
12712 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
12713 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
12714 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
12715 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
12716 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
12717 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
12718 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
12719 sound file.</p>
12720
12721 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
12722 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
12723 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
12724 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
12725 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
12726 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
12727 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
12728 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
12729 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
12730
12731 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
12732
12733 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
12734 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
12735 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
12736 )</p>
12737
12738 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
12739 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
12740
12741 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
12742 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
12743 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
12744 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
12745 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
12746 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
12747 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
12748 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
12749 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
12750 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
12751 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
12752 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
12753 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
12754 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
12755 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
12756
12757 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
12758 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
12759 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
12760 management with Airtime</a>,
12761 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
12762 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
12763 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
12764 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
12765 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
12766
12767       </div>
12768       <div class="tags">
12769
12770
12771         Tags: <a href="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>.
12772
12773
12774       </div>
12775     </div>
12776     <div class="padding"></div>
12777
12778     <div class="entry">
12779       <div class="title">
12780         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
12781       </div>
12782       <div class="date">
12783          8th July 2012
12784       </div>
12785       <div class="body">
12786         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
12787 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
12788 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
12789 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
12790 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
12791 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
12792 Steinberg in his blog post
12793 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
12794 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
12795 spending of your tax money.</p>
12796
12797 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
12798 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
12799 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
12800 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
12801 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
12802 purchases.</p>
12803
12804       </div>
12805       <div class="tags">
12806
12807
12808         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12809
12810
12811       </div>
12812     </div>
12813     <div class="padding"></div>
12814
12815     <div class="entry">
12816       <div class="title">
12817         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
12818       </div>
12819       <div class="date">
12820          7th July 2012
12821       </div>
12822       <div class="body">
12823         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
12824 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
12825 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
12826 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
12827 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
12828 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
12829 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
12830 receive.  The software is
12831
12832 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
12833 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
12834 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
12835 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
12836 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
12837 Windows</a>.</p>
12838
12839 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
12840 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
12841
12842 <p><ul>
12843
12844   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
12845     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
12846
12847   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
12848     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
12849     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
12850     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
12851     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
12852     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
12853     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
12854     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
12855     </li>
12856
12857   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
12858     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
12859
12860   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
12861     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
12862
12863   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
12864     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
12865
12866   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
12867
12868   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
12869     formats </li>
12870
12871   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
12872     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
12873     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
12874     (as separate sets)</li>
12875
12876   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
12877     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
12878     percentage)</li>
12879
12880   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
12881     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
12882     memory):
12883     <ul>
12884       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
12885       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
12886       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
12887       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
12888       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
12889       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
12890       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
12891       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
12892       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
12893       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
12894           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
12895           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
12896           activity)</li>
12897       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
12898       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
12899     </ul></li>
12900
12901   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
12902     <ul>
12903       <li>Break periods</li>
12904       <li>For teacher(s):
12905         <ul>
12906           <li>Not available periods</li>
12907           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
12908           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12909           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12910           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12911           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12912
12913           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12914             days per week</li>
12915         </ul></li>
12916       <li>For students (sets):
12917         <ul>
12918           <li>Not available periods</li>
12919           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
12920           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
12921           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
12922           <li>Min hours daily</li>
12923           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
12924
12925           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
12926             days per week</li>
12927         </ul></li>
12928       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
12929         <ul>
12930           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
12931           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
12932           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
12933           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
12934           <li>End(s) students day</li>
12935           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
12936           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
12937             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
12938           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
12939           <li>Not overlapping</li>
12940           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
12941           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
12942         </ul></li>
12943     </ul></li>
12944
12945   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
12946     <ul>
12947       <li>Room not available periods</li>
12948       <li>For teacher(s):
12949         <ul>
12950           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12951           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12952           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12953         </ul>
12954       </li>
12955
12956       <li>For students (sets):
12957         <ul>
12958           <li>Home room(s)</li>
12959           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
12960           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
12961         </ul>
12962       </li>
12963       <li>Preferred room(s):
12964         <ul>
12965           <li>For a subject</li>
12966           <li>For an activity tag</li>
12967           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
12968           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
12969         </ul>
12970       </li>
12971
12972       <li>For a set of activities:
12973         <ul>
12974           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
12975         </ul>
12976       </li>
12977     </ul>
12978   </li>
12979 </ul></p>
12980
12981 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
12982 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
12983 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
12984 manually, check it out.
12985
12986 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
12987 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
12988 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
12989 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
12990 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
12991 section</a>.</p>
12992
12993       </div>
12994       <div class="tags">
12995
12996
12997         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12998
12999
13000       </div>
13001     </div>
13002     <div class="padding"></div>
13003
13004     <div class="entry">
13005       <div class="title">
13006         <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>
13007       </div>
13008       <div class="date">
13009          3rd July 2012
13010       </div>
13011       <div class="body">
13012         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
13013 project (Norwegian version of
13014 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
13015 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
13016 a problem with the municipalities using
13017 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
13018 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
13019 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
13020 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
13021 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
13022 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
13023 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
13024 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
13025 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
13026 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
13027 the From: header.</p>
13028
13029 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
13030 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
13031 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
13032 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
13033 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
13034 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
13035 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
13036 behaviour.</p>
13037
13038 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
13039 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
13040 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
13041 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
13042 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
13043 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
13044 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
13045
13046       </div>
13047       <div class="tags">
13048
13049
13050         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>.
13051
13052
13053       </div>
13054     </div>
13055     <div class="padding"></div>
13056
13057     <div class="entry">
13058       <div class="title">
13059         <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>
13060       </div>
13061       <div class="date">
13062         26th June 2012
13063       </div>
13064       <div class="body">
13065         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
13066 another interview with the people behind
13067 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13068 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
13069 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
13070 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
13071 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
13072 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13073 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13074
13075 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13076
13077 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
13078 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
13079 ICT in schools</p>
13080
13081 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13082 project?</strong></p>
13083
13084 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
13085 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
13086 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
13087 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
13088
13089 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13090 Edu?</strong></p>
13091
13092 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
13093 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
13094 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
13095 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
13096
13097 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13098 Edu?</strong></p>
13099
13100 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
13101 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
13102 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
13103 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
13104 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
13105 technologies in school.</p>
13106
13107 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13108
13109 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
13110 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
13111 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
13112
13113 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13114 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13115
13116 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
13117 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
13118 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
13119 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
13120
13121 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
13122 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
13123 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
13124
13125 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
13126 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
13127 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
13128 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
13129 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
13130 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
13131 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
13132 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
13133 working there.</p>
13134
13135       </div>
13136       <div class="tags">
13137
13138
13139         Tags: <a href="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>.
13140
13141
13142       </div>
13143     </div>
13144     <div class="padding"></div>
13145
13146     <div class="entry">
13147       <div class="title">
13148         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
13149       </div>
13150       <div class="date">
13151         24th June 2012
13152       </div>
13153       <div class="body">
13154         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
13155 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
13156 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
13157 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
13158 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
13159 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
13160 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
13161 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
13162 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
13163 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
13164 missing in my book.</p>
13165
13166 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
13167 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
13168 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
13169 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
13170 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
13171 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
13172 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
13173
13174       </div>
13175       <div class="tags">
13176
13177
13178         Tags: <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>.
13179
13180
13181       </div>
13182     </div>
13183     <div class="padding"></div>
13184
13185     <div class="entry">
13186       <div class="title">
13187         <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>
13188       </div>
13189       <div class="date">
13190         11th June 2012
13191       </div>
13192       <div class="body">
13193         <p>During my work on
13194 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
13195 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
13196 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
13197 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
13198 explanation.</p>
13199
13200 <p><ul>
13201
13202 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
13203 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
13204 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
13205 system depend on tasksel tasks in
13206 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
13207 installation.</li>
13208
13209 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
13210 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
13211 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
13212 at least try to enable it for these services:
13213 <ul>
13214
13215   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
13216     quotas.</li>
13217   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
13218   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
13219   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
13220   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
13221   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
13222
13223 </ul></li>
13224
13225 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
13226 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
13227 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
13228 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
13229
13230 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
13231 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
13232 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
13233
13234 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
13235 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
13236 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
13237 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
13238 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
13239 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
13240
13241 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
13242 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
13243 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
13244 in Wheezy.
13245
13246 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
13247 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
13248 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
13249
13250 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
13251 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
13252 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
13253 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
13254
13255 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
13256 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
13257 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
13258 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
13259
13260 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
13261 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
13262 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
13263
13264 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
13265 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
13266 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
13267
13268 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
13269 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
13270 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
13271 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
13272 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
13273
13274 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
13275 <ul>
13276
13277 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
13278 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
13279 <li>and probably more?</li>
13280 </ul></li>
13281
13282 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
13283 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
13284 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
13285 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
13286 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
13287 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
13288 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
13289 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
13290
13291
13292 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
13293 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
13294 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
13295 use.</li>
13296
13297 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
13298 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
13299 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
13300 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
13301 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
13302
13303 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
13304 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
13305 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
13306 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
13307 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
13308 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
13309
13310 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
13311 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
13312 There are at least three implementations,
13313 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
13314 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
13315 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
13316 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
13317 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
13318 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
13319 given room.</li>
13320
13321 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
13322 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
13323 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
13324 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
13325 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
13326 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
13327 investigated.</li>
13328
13329 </ul></p>
13330
13331 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
13332 version.</p>
13333
13334       </div>
13335       <div class="tags">
13336
13337
13338         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13339
13340
13341       </div>
13342     </div>
13343     <div class="padding"></div>
13344
13345     <div class="entry">
13346       <div class="title">
13347         <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>
13348       </div>
13349       <div class="date">
13350          9th June 2012
13351       </div>
13352       <div class="body">
13353         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
13354 <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
13355 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
13356 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
13357 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
13358 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
13359 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
13360 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
13361 be willing to pay for.</p>
13362
13363 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
13364 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
13365 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
13366 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
13367 Orwell</a>.</p>
13368
13369       </div>
13370       <div class="tags">
13371
13372
13373         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>.
13374
13375
13376       </div>
13377     </div>
13378     <div class="padding"></div>
13379
13380     <div class="entry">
13381       <div class="title">
13382         <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>
13383       </div>
13384       <div class="date">
13385          6th June 2012
13386       </div>
13387       <div class="body">
13388         <p>A few days ago
13389 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
13390 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
13391 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
13392 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
13393 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
13394 code for HP, Dell and IBM
13395 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
13396 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
13397 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
13398 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
13399 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
13400
13401 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
13402 output:
13403
13404 <blockquote><pre>
13405 % 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>
13406 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": ""})
13407 %
13408 </pre></blockquote>
13409
13410 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
13411 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
13412 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
13413
13414       </div>
13415       <div class="tags">
13416
13417
13418         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>.
13419
13420
13421       </div>
13422     </div>
13423     <div class="padding"></div>
13424
13425     <div class="entry">
13426       <div class="title">
13427         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
13428       </div>
13429       <div class="date">
13430          2nd June 2012
13431       </div>
13432       <div class="body">
13433         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
13434 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13435 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
13436 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
13437 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13438 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
13439
13440 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13441
13442 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
13443 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
13444 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
13445 by Angela).</p>
13446
13447 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
13448 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
13449 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
13450 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
13451 becoming an osteopath.</p>
13452
13453 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
13454 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
13455 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
13456 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
13457 skills with communication skills.</p>
13458
13459 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13460 project?</strong></p>
13461
13462 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
13463 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
13464 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
13465 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
13466 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
13467
13468 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
13469 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
13470 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
13471 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
13472 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
13473 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
13474 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
13475 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
13476 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
13477
13478 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
13479 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
13480 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
13481
13482 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
13483
13484 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
13485 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
13486 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
13487 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
13488 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
13489 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
13490 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
13491 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
13492 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
13493 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
13494 point.</p>
13495
13496 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
13497 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
13498 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
13499 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
13500 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
13501 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
13502
13503 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
13504 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
13505 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
13506 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
13507 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
13508 spare time.</p>
13509
13510 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
13511 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
13512 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
13513 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
13514 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
13515
13516 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
13517 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
13518 avoidance do exist.</p>
13519
13520 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
13521 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
13522 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
13523 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
13524 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
13525 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
13526 and probably a gain for all.</p>
13527
13528 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13529 Edu?</strong></p>
13530
13531 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
13532 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
13533 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
13534 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
13535 project communication, honest communication within the group of
13536 developers, etc.</p>
13537
13538 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13539 Edu?</strong></p>
13540
13541 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
13542
13543 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
13544 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
13545 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
13546 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
13547 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
13548 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
13549 contribute).</p>
13550
13551 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
13552 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
13553 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
13554 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
13555 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
13556 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
13557 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
13558 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
13559 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
13560 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
13561
13562 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13563
13564 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
13565
13566 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
13567 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
13568 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
13569
13570 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
13571 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
13572 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
13573 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
13574
13575 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
13576 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
13577 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
13578 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
13579 whiteboard.</p>
13580
13581 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
13582
13583 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13584 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13585
13586 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
13587 enrol people.</p>
13588
13589       </div>
13590       <div class="tags">
13591
13592
13593         Tags: <a href="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>.
13594
13595
13596       </div>
13597     </div>
13598     <div class="padding"></div>
13599
13600     <div class="entry">
13601       <div class="title">
13602         <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>
13603       </div>
13604       <div class="date">
13605          1st June 2012
13606       </div>
13607       <div class="body">
13608         <p>A few years ago I wrote
13609 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
13610 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
13611 I have learned from colleges here at the
13612 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
13613 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
13614 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
13615 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
13616 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
13617
13618 <p><pre>
13619 use strict;
13620 use warnings;
13621 use SOAP::Lite;
13622 use Data::Dumper;
13623 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
13624 my $App = 'test';
13625 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
13626 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
13627 my $s = SOAP::Lite
13628     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
13629     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
13630     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
13631     ;
13632 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
13633     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
13634     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
13635     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
13636 );
13637 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
13638 </pre></p>
13639
13640 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
13641
13642 <p><pre>
13643 $VAR1 = {
13644           'Asset' => {
13645                      'Entitlements' => {
13646                                        'EntitlementData' => [
13647                                                             {
13648                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13649                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13650                                                               'Provider' => '',
13651                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13652                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13653                                                             },
13654                                                             {
13655                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13656                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
13657                                                               'Provider' => '',
13658                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13659                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13660                                                             },
13661                                                             {
13662                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
13663                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
13664                                                               'Provider' => '',
13665                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
13666                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
13667                                                             }
13668                                                           ]
13669                                      },
13670                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
13671                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
13672                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
13673                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
13674                                           'Buid' => '2323',
13675                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
13676                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
13677                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
13678                                         }
13679                    }
13680         };
13681 </pre></p>
13682
13683 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
13684 service outside the
13685 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
13686 documentation</a>, and according to
13687 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
13688 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
13689 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
13690
13691 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
13692 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
13693
13694       </div>
13695       <div class="tags">
13696
13697
13698         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>.
13699
13700
13701       </div>
13702     </div>
13703     <div class="padding"></div>
13704
13705     <div class="entry">
13706       <div class="title">
13707         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
13708       </div>
13709       <div class="date">
13710         31st May 2012
13711       </div>
13712       <div class="body">
13713         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
13714 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
13715 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
13716 running Debian Squeeze, where
13717 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
13718 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
13719 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
13720 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
13721 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
13722 another day.</p>
13723
13724 <p>After calibration, I get a
13725 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
13726 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
13727 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
13728 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
13729 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
13730 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
13731 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
13732 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
13733 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
13734 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
13735 and a simple</p>
13736
13737 <p><pre>
13738 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
13739 </pre></p>
13740
13741 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
13742 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
13743 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
13744 enough for now.</p>
13745
13746       </div>
13747       <div class="tags">
13748
13749
13750         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13751
13752
13753       </div>
13754     </div>
13755     <div class="padding"></div>
13756
13757     <div class="entry">
13758       <div class="title">
13759         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
13760       </div>
13761       <div class="date">
13762         27th May 2012
13763       </div>
13764       <div class="body">
13765         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
13766 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
13767 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
13768 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
13769 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
13770 since then, helping to make sure the
13771 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
13772 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
13773
13774 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
13775
13776 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
13777 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
13778 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
13779 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
13780 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
13781 our computer network.</p>
13782
13783 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
13784 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
13785 (4 months).</p>
13786
13787 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
13788 project?</strong></p>
13789
13790 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
13791 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
13792 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
13793 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
13794 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
13795 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
13796 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
13797 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
13798 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
13799 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
13800 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
13801 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
13802 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
13803 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
13804
13805 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13806 Edu?</strong></p>
13807
13808 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
13809 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
13810 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
13811 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
13812 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
13813 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
13814 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
13815 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
13816
13817 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
13818 Edu?</strong></p>
13819
13820 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
13821 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
13822 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
13823 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
13824 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
13825 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
13826 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
13827 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
13828 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
13829 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
13830 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
13831 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
13832
13833 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
13834
13835 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
13836 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
13837 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
13838
13839 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
13840 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
13841
13842 <p><ol>
13843
13844 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
13845 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
13846 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
13847 developing.</li>
13848
13849 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
13850 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
13851 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
13852 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
13853 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
13854
13855 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
13856 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
13857 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
13858
13859 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
13860 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
13861 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
13862 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
13863
13864 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
13865 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
13866 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
13867
13868 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
13869
13870 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
13871 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
13872 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
13873 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
13874
13875 </ol></p>
13876
13877       </div>
13878       <div class="tags">
13879
13880
13881         Tags: <a href="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>.
13882
13883
13884       </div>
13885     </div>
13886     <div class="padding"></div>
13887
13888     <div class="entry">
13889       <div class="title">
13890         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
13891       </div>
13892       <div class="date">
13893         26th May 2012
13894       </div>
13895       <div class="body">
13896         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
13897 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
13898 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
13899 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
13900 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
13901
13902 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
13903 <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>
13904 comment:</p>
13905
13906 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
13907 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
13908 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
13909 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
13910 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
13911 </blockquote></p>
13912
13913 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
13914 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
13915 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
13916 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
13917 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
13918 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
13919 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
13920 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
13921 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
13922 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
13923 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
13924 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
13925 of wasted effort.</p>
13926
13927 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
13928 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
13929 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
13930
13931 <p>See
13932 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
13933 and
13934 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
13935 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
13936 </blockquote></p>
13937
13938       </div>
13939       <div class="tags">
13940
13941
13942         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>.
13943
13944
13945       </div>
13946     </div>
13947     <div class="padding"></div>
13948
13949     <div class="entry">
13950       <div class="title">
13951         <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>
13952       </div>
13953       <div class="date">
13954         18th May 2012
13955       </div>
13956       <div class="body">
13957         <p>In january, I
13958 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
13959 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
13960 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
13961 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
13962 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
13963 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
13964 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
13965 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
13966 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
13967 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
13968
13969 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
13970 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
13971 drivers. :)</p>
13972
13973       </div>
13974       <div class="tags">
13975
13976
13977         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
13978
13979
13980       </div>
13981     </div>
13982     <div class="padding"></div>
13983
13984     <div class="entry">
13985       <div class="title">
13986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
13987       </div>
13988       <div class="date">
13989         13th May 2012
13990       </div>
13991       <div class="body">
13992         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
13993 publish another interview with the people behind
13994 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
13995 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
13996 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
13997 details get right before release.
13998
13999 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14000
14001 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
14002 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
14003 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
14004 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
14005 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
14006 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
14007 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
14008 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
14009
14010 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
14011 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
14012 home since 2006.</p>
14013
14014 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14015 project?</strong></p>
14016
14017 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
14018 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
14019 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
14020 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
14021 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
14022 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
14023
14024 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
14025 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
14026 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
14027 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
14028 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
14029 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
14030 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
14031 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
14032 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
14033 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
14034 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
14035 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
14036 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
14037 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
14038 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
14039 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
14040
14041 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14042 Edu?</strong></p>
14043
14044 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
14045 for me as today.</p>
14046
14047 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
14048
14049 <p><ul>
14050
14051 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
14052 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
14053
14054 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
14055 cost.</li>
14056
14057 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
14058 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
14059 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
14060 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
14061 server</li>
14062
14063 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
14064 school.</li>
14065
14066 </ul></p>
14067
14068 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
14069 came up in this way:</p>
14070
14071 <p><ul>
14072
14073 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
14074 now.</li>
14075
14076 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
14077 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
14078 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
14079
14080 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
14081 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
14082 interfaces used in the past.</li>
14083
14084 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
14085 different needs.</li>
14086
14087 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
14088
14089 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
14090 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
14091 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
14092
14093 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
14094 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
14095
14096 </ul></p>
14097
14098 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14099 Edu?</strong></p>
14100
14101 <p><ul>
14102
14103 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
14104 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
14105 whole municipality areas.</li>
14106
14107 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
14108 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
14109 politicians.</li>
14110
14111 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
14112
14113 </ul></p>
14114
14115 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14116
14117 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
14118 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
14119 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
14120 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
14121 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
14122 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
14123
14124 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
14125 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
14126 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
14127 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
14128 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
14129
14130 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14131 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14132
14133 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
14134 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
14135 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
14136
14137       </div>
14138       <div class="tags">
14139
14140
14141         Tags: <a href="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>.
14142
14143
14144       </div>
14145     </div>
14146     <div class="padding"></div>
14147
14148     <div class="entry">
14149       <div class="title">
14150         <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>
14151       </div>
14152       <div class="date">
14153         30th April 2012
14154       </div>
14155       <div class="body">
14156         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
14157 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
14158
14159 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
14160 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
14161 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
14162 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
14163 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
14164 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
14165 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
14166 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
14167 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
14168 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
14169 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
14170 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
14171 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
14172 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
14173 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
14174 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
14175
14176 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
14177 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
14178 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
14179 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
14180 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
14181 finally found a Danish supplier
14182 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
14183 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
14184 days ago.</p>
14185
14186 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
14187 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
14188 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
14189 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
14190 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
14191 toys.</p>
14192
14193       </div>
14194       <div class="tags">
14195
14196
14197         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14198
14199
14200       </div>
14201     </div>
14202     <div class="padding"></div>
14203
14204     <div class="entry">
14205       <div class="title">
14206         <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>
14207       </div>
14208       <div class="date">
14209         26th April 2012
14210       </div>
14211       <div class="body">
14212         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
14213 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
14214 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
14215 that the video editor application included with
14216 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
14217 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
14218 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
14219
14220 <p><blockquote>
14221 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
14222 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
14223 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
14224 </blockquote></p>
14225
14226 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
14227
14228 <p><blockquote>
14229 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
14230 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
14231 </blockquote></p>
14232
14233 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
14234 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
14235 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
14236 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
14237 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
14238 video.  AMR is
14239 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
14240 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
14241 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
14242 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
14243 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
14244 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
14245 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
14246
14247 <p>I know why I prefer
14248 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
14249 standards</a> also for video.</p>
14250
14251       </div>
14252       <div class="tags">
14253
14254
14255         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
14256
14257
14258       </div>
14259     </div>
14260     <div class="padding"></div>
14261
14262     <div class="entry">
14263       <div class="title">
14264         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
14265       </div>
14266       <div class="date">
14267         19th April 2012
14268       </div>
14269       <div class="body">
14270         <p>Here in Norway, the
14271 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
14272 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
14273 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
14274 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
14275 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
14276 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
14277 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
14278 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
14279 on the same level.</p>
14280
14281 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
14282 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
14283 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
14284 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
14285 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
14286 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
14287 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
14288 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
14289 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
14290 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
14291 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
14292 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
14293 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
14294 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
14295 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
14296 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
14297 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
14298 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
14299
14300 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
14301 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
14302 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
14303 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
14304 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
14305 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
14306 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
14307 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
14308
14309 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
14310 from Simon Phipps
14311 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
14312 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
14313
14314 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
14315 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
14316 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
14317 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
14318 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
14319 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
14320 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
14321 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
14322 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
14323
14324       </div>
14325       <div class="tags">
14326
14327
14328         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>.
14329
14330
14331       </div>
14332     </div>
14333     <div class="padding"></div>
14334
14335     <div class="entry">
14336       <div class="title">
14337         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
14338       </div>
14339       <div class="date">
14340         15th April 2012
14341       </div>
14342       <div class="body">
14343         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14344 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
14345 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
14346 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
14347 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
14348 up in the recently released
14349 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14350 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
14351
14352 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14353
14354 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
14355 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
14356 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
14357 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
14358 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
14359 information technology and science/technology.</p>
14360
14361 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14362 project?</strong></p>
14363
14364 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
14365 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
14366 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
14367 contributing.</p>
14368
14369 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14370 Edu?</strong></p>
14371
14372 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
14373 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
14374 Debian Project!</p>
14375
14376 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14377 Edu?</strong></p>
14378
14379 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
14380 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
14381 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
14382 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
14383 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
14384 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
14385 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
14386
14387 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
14388 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
14389
14390 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14391
14392 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
14393 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
14394 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
14395 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
14396
14397 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14398 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14399
14400 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
14401 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
14402 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
14403 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
14404 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
14405 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
14406 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
14407
14408 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
14409 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
14410 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
14411 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
14412 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
14413 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
14414 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
14415 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
14416
14417       </div>
14418       <div class="tags">
14419
14420
14421         Tags: <a href="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>.
14422
14423
14424       </div>
14425     </div>
14426     <div class="padding"></div>
14427
14428     <div class="entry">
14429       <div class="title">
14430         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
14431       </div>
14432       <div class="date">
14433          8th April 2012
14434       </div>
14435       <div class="body">
14436         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
14437 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
14438 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
14439 contributor to the
14440 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
14441 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
14442
14443 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14444
14445 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
14446 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
14447
14448 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14449 project?</strong></p>
14450
14451 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
14452 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
14453 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
14454 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
14455 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
14456 "localisation".</p>
14457
14458 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14459 Edu?</strong></p>
14460
14461 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14462 Edu?</strong></p>
14463
14464 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
14465 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
14466 education system.</p>
14467
14468 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
14469 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
14470 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
14471 money on the latest hardware.</p>
14472
14473 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14474
14475 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
14476 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
14477 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
14478
14479 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14480 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14481
14482 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
14483 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
14484 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
14485
14486       </div>
14487       <div class="tags">
14488
14489
14490         Tags: <a href="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>.
14491
14492
14493       </div>
14494     </div>
14495     <div class="padding"></div>
14496
14497     <div class="entry">
14498       <div class="title">
14499         <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>
14500       </div>
14501       <div class="date">
14502          6th April 2012
14503       </div>
14504       <div class="body">
14505         <p>Recently I have spent time with
14506 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
14507 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14508 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
14509 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
14510 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
14511 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
14512 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
14513 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
14514
14515 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
14516 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
14517 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
14518 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
14519 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
14520 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
14521 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
14522 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
14523
14524 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
14525 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
14526 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
14527 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
14528 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
14529 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
14530 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
14531 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
14532
14533 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
14534 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
14535 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
14536 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
14537 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
14538 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
14539 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
14540 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
14541 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
14542 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
14543
14544 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
14545 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
14546 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
14547 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
14548
14549 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
14550 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
14551
14552 <p>Update 2015-08-04: The
14553 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/debian-edu/upstream/kde-icon-cache.git/">source
14554 of the scripts and associated Debian package</a> is available from the
14555 Debian Edu github repository.</p>
14556
14557       </div>
14558       <div class="tags">
14559
14560
14561         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14562
14563
14564       </div>
14565     </div>
14566     <div class="padding"></div>
14567
14568     <div class="entry">
14569       <div class="title">
14570         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
14571       </div>
14572       <div class="date">
14573          5th April 2012
14574       </div>
14575       <div class="body">
14576         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
14577 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
14578 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
14579 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
14580 for schools.  Check out his article
14581 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
14582 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
14583
14584       </div>
14585       <div class="tags">
14586
14587
14588         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14589
14590
14591       </div>
14592     </div>
14593     <div class="padding"></div>
14594
14595     <div class="entry">
14596       <div class="title">
14597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
14598       </div>
14599       <div class="date">
14600          1st April 2012
14601       </div>
14602       <div class="body">
14603         <p>Germany is a core area for the
14604 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
14605 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
14606 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
14607
14608 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14609
14610 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
14611 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
14612 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
14613 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
14614 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
14615 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
14616 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
14617 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
14618
14619 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
14620 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
14621 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
14622 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
14623 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
14624 the end of April this year.</p>
14625
14626 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14627 project?</strong></p>
14628
14629 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
14630 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
14631 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
14632 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
14633 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
14634 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
14635 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
14636 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
14637 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
14638 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
14639 Skolelinux.</p>
14640
14641 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
14642 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
14643 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
14644 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
14645 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
14646 the admin teachers.</p>
14647
14648 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14649 Edu?</strong></p>
14650
14651 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
14652 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
14653 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
14654
14655 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
14656 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
14657 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
14658 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
14659 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
14660
14661 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14662 Edu?</strong></p>
14663
14664 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
14665
14666 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14667
14668 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
14669 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
14670 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
14671 LibreOffice.</p>
14672
14673 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14674 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14675
14676 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
14677 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
14678 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
14679
14680       </div>
14681       <div class="tags">
14682
14683
14684         Tags: <a href="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>.
14685
14686
14687       </div>
14688     </div>
14689     <div class="padding"></div>
14690
14691     <div class="entry">
14692       <div class="title">
14693         <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>
14694       </div>
14695       <div class="date">
14696         25th March 2012
14697       </div>
14698       <div class="body">
14699         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
14700
14701 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
14702 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
14703 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
14704 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
14705 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
14706 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
14707 and download as a
14708 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
14709 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
14710
14711 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
14712   <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"' />
14713     <p>Download video as
14714       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
14715 </video></p>
14716
14717       </div>
14718       <div class="tags">
14719
14720
14721         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14722
14723
14724       </div>
14725     </div>
14726     <div class="padding"></div>
14727
14728     <div class="entry">
14729       <div class="title">
14730         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
14731       </div>
14732       <div class="date">
14733         19th March 2012
14734       </div>
14735       <div class="body">
14736         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
14737 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
14738 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
14739 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
14740 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
14741
14742 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14743
14744 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
14745 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
14746 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
14747 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
14748 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
14749 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
14750 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
14751 installations.</p>
14752
14753 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14754 project?</strong></p>
14755
14756 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
14757 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
14758 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
14759 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
14760 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
14761 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
14762 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
14763 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
14764 these things we decided to try it.</p>
14765
14766 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14767 Edu?</strong></p>
14768
14769 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
14770 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
14771 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
14772 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
14773 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
14774 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
14775 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
14776 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
14777
14778 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14779 Edu?</strong></p>
14780
14781 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
14782 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
14783 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
14784 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
14785 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
14786
14787 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
14788
14789 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
14790 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
14791 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
14792 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
14793 that counts...)</p>
14794
14795 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
14796 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
14797
14798 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
14799 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
14800 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
14801 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
14802 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
14803 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
14804 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
14805 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
14806 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
14807 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
14808 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
14809
14810 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
14811 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
14812 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
14813
14814       </div>
14815       <div class="tags">
14816
14817
14818         Tags: <a href="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>.
14819
14820
14821       </div>
14822     </div>
14823     <div class="padding"></div>
14824
14825     <div class="entry">
14826       <div class="title">
14827         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
14828       </div>
14829       <div class="date">
14830         16th March 2012
14831       </div>
14832       <div class="body">
14833         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
14834 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
14835 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
14836 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
14837
14838 <ol>
14839
14840 <li>The documentation is written in a
14841 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
14842 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
14843 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
14844 docbook XML.</li>
14845
14846 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
14847 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
14848 with the translated text.</li>
14849
14850 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
14851 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
14852 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
14853 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
14854 images.</li>
14855
14856 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
14857 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
14858
14859 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
14860 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
14861
14862 </ol>
14863
14864 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
14865 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
14866 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
14867 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
14868 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
14869
14870 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
14871 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
14872 package</a>.</p>
14873
14874       </div>
14875       <div class="tags">
14876
14877
14878         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14879
14880
14881       </div>
14882     </div>
14883     <div class="padding"></div>
14884
14885     <div class="entry">
14886       <div class="title">
14887         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
14888       </div>
14889       <div class="date">
14890         11th March 2012
14891       </div>
14892       <div class="body">
14893         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
14894 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
14895 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
14896 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
14897 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
14898 you have not done so already.</p>
14899
14900 <p>I plan to present the new version at
14901 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
14902 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
14903 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
14904
14905       </div>
14906       <div class="tags">
14907
14908
14909         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
14910
14911
14912       </div>
14913     </div>
14914     <div class="padding"></div>
14915
14916     <div class="entry">
14917       <div class="title">
14918         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
14919       </div>
14920       <div class="date">
14921          9th March 2012
14922       </div>
14923       <div class="body">
14924         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
14925 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
14926 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
14927 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
14928 more international audience.</p>
14929
14930 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
14931 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
14932 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
14933 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
14934 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
14935 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
14936 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
14937
14938
14939 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
14940
14941 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
14942 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
14943 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
14944 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
14945 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
14946 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
14947 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
14948 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
14949 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
14950 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
14951 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
14952
14953 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
14954 project?</strong></p>
14955
14956 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
14957 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
14958 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
14959 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
14960 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
14961 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
14962 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
14963 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
14964 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
14965 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
14966 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
14967 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
14968 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
14969
14970 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14971 Edu?</strong></p>
14972
14973 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
14974 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
14975 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
14976 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
14977 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
14978 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
14979 Japan.</p>
14980
14981 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
14982 Edu?</strong></p>
14983
14984 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
14985 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
14986 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
14987 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
14988 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
14989 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
14990 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
14991 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
14992 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
14993 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
14994 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
14995 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
14996 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
14997 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
14998 help.</p>
14999
15000 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
15001
15002 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
15003 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
15004 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
15005 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
15006 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
15007 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
15008 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
15009 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
15010 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
15011 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
15012 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
15013
15014 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
15015 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
15016
15017 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
15018 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
15019 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
15020 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
15021 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
15022 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
15023 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
15024 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
15025 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
15026 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
15027 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
15028 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
15029
15030       </div>
15031       <div class="tags">
15032
15033
15034         Tags: <a href="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>.
15035
15036
15037       </div>
15038     </div>
15039     <div class="padding"></div>
15040
15041     <div class="entry">
15042       <div class="title">
15043         <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>
15044       </div>
15045       <div class="date">
15046          7th March 2012
15047       </div>
15048       <div class="body">
15049         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
15050
15051 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
15052 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
15053 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
15054 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
15055 download as a
15056 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
15057 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
15058
15059 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
15060   <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"' />
15061     <p>Download video as
15062       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
15063 </video></p>
15064
15065       </div>
15066       <div class="tags">
15067
15068
15069         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15070
15071
15072       </div>
15073     </div>
15074     <div class="padding"></div>
15075
15076     <div class="entry">
15077       <div class="title">
15078         <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>
15079       </div>
15080       <div class="date">
15081          4th March 2012
15082       </div>
15083       <div class="body">
15084         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
15085 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15086 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15087 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
15088 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
15089 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15090
15091       </div>
15092       <div class="tags">
15093
15094
15095         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15096
15097
15098       </div>
15099     </div>
15100     <div class="padding"></div>
15101
15102     <div class="entry">
15103       <div class="title">
15104         <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>
15105       </div>
15106       <div class="date">
15107          3rd March 2012
15108       </div>
15109       <div class="body">
15110         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
15111 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
15112 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
15113 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
15114 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
15115 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
15116 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
15117 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
15118 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
15119 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
15120 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
15121 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
15122 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
15123 year...</p>
15124
15125 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
15126 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
15127 name,
15128 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
15129 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
15130 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
15131 mean). I've been following
15132 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
15133 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
15134 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
15135 Check it out. :)</p>
15136
15137       </div>
15138       <div class="tags">
15139
15140
15141         Tags: <a href="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>.
15142
15143
15144       </div>
15145     </div>
15146     <div class="padding"></div>
15147
15148     <div class="entry">
15149       <div class="title">
15150         <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>
15151       </div>
15152       <div class="date">
15153         27th February 2012
15154       </div>
15155       <div class="body">
15156         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
15157 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
15158 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
15159 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
15160 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
15161 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
15162 need a software solution for your school.</p>
15163
15164       </div>
15165       <div class="tags">
15166
15167
15168         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15169
15170
15171       </div>
15172     </div>
15173     <div class="padding"></div>
15174
15175     <div class="entry">
15176       <div class="title">
15177         <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>
15178       </div>
15179       <div class="date">
15180         19th February 2012
15181       </div>
15182       <div class="body">
15183         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
15184 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
15185 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15186 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
15187 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
15188 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
15189 solution for your school.</p>
15190
15191       </div>
15192       <div class="tags">
15193
15194
15195         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15196
15197
15198       </div>
15199     </div>
15200     <div class="padding"></div>
15201
15202     <div class="entry">
15203       <div class="title">
15204         <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>
15205       </div>
15206       <div class="date">
15207         14th February 2012
15208       </div>
15209       <div class="body">
15210         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
15211 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
15212 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
15213 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
15214 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
15215 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
15216 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
15217 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
15218 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
15219
15220 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
15221 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
15222 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
15223 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
15224 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
15225
15226 <blockquote><pre>
15227 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
15228 do
15229     printf "Failed disk $d: "
15230     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
15231 done
15232 </blockquote></pre>
15233
15234 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
15235 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
15236
15237 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
15238
15239 <blockquote><pre>
15240 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15241 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
15242 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
15243 </blockquote></pre>
15244
15245 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
15246 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
15247 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
15248 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
15249 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
15250 mounted inside my box.</p>
15251
15252 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
15253 Software RAID in the
15254 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
15255 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
15256 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
15257 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
15258 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
15259 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
15260
15261       </div>
15262       <div class="tags">
15263
15264
15265         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>.
15266
15267
15268       </div>
15269     </div>
15270     <div class="padding"></div>
15271
15272     <div class="entry">
15273       <div class="title">
15274         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
15275       </div>
15276       <div class="date">
15277         13th February 2012
15278       </div>
15279       <div class="body">
15280         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
15281 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
15282 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
15283 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
15284 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
15285 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
15286 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
15287 change the global proxy setting by editing
15288 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
15289 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
15290
15291 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
15292 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
15293 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
15294
15295 <blockquote><pre>
15296 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
15297 {
15298    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
15299        isPlainHostName(host) ||
15300        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
15301       return "DIRECT";
15302    else
15303       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
15304 }
15305 </pre></blockquote>
15306
15307 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
15308
15309 <blockquote><pre>
15310 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15311 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
15312 </pre></blockquote>
15313
15314 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
15315 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
15316 would be used for
15317 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
15318 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
15319 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
15320 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
15321 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
15322 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
15323 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
15324 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
15325 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
15326 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
15327
15328 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
15329 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
15330 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
15331 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
15332 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
15333 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
15334
15335 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
15336 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
15337 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
15338 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
15339 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
15340 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
15341 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
15342 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
15343 the network setup changes.</p>
15344
15345 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
15346 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
15347 draft</a> and a
15348 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
15349 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
15350
15351       </div>
15352       <div class="tags">
15353
15354
15355         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15356
15357
15358       </div>
15359     </div>
15360     <div class="padding"></div>
15361
15362     <div class="entry">
15363       <div class="title">
15364         <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>
15365       </div>
15366       <div class="date">
15367          5th February 2012
15368       </div>
15369       <div class="body">
15370         <p>Since the Lenny version of
15371 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
15372 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
15373 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
15374 in the morning.  This is done using the
15375 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
15376
15377 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
15378 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
15379 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
15380 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
15381 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
15382 the
15383 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
15384 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
15385 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
15386 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
15387 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
15388
15389 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
15390 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
15391 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
15392 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
15393 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
15394 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
15395 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
15396
15397 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
15398 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
15399 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
15400 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
15401 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
15402
15403       </div>
15404       <div class="tags">
15405
15406
15407         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15408
15409
15410       </div>
15411     </div>
15412     <div class="padding"></div>
15413
15414     <div class="entry">
15415       <div class="title">
15416         <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>
15417       </div>
15418       <div class="date">
15419          4th February 2012
15420       </div>
15421       <div class="body">
15422         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
15423 publish the third beta version of
15424 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15425 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
15426 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
15427 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
15428 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15429 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
15430 on the project announcement list.</p>
15431
15432 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
15433 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
15434
15435 <ul>
15436
15437 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
15438   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
15439   the installation.</li>
15440
15441 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
15442   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
15443
15444 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
15445   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
15446   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
15447
15448 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
15449   for the local system administrator is created during installation
15450   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
15451   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
15452   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
15453   up to date on the system.</li>
15454
15455 </ul>
15456
15457 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
15458 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
15459 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
15460 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
15461
15462 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
15463 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
15464 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
15465 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
15466 will see you there?</p>
15467
15468       </div>
15469       <div class="tags">
15470
15471
15472         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15473
15474
15475       </div>
15476     </div>
15477     <div class="padding"></div>
15478
15479     <div class="entry">
15480       <div class="title">
15481         <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>
15482       </div>
15483       <div class="date">
15484         27th January 2012
15485       </div>
15486       <div class="body">
15487         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
15488 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
15489 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
15490 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
15491 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
15492 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
15493 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
15494
15495 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
15496 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
15497 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
15498 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
15499 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
15500 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
15501 not taken care of by this.</p>
15502
15503 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
15504 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
15505 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
15506 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
15507 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
15508 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
15509 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
15510 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
15511 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
15512 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
15513 firmware packages.</p>
15514
15515 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
15516 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
15517 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
15518 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
15519 initrd with extra firmware, the
15520 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
15521 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
15522 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
15523
15524 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
15525 network cards working.  For this,
15526 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
15527 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
15528 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
15529
15530 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
15531 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
15532 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
15533
15534 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
15535 try.</p>
15536
15537       </div>
15538       <div class="tags">
15539
15540
15541         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15542
15543
15544       </div>
15545     </div>
15546     <div class="padding"></div>
15547
15548     <div class="entry">
15549       <div class="title">
15550         <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>
15551       </div>
15552       <div class="date">
15553         25th January 2012
15554       </div>
15555       <div class="body">
15556         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
15557 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
15558 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
15559 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
15560 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
15561
15562 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
15563 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
15564 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
15565 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
15566 this is done, log on to the central server and run
15567 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
15568 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
15569 will look similar to this:</p>
15570
15571 <p><blockquote><pre>
15572 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
15573 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
15574 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.
15575
15576 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
15577
15578 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
15579 enter password: *******
15580 %
15581 </pre></blockquote></p>
15582
15583 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
15584 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
15585 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
15586 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
15587 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
15588 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
15589 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
15590 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
15591 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
15592 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
15593 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
15594 automatically.</p>
15595
15596 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
15597 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
15598
15599 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
15600 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
15601 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
15602
15603       </div>
15604       <div class="tags">
15605
15606
15607         Tags: <a href="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>.
15608
15609
15610       </div>
15611     </div>
15612     <div class="padding"></div>
15613
15614     <div class="entry">
15615       <div class="title">
15616         <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>
15617       </div>
15618       <div class="date">
15619         10th January 2012
15620       </div>
15621       <div class="body">
15622         <p>In the Squeeze version of
15623 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
15624 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
15625 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
15626 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
15627 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
15628 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
15629 first time.</p>
15630
15631 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
15632 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
15633 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
15634 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
15635
15636 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
15637 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
15638 new setting.</p>
15639
15640 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
15641 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
15642 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
15643
15644       </div>
15645       <div class="tags">
15646
15647
15648         Tags: <a href="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>.
15649
15650
15651       </div>
15652     </div>
15653     <div class="padding"></div>
15654
15655     <div class="entry">
15656       <div class="title">
15657         <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>
15658       </div>
15659       <div class="date">
15660          7th January 2012
15661       </div>
15662       <div class="body">
15663         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
15664 the second beta version of
15665 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
15666 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
15667 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
15668 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
15669 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
15670 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
15671 on the project announcement list.</p>
15672
15673       </div>
15674       <div class="tags">
15675
15676
15677         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15678
15679
15680       </div>
15681     </div>
15682     <div class="padding"></div>
15683
15684     <div class="entry">
15685       <div class="title">
15686         <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>
15687       </div>
15688       <div class="date">
15689          3rd January 2012
15690       </div>
15691       <div class="body">
15692         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
15693 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
15694 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
15695 interesting.</p>
15696
15697 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
15698 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
15699 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
15700 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
15701 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
15702 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
15703 wrap up its tasks.</p>
15704
15705 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
15706 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
15707 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
15708 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
15709 because I was typing.</P>
15710
15711 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
15712 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
15713 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
15714 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
15715 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
15716 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
15717 generate entropy.</p>
15718
15719 <p>The fix is in
15720 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
15721 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
15722 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
15723 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
15724
15725       </div>
15726       <div class="tags">
15727
15728
15729         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15730
15731
15732       </div>
15733     </div>
15734     <div class="padding"></div>
15735
15736     <div class="entry">
15737       <div class="title">
15738         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
15739       </div>
15740       <div class="date">
15741         21st November 2011
15742       </div>
15743       <div class="body">
15744         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
15745 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
15746 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
15747 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
15748 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
15749 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
15750 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
15751 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
15752 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
15753 the tools to do so.</p>
15754
15755 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
15756 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
15757 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
15758 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
15759
15760 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
15761 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
15762 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
15763 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
15764 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
15765 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
15766 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
15767 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
15768
15769 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
15770 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
15771 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
15772
15773 <p><pre>
15774 #!/usr/bin/perl
15775 use strict;
15776 use warnings;
15777 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
15778 BEGIN {
15779     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
15780     my %rhelmodules = (
15781         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
15782         );
15783     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
15784         eval "use $module;";
15785         if ($@) {
15786             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
15787             system("yum install -y $pkg");
15788             eval "use $module;";
15789         }
15790     }
15791 }
15792 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
15793
15794 upgrade_dell();
15795
15796 exit 0;
15797
15798 sub run_firmware_script {
15799     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
15800     unless ($script) {
15801         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
15802         exit 1
15803     }
15804     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
15805
15806     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
15807         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
15808     } else {
15809         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
15810     }
15811 }
15812
15813 sub run_firmware_scripts {
15814     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
15815     # Run firmware packages
15816     for my $dir (@dirs) {
15817         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
15818         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
15819         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
15820             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
15821             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
15822         }
15823         closedir $dh;
15824     }
15825 }
15826
15827 sub download {
15828     my $url = shift;
15829     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
15830     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
15831 }
15832
15833 sub upgrade_dell {
15834     my @dirs;
15835     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15836     chomp $product;
15837
15838     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
15839
15840         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
15841         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
15842
15843         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
15844             CLEANUP => 1
15845             );
15846         chdir($tmpdir);
15847         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
15848         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
15849         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
15850         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
15851         my $fwopts = "-q";
15852         if (@paths) {
15853             for my $url (@paths) {
15854                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
15855             }
15856             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
15857         } else {
15858             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15859             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15860         }
15861         chdir('/');
15862     } else {
15863         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
15864         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
15865     }
15866 }
15867
15868 sub fetch_dell_fw {
15869     my $path = shift;
15870     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
15871     download($url);
15872 }
15873
15874 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
15875 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
15876 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
15877 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
15878     my $filename = shift;
15879
15880     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
15881     chomp $product;
15882     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
15883
15884     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
15885
15886     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
15887     my @paths;
15888     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
15889         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
15890         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
15891         my $oscode;
15892         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
15893             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
15894         } else {
15895             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
15896         }
15897         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
15898         {
15899             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
15900         }
15901     }
15902     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
15903         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
15904
15905         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
15906         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
15907
15908         my $cpath = $component->{path};
15909         for my $path (@paths) {
15910             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
15911                 push(@paths, $cpath);
15912             }
15913         }
15914     }
15915     return @paths;
15916 }
15917 </pre>
15918
15919 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
15920 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
15921 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
15922 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
15923 outdated.</p>
15924
15925       </div>
15926       <div class="tags">
15927
15928
15929         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
15930
15931
15932       </div>
15933     </div>
15934     <div class="padding"></div>
15935
15936     <div class="entry">
15937       <div class="title">
15938         <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>
15939       </div>
15940       <div class="date">
15941          7th October 2011
15942       </div>
15943       <div class="body">
15944         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
15945 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
15946 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
15947 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
15948 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
15949 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
15950 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
15951 models.</p>
15952
15953 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
15954 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
15955 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
15956 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
15957
15958 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
15959 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
15960 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
15961 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
15962 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
15963 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
15964 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
15965 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
15966 distributed.</p>
15967
15968 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
15969
15970 <ul>
15971
15972 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
15973   other relevant equipment.</li>
15974
15975 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
15976
15977 </ul>
15978
15979 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
15980 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
15981 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
15982 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
15983 books available.</p>
15984
15985 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
15986 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
15987 libraries. :)</p>
15988
15989       </div>
15990       <div class="tags">
15991
15992
15993         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>.
15994
15995
15996       </div>
15997     </div>
15998     <div class="padding"></div>
15999
16000     <div class="entry">
16001       <div class="title">
16002         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
16003       </div>
16004       <div class="date">
16005         17th September 2011
16006       </div>
16007       <div class="body">
16008         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
16009 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
16010 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
16011 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
16012 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
16013 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
16014 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
16015 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
16016
16017 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
16018
16019 <blockquote><pre>
16020 #!/bin/sh
16021 # apt-get install lsdvd
16022 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16023 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
16024 </pre></blockquote>
16025
16026 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
16027 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
16028 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
16029 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
16030
16031 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
16032 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
16033 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
16034 back as an ISO.
16035
16036 <blockquote><pre>
16037 #!/bin/sh
16038 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
16039 set -e
16040 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
16041 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
16042 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
16043 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
16044 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
16045 </pre></blockquote>
16046
16047 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
16048
16049 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
16050 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
16051 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
16052 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
16053 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
16054
16055 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
16056 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
16057 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
16058 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
16059 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
16060 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
16061
16062       </div>
16063       <div class="tags">
16064
16065
16066         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>.
16067
16068
16069       </div>
16070     </div>
16071     <div class="padding"></div>
16072
16073     <div class="entry">
16074       <div class="title">
16075         <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>
16076       </div>
16077       <div class="date">
16078          4th August 2011
16079       </div>
16080       <div class="body">
16081         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
16082 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
16083 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
16084 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
16085 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
16086 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
16087 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
16088 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
16089 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
16090
16091 <p><blockquote>
16092 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
16093 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
16094 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
16095 </blockquote></p>
16096
16097 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
16098 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
16099 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
16100 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
16101 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
16102 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
16103 hard to explain.</p>
16104
16105 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
16106 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
16107 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
16108 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
16109 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
16110 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
16111 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
16112 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
16113 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
16114 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
16115 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
16116 mode).</p>
16117
16118 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
16119 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
16120 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
16121 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
16122 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
16123 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
16124 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
16125 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
16126 after visiting single user mode.</p>
16127
16128 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
16129 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
16130 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
16131 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
16132 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
16133 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
16134 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
16135 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
16136
16137 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
16138 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
16139 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
16140
16141       </div>
16142       <div class="tags">
16143
16144
16145         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>.
16146
16147
16148       </div>
16149     </div>
16150     <div class="padding"></div>
16151
16152     <div class="entry">
16153       <div class="title">
16154         <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>
16155       </div>
16156       <div class="date">
16157         30th July 2011
16158       </div>
16159       <div class="body">
16160         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
16161 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
16162 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
16163 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
16164 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
16165 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
16166 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
16167 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
16168 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
16169 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
16170 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
16171 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
16172 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
16173
16174 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
16175 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
16176 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
16177 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
16178 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
16179 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
16180 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
16181 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
16182 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
16183
16184 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
16185 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
16186 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
16187 is presented.</p>
16188
16189 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
16190 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
16191 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
16192 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
16193 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
16194 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
16195 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
16196 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
16197 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
16198 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
16199 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
16200 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
16201 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
16202 find time to push this forward.</p>
16203
16204       </div>
16205       <div class="tags">
16206
16207
16208         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>.
16209
16210
16211       </div>
16212     </div>
16213     <div class="padding"></div>
16214
16215     <div class="entry">
16216       <div class="title">
16217         <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>
16218       </div>
16219       <div class="date">
16220         29th July 2011
16221       </div>
16222       <div class="body">
16223         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
16224 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
16225 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
16226 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
16227 issues.</p>
16228
16229 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
16230 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
16231 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
16232
16233 <ol>
16234
16235 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
16236 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
16237 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
16238 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
16239 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
16240 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
16241 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
16242 Debian.</li>
16243
16244 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
16245 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
16246 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
16247 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
16248 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
16249 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
16250 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
16251 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
16252 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
16253 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
16254 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
16255 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
16256 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
16257
16258 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
16259 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
16260 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
16261 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
16262 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
16263 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
16264 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
16265 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
16266 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
16267 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
16268
16269 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
16270 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
16271 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
16272 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
16273 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
16274 latter behaviour.</li>
16275
16276 </ol>
16277
16278 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
16279 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
16280 it do not matter much.</p>
16281
16282 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
16283 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
16284 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
16285
16286       </div>
16287       <div class="tags">
16288
16289
16290         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
16291
16292
16293       </div>
16294     </div>
16295     <div class="padding"></div>
16296
16297     <div class="entry">
16298       <div class="title">
16299         <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>
16300       </div>
16301       <div class="date">
16302         26th July 2011
16303       </div>
16304       <div class="body">
16305         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
16306 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
16307 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
16308 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
16309 security support for a few years.</p>
16310
16311 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
16312 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
16313 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
16314 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
16315 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
16316 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
16317 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
16318 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
16319 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
16320 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
16321 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
16322 easier in the future.</p>
16323
16324 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
16325 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
16326 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
16327 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
16328 do not have time for.</p>
16329
16330       </div>
16331       <div class="tags">
16332
16333
16334         Tags: <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>.
16335
16336
16337       </div>
16338     </div>
16339     <div class="padding"></div>
16340
16341     <div class="entry">
16342       <div class="title">
16343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
16344       </div>
16345       <div class="date">
16346         20th June 2011
16347       </div>
16348       <div class="body">
16349         <p>Reading
16350 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
16351 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
16352 parts of the
16353 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
16354 and
16355 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
16356 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
16357 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
16358 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
16359
16360       </div>
16361       <div class="tags">
16362
16363
16364         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>.
16365
16366
16367       </div>
16368     </div>
16369     <div class="padding"></div>
16370
16371     <div class="entry">
16372       <div class="title">
16373         <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>
16374       </div>
16375       <div class="date">
16376         30th April 2011
16377       </div>
16378       <div class="body">
16379         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
16380 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
16381 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
16382 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
16383 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
16384 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
16385 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
16386 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
16387 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
16388 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
16389
16390 <p>Where is it?  Visit
16391 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
16392 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
16393 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
16394 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
16395
16396       </div>
16397       <div class="tags">
16398
16399
16400         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>.
16401
16402
16403       </div>
16404     </div>
16405     <div class="padding"></div>
16406
16407     <div class="entry">
16408       <div class="title">
16409         <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>
16410       </div>
16411       <div class="date">
16412         29th April 2011
16413       </div>
16414       <div class="body">
16415         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
16416 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
16417 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
16418 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
16419 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
16420 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
16421 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
16422 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
16423 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
16424 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
16425 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
16426 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
16427 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
16428
16429 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
16430 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
16431 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
16432 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
16433 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
16434 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
16435 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
16436 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
16437 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
16438 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
16439 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
16440 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
16441 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
16442
16443 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
16444 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
16445 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
16446 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
16447 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
16448 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
16449 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
16450 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
16451 it.</p>
16452
16453 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
16454 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
16455 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
16456 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
16457 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
16458 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
16459 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
16460
16461 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
16462 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
16463 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
16464 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
16465 and range= options.</p>
16466
16467 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
16468 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
16469 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
16470 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
16471 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
16472 to best handle this.  I've noticed
16473 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
16474 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
16475 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
16476 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
16477
16478 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
16479 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
16480 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
16481 discussions instead of only
16482 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
16483 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
16484 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
16485 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
16486 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
16487 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
16488
16489       </div>
16490       <div class="tags">
16491
16492
16493         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>.
16494
16495
16496       </div>
16497     </div>
16498     <div class="padding"></div>
16499
16500     <div class="entry">
16501       <div class="title">
16502         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
16503       </div>
16504       <div class="date">
16505          6th April 2011
16506       </div>
16507       <div class="body">
16508         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
16509 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
16510 A few days ago the project
16511 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
16512 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
16513 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
16514 into Gnash.</p>
16515
16516       </div>
16517       <div class="tags">
16518
16519
16520         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>.
16521
16522
16523       </div>
16524     </div>
16525     <div class="padding"></div>
16526
16527     <div class="entry">
16528       <div class="title">
16529         <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>
16530       </div>
16531       <div class="date">
16532          3rd April 2011
16533       </div>
16534       <div class="body">
16535         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
16536 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
16537 update in English.</p>
16538
16539 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
16540 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
16541 of the British service
16542 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
16543 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
16544 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
16545 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
16546 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
16547 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
16548 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
16549 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
16550 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
16551 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
16552 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
16553 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
16554 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
16555
16556 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
16557 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
16558 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
16559 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
16560 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
16561 public infrastructure.</p>
16562
16563 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
16564 such service?</p>
16565
16566       </div>
16567       <div class="tags">
16568
16569
16570         Tags: <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>.
16571
16572
16573       </div>
16574     </div>
16575     <div class="padding"></div>
16576
16577     <div class="entry">
16578       <div class="title">
16579         <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>
16580       </div>
16581       <div class="date">
16582         28th January 2011
16583       </div>
16584       <div class="body">
16585         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
16586 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
16587 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
16588 available on the Internet, and check our locally
16589 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
16590 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
16591 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
16592 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
16593 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
16594 out which security holes were present in our free software
16595 collection.</p>
16596
16597 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
16598 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
16599 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
16600 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
16601 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
16602 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
16603 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
16604 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
16605 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
16606 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
16607 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
16608 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
16609 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
16610 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
16611 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
16612 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
16613
16614 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
16615 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
16616 check out, one could look up
16617 <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
16618 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
16619 The most recent one is
16620 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
16621 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
16622 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
16623
16624 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
16625 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
16626 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
16627 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
16628 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
16629 security issues out.</p>
16630
16631 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
16632 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
16633 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
16634 RHEL is providing
16635 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
16636 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
16637 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
16638
16639 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
16640 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
16641 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
16642 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
16643 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
16644 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
16645 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
16646 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
16647 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
16648 established soon.</p>
16649
16650 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
16651 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
16652 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
16653 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
16654 for their packages.</p>
16655
16656       </div>
16657       <div class="tags">
16658
16659
16660         Tags: <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>.
16661
16662
16663       </div>
16664     </div>
16665     <div class="padding"></div>
16666
16667     <div class="entry">
16668       <div class="title">
16669         <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>
16670       </div>
16671       <div class="date">
16672         23rd January 2011
16673       </div>
16674       <div class="body">
16675         <p>In the
16676 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
16677 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
16678 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
16679 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
16680 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
16681 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
16682 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
16683 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
16684 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
16685 one of my machines like this:</p>
16686
16687 <pre>
16688 loaded modules:
16689 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
16690 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
16691 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
16692 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
16693 10de:03ec pata_amd
16694 10de:03f6 sata_nv
16695 1022:1103 k8temp
16696 109e:036e bttv
16697 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
16698 11ab:4364 sky2
16699 </pre>
16700
16701 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
16702 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
16703
16704 <pre>
16705 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
16706     echo loaded pci modules:
16707     (
16708         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
16709         for address in * ; do
16710             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16711                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16712                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16713                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16714                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
16715                     echo "$id $module"
16716                 fi
16717             fi
16718         done
16719     )
16720     echo
16721 fi
16722 </pre>
16723
16724 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
16725 mappings:</p>
16726
16727 <pre>
16728 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
16729     echo loaded usb modules:
16730     (
16731         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
16732         for address in * ; do
16733             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
16734                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
16735                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
16736                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
16737                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
16738                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
16739                         echo "$id $module"
16740                     fi
16741                 fi
16742             fi
16743         done
16744     )
16745     echo
16746 fi
16747 </pre>
16748
16749 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
16750 well.</p>
16751
16752       </div>
16753       <div class="tags">
16754
16755
16756         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
16757
16758
16759       </div>
16760     </div>
16761     <div class="padding"></div>
16762
16763     <div class="entry">
16764       <div class="title">
16765         <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>
16766       </div>
16767       <div class="date">
16768         16th January 2011
16769       </div>
16770       <div class="body">
16771         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
16772 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
16773 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
16774 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
16775 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
16776 the Wikipedia article on
16777 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
16778 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
16779 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
16780 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
16781 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
16782 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
16783 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
16784 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
16785 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
16786 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
16787 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
16788 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
16789
16790 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
16791 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
16792 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
16793 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
16794 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
16795 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
16796 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
16797 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
16798 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
16799 from last week</a>.</p>
16800
16801 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
16802 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
16803 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
16804 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
16805 was without royalties and license terms, check out
16806 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16807 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
16808
16809 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
16810 available from
16811 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
16812 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
16813 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
16814
16815 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
16816 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
16817 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
16818 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
16819
16820       </div>
16821       <div class="tags">
16822
16823
16824         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16825
16826
16827       </div>
16828     </div>
16829     <div class="padding"></div>
16830
16831     <div class="entry">
16832       <div class="title">
16833         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
16834       </div>
16835       <div class="date">
16836         12th January 2011
16837       </div>
16838       <div class="body">
16839         <p>Today I discovered
16840 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
16841 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
16842 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
16843 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
16844 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
16845 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
16846 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
16847 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
16848 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
16849 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
16850 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
16851 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
16852 on the Google announcement is available from
16853 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
16854 A good read. :)</p>
16855
16856 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
16857 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
16858 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
16859 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
16860 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
16861 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
16862 browsers support H.264, and others support
16863 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
16864 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
16865 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
16866 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
16867 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
16868 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
16869 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
16870 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
16871
16872 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
16873 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
16874 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
16875 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
16876 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
16877 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
16878 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
16879
16880 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
16881 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
16882 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
16883 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
16884 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
16885 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
16886 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
16887
16888 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
16889 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
16890 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
16891 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
16892 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
16893 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
16894 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
16895
16896 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
16897 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
16898 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
16899 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
16900 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
16901 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
16902 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
16903 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
16904 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
16905 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
16906 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
16907 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
16908 I guess time will tell.</p>
16909
16910 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
16911 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
16912 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
16913
16914       </div>
16915       <div class="tags">
16916
16917
16918         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
16919
16920
16921       </div>
16922     </div>
16923     <div class="padding"></div>
16924
16925     <div class="entry">
16926       <div class="title">
16927         <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>
16928       </div>
16929       <div class="date">
16930         30th December 2010
16931       </div>
16932       <div class="body">
16933         <p>After trying to
16934 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
16935 Ogg Theora</a> to
16936 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
16937 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
16938 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
16939 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
16940 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
16941 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
16942 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
16943
16944 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
16945 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
16946 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
16947 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
16948 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
16949 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
16950 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
16951
16952 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
16953 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
16954
16955       </div>
16956       <div class="tags">
16957
16958
16959         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>.
16960
16961
16962       </div>
16963     </div>
16964     <div class="padding"></div>
16965
16966     <div class="entry">
16967       <div class="title">
16968         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
16969       </div>
16970       <div class="date">
16971         27th December 2010
16972       </div>
16973       <div class="body">
16974         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
16975 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
16976 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
16977 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
16978 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
16979 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
16980 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
16981 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
16982
16983 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
16984 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
16985 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
16986 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
16987 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
16988 page</a>.</p>
16989
16990 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
16991 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
16992 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
16993 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
16994 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
16995 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
16996 specification on equal terms.</p>
16997
16998 <blockquote>
16999
17000 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
17001 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
17002 open standard:</p>
17003
17004 <ul>
17005
17006 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17007 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17008 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
17009 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
17010
17011 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17012 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
17013 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
17014 nominal fee.</li>
17015
17016 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
17017 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
17018 free basis.</li>
17019
17020 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17021
17022 </ul>
17023 </blockquote>
17024
17025 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
17026 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
17027 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
17028 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
17029 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
17030 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
17031 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
17032
17033 <blockquote>
17034
17035 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
17036
17037 <ol>
17038
17039 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
17040 tilgængelig.</li>
17041
17042 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
17043 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
17044
17045 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
17046 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
17047
17048 </ol>
17049
17050 </blockquote>
17051
17052 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
17053 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
17054
17055 <blockquote>
17056
17057 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
17058
17059 <ol>
17060
17061 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
17062 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
17063
17064 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
17065 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
17066 Standard themselves;</li>
17067
17068 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
17069 any party or in any business model;</li>
17070
17071 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
17072 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
17073 parties;</li>
17074
17075 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
17076 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
17077 parties.</li>
17078
17079 </ol>
17080
17081 </blockquote>
17082
17083 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
17084 its
17085 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
17086 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
17087
17088 <blockquote>
17089 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
17090
17091 <ul>
17092
17093 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
17094   democratic:
17095
17096          <ul>
17097
17098          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
17099             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
17100             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
17101             and managed.</li>
17102
17103          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
17104             method, can be changed through input from all
17105             participants.</li>
17106
17107          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
17108             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
17109
17110          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
17111             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
17112
17113          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
17114             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
17115             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
17116
17117          </ul>
17118
17119 </li>
17120
17121 </ul>
17122
17123 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
17124 <ul>
17125
17126 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
17127   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
17128   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
17129   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
17130   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
17131
17132 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
17133   a technical or economic barriers</li>
17134
17135 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
17136   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
17137   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
17138   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
17139   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
17140   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
17141   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
17142   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
17143   intended to function.</li>
17144
17145 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
17146   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
17147   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
17148
17149 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
17150   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
17151   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
17152   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
17153   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
17154   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
17155   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
17156   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
17157
17158       <ul>
17159
17160       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
17161         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
17162         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
17163
17164       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
17165         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
17166         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
17167         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
17168
17169       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
17170         licensor</li>
17171
17172       </ul>
17173 </li>
17174
17175 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
17176   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
17177   or restricted licensing terms</li>
17178
17179 </ul>
17180
17181 </blockquote>
17182
17183 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
17184 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
17185 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
17186 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
17187 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
17188 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
17189 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
17190 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
17191 Standards.</p>
17192
17193       </div>
17194       <div class="tags">
17195
17196
17197         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>.
17198
17199
17200       </div>
17201     </div>
17202     <div class="padding"></div>
17203
17204     <div class="entry">
17205       <div class="title">
17206         <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>
17207       </div>
17208       <div class="date">
17209         25th December 2010
17210       </div>
17211       <div class="body">
17212         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
17213 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
17214
17215 <blockquote>
17216
17217 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
17218 as follows:</p>
17219
17220 <ol>
17221
17222 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
17223 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
17224 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
17225
17226 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
17227 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
17228 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
17229 parties.</li>
17230
17231 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
17232 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
17233 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
17234
17235 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
17236 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
17237
17238 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
17239
17240 </ol>
17241
17242 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
17243 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
17244 products based on the standard.</p>
17245 </blockquote>
17246
17247 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
17248 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
17249 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
17250 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
17251 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
17252 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
17253 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
17254 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
17255
17256 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
17257
17258 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
17259 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
17260 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
17261 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
17262 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
17263 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
17264 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
17265 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
17266 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
17267 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
17268 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
17269 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
17270 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
17271 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
17272
17273 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
17274
17275 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
17276 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
17277 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
17278 documentation indicating this.</p>
17279
17280 <p>According to
17281 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
17282 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
17283 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
17284 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
17285 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
17286 report is correct.</p>
17287
17288 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
17289
17290 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
17291 container format</a> and both the
17292 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
17293 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
17294 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
17295
17296 <blockquote>
17297
17298 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
17299 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
17300 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
17301 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
17302 specification compliance.
17303
17304 </blockquote>
17305
17306 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
17307 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
17308 this is the term:<p>
17309
17310 <blockquote>
17311
17312 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
17313 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
17314 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
17315 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
17316 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
17317 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
17318 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
17319 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
17320 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
17321 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
17322 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
17323 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
17324
17325 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
17326 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
17327 </blockquote>
17328
17329 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
17330 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
17331 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
17332 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
17333 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
17334
17335 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
17336
17337 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
17338 Theora format.
17339 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
17340 and
17341 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
17342 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
17343 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
17344 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
17345 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
17346 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
17347 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
17348 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
17349
17350 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
17351
17352 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
17353
17354 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
17355
17356 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
17357 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
17358 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
17359 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
17360 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
17361 this.</p>
17362
17363 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
17364 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
17365
17366       </div>
17367       <div class="tags">
17368
17369
17370         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
17371
17372
17373       </div>
17374     </div>
17375     <div class="padding"></div>
17376
17377     <div class="entry">
17378       <div class="title">
17379         <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>
17380       </div>
17381       <div class="date">
17382         25th December 2010
17383       </div>
17384       <div class="body">
17385         <p>A few days ago
17386 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
17387 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
17388 2.0 of
17389 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
17390 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
17391 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
17392 Nothing very surprising there, given
17393 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
17394 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
17395 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
17396 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
17397 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
17398 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
17399 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
17400 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
17401 standard definition from its content.</p>
17402
17403 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
17404 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
17405 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
17406 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
17407 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
17408 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
17409 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
17410 background information about that story is available in
17411 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
17412 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
17413
17414 <blockquote>
17415 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
17416 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
17417 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
17418
17419 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
17420
17421 <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>
17422
17423 <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>
17424
17425 <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>
17426
17427 <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>
17428
17429 <p>
17430 <ul>
17431 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
17432 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
17433 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
17434 </ul>
17435 </p>
17436
17437 <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>
17438
17439 <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>
17440
17441 <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>
17442
17443 <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>
17444
17445 <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>
17446
17447
17448 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
17449 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
17450 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
17451 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
17452 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
17453 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
17454
17455 </p>
17456
17457 <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>
17458
17459 <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>
17460
17461 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
17462
17463 <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>
17464
17465 <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>
17466
17467 <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>
17468
17469 <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>
17470
17471 <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>
17472
17473 <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>
17474
17475 <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>
17476
17477 <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>
17478
17479 <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>
17480
17481 <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>
17482
17483 <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>
17484
17485 <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>
17486
17487 <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>
17488
17489 <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>
17490
17491 <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>
17492
17493 <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>
17494
17495 <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>
17496
17497 <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>
17498
17499 <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>
17500
17501 <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>
17502
17503 <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>
17504
17505 <p>On security:</p>
17506
17507 <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>
17508
17509 <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>
17510
17511 <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>
17512
17513 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
17514
17515 <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>
17516
17517 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
17518
17519 <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>
17520
17521 <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>
17522
17523 <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>
17524
17525 <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>
17526
17527 <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>
17528
17529 <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>
17530
17531 <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>
17532
17533 <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>
17534
17535 <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>
17536
17537 <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>
17538
17539 <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>
17540
17541 <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>
17542
17543 <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>
17544
17545 <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>
17546
17547 <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>
17548
17549 <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>
17550
17551 <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>
17552
17553 <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>
17554
17555 <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>
17556
17557 <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>
17558
17559 <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>
17560
17561 <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>
17562
17563 <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>
17564
17565 <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>
17566
17567 <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>
17568
17569 <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>
17570
17571 <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>
17572
17573 <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>
17574
17575 <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>
17576
17577 <p>Cordially,<br>
17578 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
17579 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
17580 </blockquote>
17581
17582       </div>
17583       <div class="tags">
17584
17585
17586         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>.
17587
17588
17589       </div>
17590     </div>
17591     <div class="padding"></div>
17592
17593     <div class="entry">
17594       <div class="title">
17595         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
17596       </div>
17597       <div class="date">
17598         25th December 2010
17599       </div>
17600       <div class="body">
17601         <p>Half a year ago I
17602 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
17603 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
17604 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
17605 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
17606
17607 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
17608 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
17609 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
17610 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
17611 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
17612 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
17613 got such a great test tool available.</p>
17614
17615       </div>
17616       <div class="tags">
17617
17618
17619         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>.
17620
17621
17622       </div>
17623     </div>
17624     <div class="padding"></div>
17625
17626     <div class="entry">
17627       <div class="title">
17628         <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>
17629       </div>
17630       <div class="date">
17631         22nd December 2010
17632       </div>
17633       <div class="body">
17634         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
17635 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
17636 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
17637 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
17638 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
17639 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
17640 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
17641 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
17642 university.</p>
17643
17644 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
17645 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
17646 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
17647 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
17648 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
17649 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
17650 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
17651 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
17652
17653 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
17654 I perform on a new model.</p>
17655
17656 <ul>
17657
17658 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
17659 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
17660 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
17661
17662 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
17663 installation, X.org is working.</li>
17664
17665 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
17666 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
17667 reported by the program.</li>
17668
17669 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
17670 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
17671 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
17672 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
17673 normally test this by playing
17674 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
17675 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
17676
17677 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
17678 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17679
17680 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
17681 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
17682
17683 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
17684 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
17685
17686 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
17687 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
17688 few.</li>
17689
17690 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
17691 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
17692 notice this.</li>
17693
17694 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
17695 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
17696 resume.</li>
17697
17698 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
17699 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
17700 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
17701 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
17702 not.</li>
17703
17704 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
17705 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
17706 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
17707 existence.</li>
17708
17709 </ul>
17710
17711 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
17712 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
17713 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
17714 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
17715 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
17716 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
17717 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
17718 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
17719
17720       </div>
17721       <div class="tags">
17722
17723
17724         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>.
17725
17726
17727       </div>
17728     </div>
17729     <div class="padding"></div>
17730
17731     <div class="entry">
17732       <div class="title">
17733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
17734       </div>
17735       <div class="date">
17736         11th December 2010
17737       </div>
17738       <div class="body">
17739         <p>As I continue to explore
17740 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
17741 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
17742 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
17743
17744 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
17745 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
17746 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
17747 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
17748 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
17749 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
17750 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
17751 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
17752 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
17753 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
17754 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
17755 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
17756 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
17757 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
17758 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
17759 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
17760 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
17761 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
17762 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
17763 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
17764
17765 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
17766 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
17767 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
17768 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
17769 If the Skolelinux foundation
17770 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
17771 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
17772 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
17773 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
17774 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
17775 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
17776 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
17777 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
17778
17779 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
17780 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
17781 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
17782 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
17783 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
17784 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
17785 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
17786 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
17787 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
17788 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
17789 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
17790 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
17791 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
17792 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
17793 currencies.</p>
17794
17795 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
17796 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
17797 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
17798 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
17799 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
17800 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
17801 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
17802 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
17803 BitCoins.  Check out
17804 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
17805 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
17806 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
17807 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
17808 yet.</p>
17809
17810 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
17811 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
17812 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
17813 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
17814 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
17815
17816       </div>
17817       <div class="tags">
17818
17819
17820         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>.
17821
17822
17823       </div>
17824     </div>
17825     <div class="padding"></div>
17826
17827     <div class="entry">
17828       <div class="title">
17829         <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>
17830       </div>
17831       <div class="date">
17832         10th December 2010
17833       </div>
17834       <div class="body">
17835         <p>With this weeks lawless
17836 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
17837 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
17838 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
17839 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
17840 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
17841 A blog post from
17842 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
17843 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
17844 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
17845 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
17846 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
17847 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
17848 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
17849
17850 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
17851 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
17852 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
17853 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
17854 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
17855 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
17856 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
17857 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
17858 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
17859 Debian</a> soon.</p>
17860
17861 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
17862 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
17863 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
17864 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
17865 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
17866 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
17867 you can even get
17868 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
17869 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
17870 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
17871 on the current exchange rates.</p>
17872
17873 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
17874 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
17875 donations to the address
17876 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
17877
17878       </div>
17879       <div class="tags">
17880
17881
17882         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>.
17883
17884
17885       </div>
17886     </div>
17887     <div class="padding"></div>
17888
17889     <div class="entry">
17890       <div class="title">
17891         <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>
17892       </div>
17893       <div class="date">
17894          9th December 2010
17895       </div>
17896       <div class="body">
17897         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
17898 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
17899 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
17900 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
17901 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
17902 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
17903 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
17904 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
17905 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
17906 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
17907 operational.</p>
17908
17909 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
17910 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
17911 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
17912 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
17913 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
17914 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
17915 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
17916
17917       </div>
17918       <div class="tags">
17919
17920
17921         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>.
17922
17923
17924       </div>
17925     </div>
17926     <div class="padding"></div>
17927
17928     <div class="entry">
17929       <div class="title">
17930         <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>
17931       </div>
17932       <div class="date">
17933         29th November 2010
17934       </div>
17935       <div class="body">
17936         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
17937 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
17938 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
17939 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
17940 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
17941 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
17942
17943 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
17944 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
17945 will hold its
17946 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
17947 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
17948 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
17949 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
17950 vote this year.</p>
17951
17952       </div>
17953       <div class="tags">
17954
17955
17956         Tags: <a href="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>.
17957
17958
17959       </div>
17960     </div>
17961     <div class="padding"></div>
17962
17963     <div class="entry">
17964       <div class="title">
17965         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
17966       </div>
17967       <div class="date">
17968         27th November 2010
17969       </div>
17970       <div class="body">
17971         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
17972 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
17973 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
17974 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
17975 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
17976 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
17977 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
17978 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
17979
17980 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
17981 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
17982 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
17983 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
17984 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
17985 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
17986 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
17987 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
17988 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
17989 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
17990 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
17991
17992 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
17993 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
17994 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
17995 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
17996 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
17997 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
17998 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
17999 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
18000 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
18001 what is going on.</p>
18002
18003       </div>
18004       <div class="tags">
18005
18006
18007         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>.
18008
18009
18010       </div>
18011     </div>
18012     <div class="padding"></div>
18013
18014     <div class="entry">
18015       <div class="title">
18016         <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>
18017       </div>
18018       <div class="date">
18019         22nd November 2010
18020       </div>
18021       <div class="body">
18022         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
18023 upgrade testing of the
18024 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18025 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
18026 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
18027 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
18028
18029 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18030
18031 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18032
18033 <blockquote><p>
18034   apache2.2-bin
18035   aptdaemon
18036   baobab
18037   binfmt-support
18038   browser-plugin-gnash
18039   cheese-common
18040   cli-common
18041   cups-pk-helper
18042   dmz-cursor-theme
18043   empathy
18044   empathy-common
18045   freedesktop-sound-theme
18046   freeglut3
18047   gconf-defaults-service
18048   gdm-themes
18049   gedit-plugins
18050   geoclue
18051   geoclue-hostip
18052   geoclue-localnet
18053   geoclue-manual
18054   geoclue-yahoo
18055   gnash
18056   gnash-common
18057   gnome
18058   gnome-backgrounds
18059   gnome-cards-data
18060   gnome-codec-install
18061   gnome-core
18062   gnome-desktop-environment
18063   gnome-disk-utility
18064   gnome-screenshot
18065   gnome-search-tool
18066   gnome-session-canberra
18067   gnome-system-log
18068   gnome-themes-extras
18069   gnome-themes-more
18070   gnome-user-share
18071   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18072   gstreamer0.10-tools
18073   gtk2-engines
18074   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18075   gtk2-engines-smooth
18076   hamster-applet
18077   libapache2-mod-dnssd
18078   libapr1
18079   libaprutil1
18080   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
18081   libaprutil1-ldap
18082   libart2.0-cil
18083   libboost-date-time1.42.0
18084   libboost-python1.42.0
18085   libboost-thread1.42.0
18086   libchamplain-0.4-0
18087   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
18088   libcheese-gtk18
18089   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18090   libcryptui0
18091   libdiscid0
18092   libelf1
18093   libepc-1.0-2
18094   libepc-common
18095   libepc-ui-1.0-2
18096   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18097   libfreerdp0
18098   libgconf2.0-cil
18099   libgdata-common
18100   libgdata7
18101   libgdu-gtk0
18102   libgee2
18103   libgeoclue0
18104   libgexiv2-0
18105   libgif4
18106   libglade2.0-cil
18107   libglib2.0-cil
18108   libgmime2.4-cil
18109   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18110   libgnome2.24-cil
18111   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
18112   libgpod-common
18113   libgpod4
18114   libgtk2.0-cil
18115   libgtkglext1
18116   libgtksourceview2.0-common
18117   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18118   libmono-addins0.2-cil
18119   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
18120   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18121   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
18122   libmono-posix2.0-cil
18123   libmono-security2.0-cil
18124   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18125   libmono-system2.0-cil
18126   libmtp8
18127   libmusicbrainz3-6
18128   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
18129   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
18130   libopal3.6.8
18131   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
18132   libpt2.6.7
18133   libpython2.6
18134   librpm1
18135   librpmio1
18136   libsdl1.2debian
18137   libsrtp0
18138   libssh-4
18139   libtelepathy-farsight0
18140   libtelepathy-glib0
18141   libtidy-0.99-0
18142   media-player-info
18143   mesa-utils
18144   mono-2.0-gac
18145   mono-gac
18146   mono-runtime
18147   nautilus-sendto
18148   nautilus-sendto-empathy
18149   p7zip-full
18150   pkg-config
18151   python-aptdaemon
18152   python-aptdaemon-gtk
18153   python-axiom
18154   python-beautifulsoup
18155   python-bugbuddy
18156   python-clientform
18157   python-coherence
18158   python-configobj
18159   python-crypto
18160   python-cupshelpers
18161   python-elementtree
18162   python-epsilon
18163   python-evolution
18164   python-feedparser
18165   python-gdata
18166   python-gdbm
18167   python-gst0.10
18168   python-gtkglext1
18169   python-gtksourceview2
18170   python-httplib2
18171   python-louie
18172   python-mako
18173   python-markupsafe
18174   python-mechanize
18175   python-nevow
18176   python-notify
18177   python-opengl
18178   python-openssl
18179   python-pam
18180   python-pkg-resources
18181   python-pyasn1
18182   python-pysqlite2
18183   python-rdflib
18184   python-serial
18185   python-tagpy
18186   python-twisted-bin
18187   python-twisted-conch
18188   python-twisted-core
18189   python-twisted-web
18190   python-utidylib
18191   python-webkit
18192   python-xdg
18193   python-zope.interface
18194   remmina
18195   remmina-plugin-data
18196   remmina-plugin-rdp
18197   remmina-plugin-vnc
18198   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18199   rhythmbox-plugins
18200   rpm-common
18201   rpm2cpio
18202   seahorse-plugins
18203   shotwell
18204   software-center
18205   system-config-printer-udev
18206   telepathy-gabble
18207   telepathy-mission-control-5
18208   telepathy-salut
18209   tomboy
18210   totem
18211   totem-coherence
18212   totem-mozilla
18213   totem-plugins
18214   transmission-common
18215   xdg-user-dirs
18216   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
18217   xserver-xephyr
18218 </p></blockquote>
18219
18220 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18221
18222 <blockquote><p>
18223   cheese
18224   ekiga
18225   eog
18226   epiphany-extensions
18227   evolution-exchange
18228   fast-user-switch-applet
18229   file-roller
18230   gcalctool
18231   gconf-editor
18232   gdm
18233   gedit
18234   gedit-common
18235   gnome-games
18236   gnome-games-data
18237   gnome-nettool
18238   gnome-system-tools
18239   gnome-themes
18240   gnuchess
18241   gucharmap
18242   guile-1.8-libs
18243   libavahi-ui0
18244   libdmx1
18245   libgalago3
18246   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18247   libgtksourceview2.0-0
18248   liblircclient0
18249   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
18250   libspeexdsp1
18251   libsvga1
18252   rhythmbox
18253   seahorse
18254   sound-juicer
18255   system-config-printer
18256   totem-common
18257   transmission-gtk
18258   vinagre
18259   vino
18260 </p></blockquote>
18261
18262 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18263
18264 <blockquote><p>
18265   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18266 </p></blockquote>
18267
18268 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18269
18270 <blockquote><p>
18271 [nothing]
18272 </p></blockquote>
18273
18274 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18275
18276 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18277
18278 <blockquote><p>
18279   ksmserver
18280 </p></blockquote>
18281
18282 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18283
18284 <blockquote><p>
18285   kwin
18286   network-manager-kde
18287 </p></blockquote>
18288
18289 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18290
18291 <blockquote><p>
18292   arts
18293   dolphin
18294   freespacenotifier
18295   google-gadgets-gst
18296   google-gadgets-xul
18297   kappfinder
18298   kcalc
18299   kcharselect
18300   kde-core
18301   kde-plasma-desktop
18302   kde-standard
18303   kde-window-manager
18304   kdeartwork
18305   kdeartwork-emoticons
18306   kdeartwork-style
18307   kdeartwork-theme-icon
18308   kdebase
18309   kdebase-apps
18310   kdebase-workspace
18311   kdebase-workspace-bin
18312   kdebase-workspace-data
18313   kdeeject
18314   kdelibs
18315   kdeplasma-addons
18316   kdeutils
18317   kdewallpapers
18318   kdf
18319   kfloppy
18320   kgpg
18321   khelpcenter4
18322   kinfocenter
18323   konq-plugins-l10n
18324   konqueror-nsplugins
18325   kscreensaver
18326   kscreensaver-xsavers
18327   ktimer
18328   kwrite
18329   libgle3
18330   libkde4-ruby1.8
18331   libkonq5
18332   libkonq5-templates
18333   libnetpbm10
18334   libplasma-ruby
18335   libplasma-ruby1.8
18336   libqt4-ruby1.8
18337   marble-data
18338   marble-plugins
18339   netpbm
18340   nuvola-icon-theme
18341   plasma-dataengines-workspace
18342   plasma-desktop
18343   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
18344   plasma-runners-addons
18345   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
18346   plasma-scriptengine-python
18347   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
18348   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
18349   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
18350   plasma-scriptengines
18351   plasma-wallpapers-addons
18352   plasma-widget-folderview
18353   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18354   ruby
18355   sweeper
18356   update-notifier-kde
18357   xscreensaver-data-extra
18358   xscreensaver-gl
18359   xscreensaver-gl-extra
18360   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18361 </p></blockquote>
18362
18363 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18364
18365 <blockquote><p>
18366   ark
18367   google-gadgets-common
18368   google-gadgets-qt
18369   htdig
18370   kate
18371   kdebase-bin
18372   kdebase-data
18373   kdepasswd
18374   kfind
18375   klipper
18376   konq-plugins
18377   konqueror
18378   ksysguard
18379   ksysguardd
18380   libarchive1
18381   libcln6
18382   libeet1
18383   libeina-svn-06
18384   libggadget-1.0-0b
18385   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
18386   libgps19
18387   libkdecorations4
18388   libkephal4
18389   libkonq4
18390   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
18391   libkscreensaver5
18392   libksgrd4
18393   libksignalplotter4
18394   libkunitconversion4
18395   libkwineffects1a
18396   libmarblewidget4
18397   libntrack-qt4-1
18398   libntrack0
18399   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
18400   libplasmaclock4a
18401   libplasmagenericshell4
18402   libprocesscore4a
18403   libprocessui4a
18404   libqalculate5
18405   libqedje0a
18406   libqtruby4shared2
18407   libqzion0a
18408   libruby1.8
18409   libscim8c2a
18410   libsmokekdecore4-3
18411   libsmokekdeui4-3
18412   libsmokekfile3
18413   libsmokekhtml3
18414   libsmokekio3
18415   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
18416   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
18417   libsmokekparts3
18418   libsmokektexteditor3
18419   libsmokekutils3
18420   libsmokenepomuk3
18421   libsmokephonon3
18422   libsmokeplasma3
18423   libsmokeqtcore4-3
18424   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
18425   libsmokeqtgui4-3
18426   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
18427   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
18428   libsmokeqtscript4-3
18429   libsmokeqtsql4-3
18430   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
18431   libsmokeqttest4-3
18432   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
18433   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
18434   libsmokeqtxml4-3
18435   libsmokesolid3
18436   libsmokesoprano3
18437   libtaskmanager4a
18438   libtidy-0.99-0
18439   libweather-ion4a
18440   libxklavier16
18441   libxxf86misc1
18442   okteta
18443   oxygencursors
18444   plasma-dataengines-addons
18445   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
18446   plasma-widget-lancelot
18447   plasma-widgets-addons
18448   plasma-widgets-workspace
18449   polkit-kde-1
18450   ruby1.8
18451   systemsettings
18452   update-notifier-common
18453 </p></blockquote>
18454
18455 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
18456 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
18457 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
18458 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
18459
18460       </div>
18461       <div class="tags">
18462
18463
18464         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>.
18465
18466
18467       </div>
18468     </div>
18469     <div class="padding"></div>
18470
18471     <div class="entry">
18472       <div class="title">
18473         <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>
18474       </div>
18475       <div class="date">
18476         22nd November 2010
18477       </div>
18478       <div class="body">
18479         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
18480 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
18481 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
18482 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
18483 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
18484 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
18485 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
18486 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
18487 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
18488
18489 <p>I found
18490 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
18491 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
18492 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
18493 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
18494 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
18495 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
18496
18497 <pre>
18498 #!/bin/sh
18499
18500 # Based on
18501 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
18502
18503 set -e
18504 set -x
18505
18506 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
18507     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
18508     exit 1
18509 else
18510     host="$1"
18511 fi
18512
18513 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
18514     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
18515     exit 1
18516 fi
18517
18518 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
18519 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18520 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
18521 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
18522
18523 img=$host.img
18524 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
18525 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
18526
18527 parted $img mklabel msdos
18528 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
18529 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
18530 parted $img set 1 boot on
18531
18532 modprobe dm-mod
18533 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
18534 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
18535
18536 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
18537 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
18538 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
18539
18540 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
18541 losetup -d /dev/loop0
18542 </pre>
18543
18544 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
18545 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
18546
18547 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
18548 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
18549 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
18550 seem to work just fine.</p>
18551
18552       </div>
18553       <div class="tags">
18554
18555
18556         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>.
18557
18558
18559       </div>
18560     </div>
18561     <div class="padding"></div>
18562
18563     <div class="entry">
18564       <div class="title">
18565         <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>
18566       </div>
18567       <div class="date">
18568         20th November 2010
18569       </div>
18570       <div class="body">
18571         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
18572 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
18573 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
18574 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
18575
18576 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
18577 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
18578 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
18579
18580 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
18581
18582 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18583
18584 <blockquote><p>
18585   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
18586   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
18587   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
18588   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
18589   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
18590   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
18591   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
18592   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
18593   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
18594   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
18595   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
18596   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
18597   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
18598   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
18599   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
18600   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
18601   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
18602   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
18603   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
18604   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
18605   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
18606   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
18607   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
18608   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
18609   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
18610   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
18611   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
18612   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
18613   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
18614   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
18615   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
18616   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
18617   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
18618   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
18619   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
18620   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
18621   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
18622   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
18623   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
18624   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
18625   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
18626   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
18627   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
18628   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
18629   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
18630   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
18631   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
18632   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
18633   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
18634   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
18635   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
18636   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
18637   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
18638   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
18639   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
18640   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
18641   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
18642   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
18643   zip
18644 </p></blockquote>
18645
18646 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
18647
18648 <blockquote><p>
18649   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
18650   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
18651   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
18652   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
18653   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
18654   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
18655   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
18656   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
18657   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
18658   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
18659   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
18660   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
18661   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
18662   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
18663   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
18664   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
18665   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18666   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
18667   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
18668   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
18669   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
18670   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
18671   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
18672   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
18673   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
18674   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
18675   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
18676   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
18677   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
18678 </p></blockquote>
18679
18680 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18681
18682 <blockquote><p>
18683   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
18684 </p></blockquote>
18685
18686 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18687
18688 <blockquote><p>
18689 [nothing]
18690 </p></blockquote>
18691
18692 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
18693
18694 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
18695
18696 <blockquote><p>
18697   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
18698   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
18699   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
18700   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
18701   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
18702   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
18703   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
18704   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
18705   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
18706   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
18707   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
18708   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
18709   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
18710   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
18711   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
18712   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
18713   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
18714   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
18715   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
18716   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
18717   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
18718   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
18719   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
18720   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
18721   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
18722   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
18723   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
18724   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
18725   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
18726   ttf-sazanami-gothic
18727 </p></blockquote>
18728
18729 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
18730
18731 <blockquote><p>
18732   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
18733   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
18734   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
18735   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
18736   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
18737   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
18738   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
18739   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
18740   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
18741   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
18742   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
18743   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
18744   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
18745   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
18746   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
18747   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
18748   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
18749   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
18750   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
18751   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
18752   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
18753   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
18754   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
18755   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
18756   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
18757   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
18758   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
18759   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
18760   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
18761   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
18762   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
18763   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
18764   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
18765 </p></blockquote>
18766
18767 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
18768
18769 <blockquote><p>
18770   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
18771   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
18772   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
18773   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
18774   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
18775   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
18776   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
18777 </p></blockquote>
18778
18779 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
18780
18781 <blockquote><p>
18782   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
18783 </p></blockquote>
18784
18785       </div>
18786       <div class="tags">
18787
18788
18789         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>.
18790
18791
18792       </div>
18793     </div>
18794     <div class="padding"></div>
18795
18796     <div class="entry">
18797       <div class="title">
18798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
18799       </div>
18800       <div class="date">
18801         20th November 2010
18802       </div>
18803       <div class="body">
18804         <p>Answering
18805 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
18806 call from the Gnash project</a> for
18807 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
18808 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
18809 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
18810 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
18811 releases out more often.</p>
18812
18813 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
18814 I have considered setting up a <a
18815 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
18816 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
18817 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
18818 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
18819 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
18820 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
18821 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
18822 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
18823 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
18824 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
18825 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
18826 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
18827
18828       </div>
18829       <div class="tags">
18830
18831
18832         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>.
18833
18834
18835       </div>
18836     </div>
18837     <div class="padding"></div>
18838
18839     <div class="entry">
18840       <div class="title">
18841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
18842       </div>
18843       <div class="date">
18844          9th November 2010
18845       </div>
18846       <div class="body">
18847         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
18848
18849 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
18850 3D linked in from
18851 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
18852 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
18853
18854       </div>
18855       <div class="tags">
18856
18857
18858         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>.
18859
18860
18861       </div>
18862     </div>
18863     <div class="padding"></div>
18864
18865     <div class="entry">
18866       <div class="title">
18867         <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>
18868       </div>
18869       <div class="date">
18870          7th November 2010
18871       </div>
18872       <div class="body">
18873         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
18874 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
18875 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
18876 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
18877 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
18878 working using this DVD.</p>
18879
18880 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
18881 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
18882 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
18883 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
18884 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
18885 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
18886 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
18887
18888 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
18889 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
18890 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
18891 Debian archive.</p>
18892
18893 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
18894 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
18895 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
18896 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
18897 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
18898 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
18899 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
18900 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
18901 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
18902 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
18903 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
18904 free X driver should work.</p>
18905
18906 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
18907 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
18908 DVD more useful again.</p>
18909
18910       </div>
18911       <div class="tags">
18912
18913
18914         Tags: <a href="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>.
18915
18916
18917       </div>
18918     </div>
18919     <div class="padding"></div>
18920
18921     <div class="entry">
18922       <div class="title">
18923         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
18924       </div>
18925       <div class="date">
18926         24th October 2010
18927       </div>
18928       <div class="body">
18929         <p>Some updates.</p>
18930
18931 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
18932 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
18933 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
18934 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
18935 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
18936 :)</p>
18937
18938 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
18939 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
18940 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
18941 It is called
18942 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
18943 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
18944 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
18945 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
18946 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
18947 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
18948
18949 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
18950 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
18951 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
18952 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
18953 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
18954 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
18955 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
18956 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
18957 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
18958 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
18959
18960       </div>
18961       <div class="tags">
18962
18963
18964         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>.
18965
18966
18967       </div>
18968     </div>
18969     <div class="padding"></div>
18970
18971     <div class="entry">
18972       <div class="title">
18973         <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>
18974       </div>
18975       <div class="date">
18976         19th October 2010
18977       </div>
18978       <div class="body">
18979         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
18980 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
18981 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
18982 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
18983 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
18984 AVM2 flash files.</p>
18985
18986 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
18987 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
18988 following text:</P>
18989
18990 <p><blockquote>
18991
18992   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
18993   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
18994
18995   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
18996
18997   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
18998
18999   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
19000   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
19001   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
19002   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
19003   days. The project web page is available from
19004   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
19005   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
19006   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
19007
19008   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
19009   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
19010   to get this to happen.</p>
19011
19012   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
19013   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
19014
19015 </blockquote></p>
19016
19017 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
19018 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
19019 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
19020 :)</p>
19021
19022       </div>
19023       <div class="tags">
19024
19025
19026         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>.
19027
19028
19029       </div>
19030     </div>
19031     <div class="padding"></div>
19032
19033     <div class="entry">
19034       <div class="title">
19035         <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>
19036       </div>
19037       <div class="date">
19038          9th October 2010
19039       </div>
19040       <div class="body">
19041         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
19042 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
19043 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
19044 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
19045 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
19046 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
19047 robots.</p>
19048
19049 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
19050 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
19051 a few less important features too.</p>
19052
19053 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
19054 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
19055 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
19056 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
19057
19058 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
19059 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
19060 source or binary package:</p>
19061
19062 <p><ul>
19063 <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>
19064 <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>
19065 <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>
19066 </ul></p>
19067
19068 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
19069 please let me know.</p>
19070
19071       </div>
19072       <div class="tags">
19073
19074
19075         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>.
19076
19077
19078       </div>
19079     </div>
19080     <div class="padding"></div>
19081
19082     <div class="entry">
19083       <div class="title">
19084         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
19085       </div>
19086       <div class="date">
19087          3rd October 2010
19088       </div>
19089       <div class="body">
19090         <p><ul>
19091
19092 <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
19093 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
19094
19095 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
19096 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
19097 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
19098
19099 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
19100 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
19101 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
19102 simple setup.
19103
19104 </ul></p>
19105
19106       </div>
19107       <div class="tags">
19108
19109
19110         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>.
19111
19112
19113       </div>
19114     </div>
19115     <div class="padding"></div>
19116
19117     <div class="entry">
19118       <div class="title">
19119         <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>
19120       </div>
19121       <div class="date">
19122          9th September 2010
19123       </div>
19124       <div class="body">
19125         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
19126 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
19127 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
19128 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
19129 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
19130 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
19131 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
19132 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
19133 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
19134
19135 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
19136 written:</p>
19137
19138 <blockquote>
19139 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
19140 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
19141 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
19142 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
19143 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
19144
19145 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
19146 standard.</p>
19147 </blockquote>
19148
19149 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
19150 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
19151 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
19152 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
19153
19154 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
19155 read
19156 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
19157 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
19158 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
19159 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
19160 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
19161 the issue.  The solution is to support the
19162 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
19163 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
19164 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
19165
19166       </div>
19167       <div class="tags">
19168
19169
19170         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
19171
19172
19173       </div>
19174     </div>
19175     <div class="padding"></div>
19176
19177     <div class="entry">
19178       <div class="title">
19179         <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>
19180       </div>
19181       <div class="date">
19182          4th September 2010
19183       </div>
19184       <div class="body">
19185         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
19186 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
19187 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
19188 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
19189 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
19190 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
19191 installed.</p>
19192
19193 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
19194 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
19195 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
19196 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
19197 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
19198 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
19199 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
19200 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
19201 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
19202
19203 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
19204 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
19205 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
19206 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
19207 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
19208 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
19209 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
19210 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
19211 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
19212 pages they want to visit.</p>
19213
19214 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
19215 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
19216 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
19217 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
19218 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
19219 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
19220 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
19221 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
19222 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
19223 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
19224 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
19225
19226       </div>
19227       <div class="tags">
19228
19229
19230         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>.
19231
19232
19233       </div>
19234     </div>
19235     <div class="padding"></div>
19236
19237     <div class="entry">
19238       <div class="title">
19239         <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>
19240       </div>
19241       <div class="date">
19242          1st September 2010
19243       </div>
19244       <div class="body">
19245         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
19246 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
19247 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
19248 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
19249 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
19250 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
19251 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
19252 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
19253 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
19254 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
19255 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
19256 drive around.</p>
19257
19258 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
19259 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
19260
19261 <p><pre>
19262 use Spykee;
19263 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
19264 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
19265 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
19266 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
19267 $spykee->left();
19268 sleep 2;
19269 $spykee->right();
19270 sleep 2;
19271 $spykee->forward();
19272 sleep 2;
19273 $spykee->back();
19274 sleep 2;
19275 $spykee->stop();
19276 </pre></p>
19277
19278 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
19279 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
19280 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
19281 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
19282 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
19283 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
19284 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
19285 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
19286 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
19287 going. :).</p>
19288
19289 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
19290 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
19291 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
19292 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
19293
19294       </div>
19295       <div class="tags">
19296
19297
19298         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>.
19299
19300
19301       </div>
19302     </div>
19303     <div class="padding"></div>
19304
19305     <div class="entry">
19306       <div class="title">
19307         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
19308       </div>
19309       <div class="date">
19310         30th August 2010
19311       </div>
19312       <div class="body">
19313         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
19314 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
19315 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
19316 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
19317 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
19318 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
19319 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
19320
19321 <pre>
19322 % ln foo bar
19323 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
19324 %
19325 </pre>
19326
19327 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
19328 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
19329 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
19330 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
19331 nevertheless. :)</p>
19332
19333 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
19334 git from
19335 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
19336
19337       </div>
19338       <div class="tags">
19339
19340
19341         Tags: <a href="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>.
19342
19343
19344       </div>
19345     </div>
19346     <div class="padding"></div>
19347
19348     <div class="entry">
19349       <div class="title">
19350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
19351       </div>
19352       <div class="date">
19353         26th August 2010
19354       </div>
19355       <div class="body">
19356         <p>My file system sematics program
19357 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
19358 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
19359 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
19360 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
19361 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
19362 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
19363 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
19364 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
19365 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
19366 script:</p>
19367
19368 <pre>
19369 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
19370   mode_t retval = 0;
19371   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
19372   if (-1 != fd) {
19373     unlink(name);
19374     struct stat statbuf;
19375     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
19376       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
19377     }
19378     close(fd);
19379   }
19380   return retval;
19381 }
19382
19383 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
19384 int test_umask(void) {
19385   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
19386
19387   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
19388   mode_t newmode;
19389   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19390     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
19391            newmode);
19392   }
19393   umask(007);
19394   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
19395     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
19396            newmode);
19397   }
19398
19399   umask (orig_umask);
19400   return 0;
19401 }
19402
19403 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19404   [...]
19405   test_umask();
19406   return 0;
19407 }
19408 </pre>
19409
19410 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
19411
19412 <pre>
19413 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19414 info: testing symlink creation
19415 info: testing subdirectory creation
19416 info: testing fcntl locking
19417   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19418   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19419   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19420   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19421   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19422   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19423 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19424 </pre>
19425
19426 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
19427 result:</p>
19428
19429 <pre>
19430 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19431 info: testing symlink creation
19432 info: testing subdirectory creation
19433 info: testing fcntl locking
19434   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19435   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19436   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19437   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19438   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19439   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19440 info: testing umask effect on file creation
19441   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
19442   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
19443 </pre>
19444
19445 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
19446 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
19447 directory.</p>
19448
19449 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
19450 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
19451
19452 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19453 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19454 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19455
19456       </div>
19457       <div class="tags">
19458
19459
19460         Tags: <a href="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>.
19461
19462
19463       </div>
19464     </div>
19465     <div class="padding"></div>
19466
19467     <div class="entry">
19468       <div class="title">
19469         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
19470       </div>
19471       <div class="date">
19472         15th August 2010
19473       </div>
19474       <div class="body">
19475         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
19476 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
19477 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
19478 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
19479 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
19480 long time.</p>
19481
19482       </div>
19483       <div class="tags">
19484
19485
19486         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>.
19487
19488
19489       </div>
19490     </div>
19491     <div class="padding"></div>
19492
19493     <div class="entry">
19494       <div class="title">
19495         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
19496       </div>
19497       <div class="date">
19498          9th August 2010
19499       </div>
19500       <div class="body">
19501         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
19502 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
19503 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
19504 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
19505 generated configuration.</p>
19506
19507 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
19508 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
19509 without any manual configuration.</p>
19510
19511 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
19512 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
19513 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
19514 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
19515 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
19516 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
19517 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
19518 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
19519 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
19520 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
19521 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
19522 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
19523 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
19524 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
19525 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
19526 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
19527 use.</p>
19528
19529 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
19530 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
19531 working properly out of the box:</p>
19532
19533 <ul>
19534 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
19535 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
19536 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
19537 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
19538 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
19539 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
19540 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
19541 </ul>
19542
19543 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
19544
19545 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
19546 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
19547 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
19548 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
19549 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
19550
19551 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
19552 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
19553 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
19554 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
19555 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
19556 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
19557 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
19558 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
19559
19560 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
19561 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
19562 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
19563 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
19564 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
19565 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
19566 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
19567 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
19568 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
19569 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
19570 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
19571 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19572 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
19573 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
19574 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
19575 current DNS domain is used.</p>
19576
19577 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
19578 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
19579 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
19580 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
19581 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
19582 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
19583 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
19584 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
19585 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
19586 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
19587 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
19588 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
19589 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
19590
19591 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
19592 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
19593 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
19594 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
19595 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
19596 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
19597 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
19598 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
19599 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
19600 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
19601 do for now. :)</p>
19602
19603 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
19604 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
19605 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
19606 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
19607 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
19608 yet.</p>
19609
19610 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19611 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19612
19613 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
19614 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
19615 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
19616 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
19617
19618       </div>
19619       <div class="tags">
19620
19621
19622         Tags: <a href="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>.
19623
19624
19625       </div>
19626     </div>
19627     <div class="padding"></div>
19628
19629     <div class="entry">
19630       <div class="title">
19631         <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>
19632       </div>
19633       <div class="date">
19634          8th August 2010
19635       </div>
19636       <div class="body">
19637         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
19638 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
19639 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
19640 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
19641 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
19642 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
19643 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
19644
19645 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
19646 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
19647 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
19648 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
19649 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
19650 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
19651 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
19652
19653 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
19654 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
19655 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
19656 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
19657 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
19658
19659 <pre>
19660 /*
19661  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
19662  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
19663  * directory.
19664  * License: GPL v2 or later
19665  *
19666  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
19667  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
19668 */
19669
19670 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
19671 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
19672 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
19673
19674 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
19675
19676 #include &lt;errno.h>
19677 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
19678 #include &lt;stdio.h>
19679 #include &lt;string.h>
19680 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
19681 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
19682 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
19683 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
19684 #include &lt;unistd.h>
19685
19686 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19687 /*
19688  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
19689  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
19690  * below.
19691  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
19692  */
19693 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
19694 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
19695   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
19696 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
19697   char *zErrMsg;
19698   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19699   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
19700   unlink(name);
19701   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
19702   if( rc ){
19703     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
19704     sqlite3_close(db);
19705     return -1;
19706   }
19707
19708   /* create tables */
19709   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
19710   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
19711     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
19712     sqlite3_close(db);
19713     return -1;
19714   }
19715   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
19716   sqlite3_close(db);
19717   return 0;
19718 }
19719 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19720
19721 /*
19722  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
19723  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
19724  * done in the sqlite3 library.
19725  * See also
19726  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
19727  * POSIX specification
19728  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
19729  */
19730 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
19731   struct flock fl;
19732   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
19733   unlink(name);
19734   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
19735   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
19736
19737   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
19738   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
19739   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19740   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19741   fl.l_len    = 1;
19742   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19743   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19744
19745   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19746   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19747   fl.l_len    = 510;
19748   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
19749   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19750
19751   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19752   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19753   fl.l_len    = 1;
19754   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19755   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19756
19757   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
19758   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19759   fl.l_len    = 1;
19760   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
19761   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19762
19763   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
19764   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
19765   fl.l_len    = 510;
19766   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19767
19768   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
19769   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
19770   fl.l_len    = 2;
19771   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
19772   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
19773
19774   close(fd);
19775   return 0;
19776 }
19777
19778 /*
19779  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
19780  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
19781  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
19782  * slowing down file operations.
19783  */
19784 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
19785 #define LEVELS 5
19786   char *path = strdup("test");
19787   char *dirs[LEVELS];
19788   int level;
19789   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
19790   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
19791     char *newpath = NULL;
19792     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
19793       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
19794              path, strerror(errno));
19795       break;
19796     }
19797     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
19798     free(path);
19799     path = newpath;
19800   }
19801   return 0;
19802 }
19803
19804 /*
19805  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
19806  * KDE.
19807  */
19808 int test_symlinks(void) {
19809   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
19810   unlink("symlink");
19811   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
19812     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
19813   return 0;
19814 }
19815
19816 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
19817   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
19818   test_symlinks();
19819   test_subdirectory_creation();
19820 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
19821   test_sqlite_open();
19822 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
19823   test_gcompris_locking();
19824   return 0;
19825 }
19826 </pre>
19827
19828 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
19829 this:</p>
19830
19831 <pre>
19832 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
19833 info: testing symlink creation
19834 info: testing subdirectory creation
19835 info: sqlite worked
19836 info: testing fcntl locking
19837   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19838   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19839   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
19840   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
19841   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
19842   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
19843 </pre>
19844
19845 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
19846 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
19847 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
19848 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
19849 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
19850 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
19851 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
19852 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
19853
19854 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
19855 it. :)</p>
19856
19857 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
19858 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
19859 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
19860
19861       </div>
19862       <div class="tags">
19863
19864
19865         Tags: <a href="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>.
19866
19867
19868       </div>
19869     </div>
19870     <div class="padding"></div>
19871
19872     <div class="entry">
19873       <div class="title">
19874         <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>
19875       </div>
19876       <div class="date">
19877          7th August 2010
19878       </div>
19879       <div class="body">
19880         <p>A few days ago, I
19881 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
19882 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
19883 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
19884 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
19885 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
19886 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
19887 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
19888 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
19889 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
19890
19891 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
19892 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
19893 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
19894 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
19895 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
19896 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
19897 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
19898 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
19899 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
19900 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
19901 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
19902 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
19903 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
19904 gave it a IP address.</p>
19905
19906 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
19907 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
19908 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
19909 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
19910 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
19911 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
19912 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
19913 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
19914
19915 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
19916 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
19917 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
19918 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
19919 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
19920 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
19921
19922 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
19923 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
19924 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
19925 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
19926 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
19927 with UID and GID values.</p>
19928
19929 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
19930 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
19931
19932       </div>
19933       <div class="tags">
19934
19935
19936         Tags: <a href="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>.
19937
19938
19939       </div>
19940     </div>
19941     <div class="padding"></div>
19942
19943     <div class="entry">
19944       <div class="title">
19945         <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>
19946       </div>
19947       <div class="date">
19948          3rd August 2010
19949       </div>
19950       <div class="body">
19951         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
19952 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
19953 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
19954 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
19955 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
19956 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
19957 servers.</p>
19958
19959 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
19960 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
19961 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
19962 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
19963 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
19964 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
19965 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
19966 .uio.no.</p>
19967
19968 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
19969 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
19970 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
19971 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
19972 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
19973 university servers.</p>
19974
19975 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
19976 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
19977 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
19978 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
19979 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
19980 uses.</p>
19981
19982       </div>
19983       <div class="tags">
19984
19985
19986         Tags: <a href="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>.
19987
19988
19989       </div>
19990     </div>
19991     <div class="padding"></div>
19992
19993     <div class="entry">
19994       <div class="title">
19995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
19996       </div>
19997       <div class="date">
19998         27th July 2010
19999       </div>
20000       <div class="body">
20001         <p>I discovered this while doing
20002 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
20003 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
20004 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
20005 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
20006 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
20007
20008 <p>An example is from todays
20009 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
20010 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
20011 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
20012 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
20013 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
20014 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
20015 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
20016
20017 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
20018
20019 <blockquote><pre>
20020 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
20021  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
20022   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
20023 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
20024  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
20025 </pre></blockquote>
20026
20027 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
20028 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
20029 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
20030 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
20031 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
20032 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
20033 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
20034 of dependency loops.</p>
20035
20036 <p>Thanks to
20037 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
20038 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
20039 dependencies
20040 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
20041 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
20042
20043 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
20044 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
20045 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
20046 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
20047 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
20048 it.</p>
20049
20050       </div>
20051       <div class="tags">
20052
20053
20054         Tags: <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>.
20055
20056
20057       </div>
20058     </div>
20059     <div class="padding"></div>
20060
20061     <div class="entry">
20062       <div class="title">
20063         <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>
20064       </div>
20065       <div class="date">
20066         27th July 2010
20067       </div>
20068       <div class="body">
20069         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
20070 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
20071 completed.</p>
20072
20073 <blockquote>
20074 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
20075 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
20076 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
20077 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
20078 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
20079 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
20080 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
20081 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
20082
20083 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
20084 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
20085 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
20086
20087 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
20088 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
20089 much.</p>
20090
20091 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
20092
20093 <ul>
20094 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
20095 <ul>
20096   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
20097          combination with some new artwork
20098   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
20099   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
20100   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
20101   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
20102   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
20103   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
20104   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
20105   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
20106   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
20107 </ul></li>
20108 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
20109     Enabled for:
20110 <ul>
20111   <li>PAM
20112   <li>LDAP
20113   <li>IMAP
20114   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
20115 </ul>
20116 </li>
20117 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
20118 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
20119     fetched from LDAP.</li>
20120 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
20121 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
20122 </ul>
20123 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
20124
20125 <ul>
20126 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
20127     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
20128     for testing.</li>
20129 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
20130     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
20131     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
20132 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
20133 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
20134 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
20135 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
20136     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
20137 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
20138     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
20139     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
20140 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
20141     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
20142     and help out with translations.</li>
20143 </ul>
20144
20145 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
20146
20147 <ul>
20148 <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>
20149 <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>
20150 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20151 </ul>
20152 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
20153
20154 <ul>
20155 <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>
20156 <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>
20157 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20158 </ul>
20159
20160 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
20161 get closer to the final release.</p>
20162
20163 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
20164
20165 <ul>
20166 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20167 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20168 </ul>
20169
20170 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
20171 <ul>
20172 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
20173 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
20174 </ul>
20175 <p>How to report bugs:
20176 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
20177
20178 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
20179 </blockquote>
20180
20181       </div>
20182       <div class="tags">
20183
20184
20185         Tags: <a href="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>.
20186
20187
20188       </div>
20189     </div>
20190     <div class="padding"></div>
20191
20192     <div class="entry">
20193       <div class="title">
20194         <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>
20195       </div>
20196       <div class="date">
20197         25th July 2010
20198       </div>
20199       <div class="body">
20200         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
20201 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
20202 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
20203 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
20204 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
20205
20206 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
20207 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
20208 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
20209 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
20210 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
20211 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
20212 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
20213
20214 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
20215 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
20216 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
20217 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
20218 up. :)</p>
20219
20220 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
20221 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
20222 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
20223
20224 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
20225 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
20226 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
20227 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
20228 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
20229 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
20230 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
20231 release another day.</p>
20232
20233 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
20234 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20235
20236       </div>
20237       <div class="tags">
20238
20239
20240         Tags: <a href="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>.
20241
20242
20243       </div>
20244     </div>
20245     <div class="padding"></div>
20246
20247     <div class="entry">
20248       <div class="title">
20249         <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>
20250       </div>
20251       <div class="date">
20252         18th July 2010
20253       </div>
20254       <div class="body">
20255         <p>Thanks to
20256 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
20257 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
20258 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
20259 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
20260 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
20261 only available from the development server, until more experience is
20262 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
20263
20264 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
20265 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
20266 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
20267 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
20268 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
20269 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
20270 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
20271
20272       </div>
20273       <div class="tags">
20274
20275
20276         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>.
20277
20278
20279       </div>
20280     </div>
20281     <div class="padding"></div>
20282
20283     <div class="entry">
20284       <div class="title">
20285         <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>
20286       </div>
20287       <div class="date">
20288         17th July 2010
20289       </div>
20290       <div class="body">
20291         <p>This is a
20292 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
20293 on my
20294 <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
20295 work</a> on
20296 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
20297 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
20298
20299 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
20300 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
20301 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
20302 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
20303
20304 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
20305 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
20306 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
20307
20308 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
20309
20310 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
20311 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
20312 the web.
20313
20314 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
20315 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
20316 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
20317 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
20318 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
20319 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
20320
20321 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
20322 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
20323 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
20324 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
20325 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
20326 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
20327 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
20328 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
20329 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
20330 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
20331 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
20332 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
20333 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
20334 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
20335 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
20336 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
20337
20338 <blockquote><pre>
20339 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20340   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20341   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20342   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20343   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20344   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20345   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20346
20347 ldapsearch -h ldap \
20348   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
20349   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
20350   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
20351   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
20352   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
20353 </pre></blockquote>
20354
20355 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
20356 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
20357 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
20358 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20359 also exist.</p>
20360
20361 <blockquote><pre>
20362 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20363 objectclass: top
20364 objectclass: dnsdomain
20365 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20366 dc: tjener
20367 arecord: 10.0.2.2
20368 associateddomain: tjener.intern
20369
20370 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20371 objectclass: top
20372 objectclass: dnsdomain2
20373 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20374 dc: 2
20375 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
20376 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
20377 </pre></blockquote>
20378
20379 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
20380 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
20381 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
20382 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
20383 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
20384 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
20385 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
20386 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
20387 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
20388 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
20389 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
20390 instead.</p>
20391
20392 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
20393 like this:</p>
20394
20395 <blockquote><pre>
20396 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20397   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
20398   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
20399   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
20400   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
20401   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
20402
20403 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
20404   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
20405 </pre></blockquote>
20406
20407 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
20408 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
20409 reverse lookups.</p>
20410
20411 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
20412 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
20413 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
20414 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
20415
20416 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
20417 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
20418 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
20419
20420 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
20421 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
20422 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
20423 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
20424 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
20425
20426 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
20427 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
20428 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
20429 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
20430 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
20431
20432 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
20433 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
20434 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
20435 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
20436 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
20437 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
20438
20439 <blockquote><pre>
20440 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
20441     SUP top
20442     AUXILIARY
20443     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
20444           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
20445           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
20446           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
20447           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
20448     ))
20449 </pre></blockquote>
20450
20451 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
20452 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
20453 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
20454 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
20455 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
20456 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
20457
20458 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
20459
20460 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
20461 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
20462 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
20463 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
20464 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
20465
20466 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
20467 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
20468 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
20469 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
20470
20471 <blockquote><pre>
20472 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
20473 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
20474 </pre></blockquote>
20475
20476 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
20477 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
20478 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
20479 search result is this entry:</p>
20480
20481 <blockquote><pre>
20482 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20483 cn: dhcp
20484 objectClass: top
20485 objectClass: dhcpServer
20486 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20487 </pre></blockquote>
20488
20489 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
20490 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
20491 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
20492 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
20493 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
20494 The search result is this entry:</p>
20495
20496 <blockquote><pre>
20497 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20498 cn: DHCP Config
20499 objectClass: top
20500 objectClass: dhcpService
20501 objectClass: dhcpOptions
20502 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20503 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
20504 dhcpStatements: authoritative
20505 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
20506 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
20507 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
20508 </pre></blockquote>
20509
20510 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
20511 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
20512 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
20513 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
20514 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
20515 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
20516 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
20517 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
20518 related computer objects.</p>
20519
20520 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
20521 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
20522 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
20523 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
20524 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
20525 like:</p>
20526
20527 <blockquote><pre>
20528 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20529 cn: hostname
20530 objectClass: top
20531 objectClass: dhcpHost
20532 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20533 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
20534 </pre></blockquote>
20535
20536 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
20537 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
20538 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
20539 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
20540 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
20541 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
20542 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
20543 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
20544 structural object class.
20545
20546 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
20547
20548 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
20549 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
20550 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
20551 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
20552 in the configuration.</p>
20553
20554 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
20555 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
20556 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
20557 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
20558 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
20559 structure.</p>
20560
20561 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
20562 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
20563
20564 <blockquote><pre>
20565 ou=services
20566   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
20567     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
20568     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20569       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20570         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20571     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
20572       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
20573         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
20574     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
20575       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
20576 </pre></blockquote>
20577
20578 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
20579 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
20580 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
20581 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
20582
20583 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
20584 like this:</p>
20585
20586 <blockquote><pre>
20587 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20588 dc: hostname
20589 objectClass: top
20590 objectClass: dhcpHost
20591 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20592 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
20593 associateddomain: hostname.intern
20594 arecord: 10.11.12.13
20595 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20596 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
20597 </pre></blockquote>
20598
20599 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
20600 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
20601 auxiliary object class.</p>
20602
20603       </div>
20604       <div class="tags">
20605
20606
20607         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>.
20608
20609
20610       </div>
20611     </div>
20612     <div class="padding"></div>
20613
20614     <div class="entry">
20615       <div class="title">
20616         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
20617       </div>
20618       <div class="date">
20619         14th July 2010
20620       </div>
20621       <div class="body">
20622         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
20623 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
20624 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
20625 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
20626 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
20627
20628 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
20629 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
20630
20631 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
20632 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
20633 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
20634 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
20635 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
20636 to a slave DNS server.</p>
20637
20638 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
20639 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
20640 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
20641 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
20642 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
20643 seem to work.</p>
20644
20645 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
20646 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
20647 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
20648 this:</p>
20649
20650 <blockquote><pre>
20651   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
20652   cn: hostname
20653   objectClass: dhcphost
20654   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
20655   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
20656   associateddomain: hostname.intern
20657   arecord: 10.11.12.13
20658   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
20659   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
20660   ldapconfigsound: Y
20661 </pre></blockquote>
20662
20663 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
20664 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
20665 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
20666 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
20667
20668 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
20669 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
20670 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
20671 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
20672 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
20673 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
20674 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
20675 might be a good place to put it.</p>
20676
20677 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20678 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20679
20680       </div>
20681       <div class="tags">
20682
20683
20684         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>.
20685
20686
20687       </div>
20688     </div>
20689     <div class="padding"></div>
20690
20691     <div class="entry">
20692       <div class="title">
20693         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
20694       </div>
20695       <div class="date">
20696         11th July 2010
20697       </div>
20698       <div class="body">
20699         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
20700 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
20701 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
20702 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
20703
20704 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
20705 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
20706 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
20707 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
20708 LTSP clients.</p>
20709
20710 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
20711 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
20712 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
20713
20714 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
20715 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
20716 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
20717
20718 <blockquote><pre>
20719 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
20720 #
20721 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
20722 #
20723 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
20724 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
20725 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
20726 #
20727 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
20728 # existence of attribute names.
20729 #
20730 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
20731 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
20732 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
20733 #
20734 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
20735 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
20736 #
20737 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
20738 #     SUP top
20739 #     AUXILIARY
20740 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
20741
20742 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
20743 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
20744     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
20745     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
20746         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
20747         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
20748             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
20749             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
20750             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
20751             # bass value on to clients
20752             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
20753         done
20754     done
20755 fi
20756 </pre></blockquote>
20757
20758 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
20759 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
20760 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
20761 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
20762 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
20763
20764 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
20765 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
20766
20767 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
20768 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
20769 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
20770 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
20771 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
20772 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
20773
20774       </div>
20775       <div class="tags">
20776
20777
20778         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>.
20779
20780
20781       </div>
20782     </div>
20783     <div class="padding"></div>
20784
20785     <div class="entry">
20786       <div class="title">
20787         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
20788       </div>
20789       <div class="date">
20790          9th July 2010
20791       </div>
20792       <div class="body">
20793         <p>Since
20794 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
20795 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
20796 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
20797 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
20798 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
20799 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
20800 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
20801 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
20802 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
20803 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
20804 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
20805 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
20806 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
20807
20808       </div>
20809       <div class="tags">
20810
20811
20812         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>.
20813
20814
20815       </div>
20816     </div>
20817     <div class="padding"></div>
20818
20819     <div class="entry">
20820       <div class="title">
20821         <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>
20822       </div>
20823       <div class="date">
20824          3rd July 2010
20825       </div>
20826       <div class="body">
20827         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
20828 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
20829 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
20830 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
20831 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
20832 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
20833 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
20834 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
20835
20836 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
20837 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
20838 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
20839 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
20840 publish the difference.</p>
20841
20842 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
20843
20844 <blockquote><p>
20845   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
20846   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
20847   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
20848   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
20849   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
20850   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
20851   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
20852   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
20853 </p></blockquote>
20854
20855 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
20856
20857 <blockquote><p>
20858   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
20859   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
20860   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
20861   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
20862   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
20863   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
20864   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
20865   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
20866   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
20867   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
20868   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
20869   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
20870   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
20871   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
20872   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
20873   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
20874   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
20875   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
20876   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
20877   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
20878 </p></blockquote>
20879
20880 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
20881
20882 <blockquote><p>
20883   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
20884   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
20885   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
20886   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
20887   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
20888   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
20889   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
20890   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
20891   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
20892   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
20893   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
20894   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
20895   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
20896   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
20897   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
20898   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
20899   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
20900   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
20901   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
20902   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
20903   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
20904 </p></blockquote>
20905
20906 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
20907
20908 <blockquote><p>
20909   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
20910   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
20911   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
20912 </p></blockquote>
20913
20914 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
20915 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
20916 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
20917 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
20918 the difference somewhat.
20919
20920       </div>
20921       <div class="tags">
20922
20923
20924         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>.
20925
20926
20927       </div>
20928     </div>
20929     <div class="padding"></div>
20930
20931     <div class="entry">
20932       <div class="title">
20933         <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>
20934       </div>
20935       <div class="date">
20936          1st July 2010
20937       </div>
20938       <div class="body">
20939         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
20940 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
20941 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
20942 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
20943 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
20944 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
20945 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
20946 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
20947 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
20948
20949 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
20950
20951 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
20952 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
20953 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
20954 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
20955 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
20956 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
20957 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
20958 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
20959 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
20960 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
20961 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
20962 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
20963 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
20964 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
20965 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
20966
20967 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
20968
20969 <blockquote><pre>
20970 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
20971 </pre></blockquote>
20972
20973 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
20974 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
20975 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
20976 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
20977 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
20978 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
20979 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
20980 on how to get this working.</p>
20981
20982 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
20983 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
20984 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
20985 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
20986 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
20987 instructions I found in the
20988 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
20989 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
20990
20991 <blockquote><pre>
20992         debug-level             0
20993         reload-count            unlimited
20994         paranoia                no
20995
20996         enable-cache            passwd          yes
20997         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
20998         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
20999         suggested-size          passwd          211
21000         check-files             passwd          yes
21001         persistent              passwd          yes
21002         shared                  passwd          yes
21003         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
21004         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
21005
21006         enable-cache            group           yes
21007         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
21008         negative-time-to-live   group           20
21009         suggested-size          group           211
21010         check-files             group           yes
21011         persistent              group           yes
21012         shared                  group           yes
21013         max-db-size             group           33554432
21014         auto-propagate          group           yes
21015
21016         enable-cache            hosts           no
21017         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
21018         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
21019         suggested-size          hosts           211
21020         check-files             hosts           yes
21021         persistent              hosts           yes
21022         shared                  hosts           yes
21023         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
21024
21025         enable-cache            services        yes
21026         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
21027         negative-time-to-live   services        20
21028         suggested-size          services        211
21029         check-files             services        yes
21030         persistent              services        yes
21031         shared                  services        yes
21032         max-db-size             services        33554432
21033 </pre></blockquote>
21034
21035 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
21036 automatically like the one provided in
21037 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
21038 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
21039 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
21040 look like this:</p>
21041
21042 <blockquote><pre>
21043 passwd:         files ldap
21044 group:          files ldap
21045 shadow:         files ldap
21046 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
21047 networks:       files
21048 protocols:      files
21049 services:       files
21050 ethers:         files
21051 rpc:            files
21052 netgroup:       files ldap
21053 </pre></blockquote>
21054
21055 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
21056 shadow and netgroup.</p>
21057
21058 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
21059 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
21060 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
21061 attributes cached.
21062
21063 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
21064   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
21065
21066 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
21067 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
21068 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
21069 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
21070 discovered sssd.</p>
21071
21072 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
21073
21074 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
21075 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
21076 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
21077 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
21078 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
21079 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
21080 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
21081 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
21082 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
21083 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
21084 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
21085 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
21086 version 1.2 is now in testing.
21087
21088 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
21089 roaming setup I want</p>
21090
21091 <blockquote><pre>
21092 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
21093 </pre></blockquote>
21094
21095 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
21096 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
21097
21098 <blockquote><pre>
21099 [sssd]
21100 config_file_version = 2
21101 reconnection_retries = 3
21102 sbus_timeout = 30
21103 services = nss, pam
21104 domains = INTERN
21105
21106 [nss]
21107 filter_groups = root
21108 filter_users = root
21109 reconnection_retries = 3
21110
21111 [pam]
21112 reconnection_retries = 3
21113
21114 [domain/INTERN]
21115 enumerate = false
21116 cache_credentials = true
21117
21118 id_provider = ldap
21119 auth_provider = ldap
21120 chpass_provider = ldap
21121
21122 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
21123 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
21124 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
21125 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
21126 </pre></blockquote>
21127
21128 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
21129 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
21130
21131 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
21132 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
21133 modify it manually.</p>
21134
21135 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21136 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21137
21138       </div>
21139       <div class="tags">
21140
21141
21142         Tags: <a href="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>.
21143
21144
21145       </div>
21146     </div>
21147     <div class="padding"></div>
21148
21149     <div class="entry">
21150       <div class="title">
21151         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
21152       </div>
21153       <div class="date">
21154         28th June 2010
21155       </div>
21156       <div class="body">
21157         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
21158 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
21159 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
21160 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
21161 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
21162 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
21163 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
21164 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
21165 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
21166 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
21167
21168 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
21169 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
21170 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
21171 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
21172 released.</p>
21173
21174 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
21175 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
21176 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
21177 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
21178
21179 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
21180 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21181
21182 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
21183 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
21184 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
21185 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
21186 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
21187
21188       </div>
21189       <div class="tags">
21190
21191
21192         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>.
21193
21194
21195       </div>
21196     </div>
21197     <div class="padding"></div>
21198
21199     <div class="entry">
21200       <div class="title">
21201         <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>
21202       </div>
21203       <div class="date">
21204         24th June 2010
21205       </div>
21206       <div class="body">
21207         <p>A while back, I
21208 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
21209 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
21210 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
21211 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
21212
21213 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
21214 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
21215 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
21216 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
21217
21218 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
21219 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
21220 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
21221 Debian Edu.</p>
21222
21223 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
21224 the
21225 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
21226 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
21227 available today from IETF.</p>
21228
21229 <pre>
21230 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
21231 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
21232 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
21233  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
21234         NAME 'dhcpHost'
21235         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
21236 -       SUP top
21237 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
21238         MUST cn
21239         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
21240         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
21241 </pre>
21242
21243 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
21244 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
21245 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
21246
21247 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
21248 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
21249
21250       </div>
21251       <div class="tags">
21252
21253
21254         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>.
21255
21256
21257       </div>
21258     </div>
21259     <div class="padding"></div>
21260
21261     <div class="entry">
21262       <div class="title">
21263         <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>
21264       </div>
21265       <div class="date">
21266         16th June 2010
21267       </div>
21268       <div class="body">
21269         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
21270 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
21271 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
21272 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
21273 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
21274 this:
21275
21276 <blockquote><pre>
21277 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21278 tasksel --new-install
21279 </pre></blockquote>
21280
21281 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
21282 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
21283 any output what so ever.
21284
21285 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
21286 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
21287 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
21288 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
21289 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
21290 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
21291 code like this:
21292
21293 <blockquote><pre>
21294 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21295 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
21296 $cmd
21297 </pre></blockquote>
21298
21299 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
21300 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
21301 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
21302 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
21303 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
21304 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
21305 installation.</p>
21306
21307 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
21308 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
21309 like this.</p>
21310
21311       </div>
21312       <div class="tags">
21313
21314
21315         Tags: <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>.
21316
21317
21318       </div>
21319     </div>
21320     <div class="padding"></div>
21321
21322     <div class="entry">
21323       <div class="title">
21324         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
21325       </div>
21326       <div class="date">
21327         13th June 2010
21328       </div>
21329       <div class="body">
21330         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
21331 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
21332 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
21333 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
21334 pages.</p>
21335
21336 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
21337 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
21338 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
21339 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
21340 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
21341 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
21342 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
21343 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
21344 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
21345 see how the project is doing.</p>
21346
21347 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
21348 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
21349 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
21350 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
21351 Windows.  This is great.</p>
21352
21353       </div>
21354       <div class="tags">
21355
21356
21357         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>.
21358
21359
21360       </div>
21361     </div>
21362     <div class="padding"></div>
21363
21364     <div class="entry">
21365       <div class="title">
21366         <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>
21367       </div>
21368       <div class="date">
21369         13th June 2010
21370       </div>
21371       <div class="body">
21372         <p>My
21373 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
21374 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
21375 finally made the upgrade logs available from
21376 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
21377 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
21378 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
21379 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
21380
21381 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
21382 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
21383 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
21384 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
21385 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
21386 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
21387 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
21388 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
21389
21390 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
21391 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
21392 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
21393 too surprising.</p>
21394
21395 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
21396 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
21397 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
21398 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
21399 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
21400 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
21401 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
21402 continue.</p>
21403
21404 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
21405 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
21406   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
21407   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
21408   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
21409   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
21410   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
21411   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21412   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21413   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21414   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21415   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21416   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21417   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21418   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21419   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21420   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21421   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21422   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21423   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21424   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21425   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21426   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21427   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21428   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21429   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21430   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21431   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21432   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
21433   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
21434
21435 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
21436
21437 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
21438   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
21439   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
21440   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
21441   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21442   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
21443   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
21444   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
21445   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
21446   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
21447   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
21448   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
21449   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
21450   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
21451   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
21452   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
21453   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
21454   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
21455   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
21456   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
21457   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
21458   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
21459   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
21460   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
21461   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
21462   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
21463   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
21464   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
21465   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
21466   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21467   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21468   zip</p>
21469
21470 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
21471
21472 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
21473   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
21474   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
21475   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
21476   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
21477   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
21478   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
21479   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
21480   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
21481   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
21482   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
21483   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
21484   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
21485   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
21486   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21487   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
21488   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
21489   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
21490   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
21491   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
21492   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
21493   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
21494   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
21495   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
21496   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
21497   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
21498   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
21499   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
21500
21501 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
21502 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
21503   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
21504   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
21505   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
21506   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
21507   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
21508   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
21509   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
21510   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
21511   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
21512   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
21513   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
21514   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
21515   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
21516   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
21517   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
21518   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
21519   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
21520   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
21521   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
21522   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
21523   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
21524   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
21525   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
21526   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
21527   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
21528   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
21529   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
21530   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
21531   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
21532   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
21533   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
21534   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
21535   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
21536   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
21537   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
21538   xulrunner-1.9</p>
21539
21540
21541       </div>
21542       <div class="tags">
21543
21544
21545         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>.
21546
21547
21548       </div>
21549     </div>
21550     <div class="padding"></div>
21551
21552     <div class="entry">
21553       <div class="title">
21554         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
21555       </div>
21556       <div class="date">
21557         11th June 2010
21558       </div>
21559       <div class="body">
21560         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
21561 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
21562 have been discovered and reported in the process
21563 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
21564 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
21565 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
21566 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
21567 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
21568
21569 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
21570 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
21571 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
21572 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
21573 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
21574 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
21575
21576 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
21577 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
21578 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21579 is created.  The bug report
21580 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
21581 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
21582 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
21583 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
21584 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
21585 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
21586 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
21587 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
21588 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
21589 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
21590 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
21591 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
21592 Debian Squeeze.</p>
21593
21594 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
21595 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
21596 trick:</p>
21597
21598 <blockquote><pre>
21599 #!/bin/sh
21600 set -ex
21601
21602 if [ "$1" ] ; then
21603     desktop=$1
21604 else
21605     desktop=gnome
21606 fi
21607
21608 from=lenny
21609 to=squeeze
21610
21611 exec &lt; /dev/null
21612 unset LANG
21613 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
21614 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
21615 fuser -mv .
21616 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
21617 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21618 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
21619 #!/bin/sh
21620 exit 101
21621 EOF
21622 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
21623 exit_cleanup() {
21624     umount $tmpdir/proc
21625 }
21626 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
21627 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
21628 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
21629
21630 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
21631
21632 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
21633 # to return the correct answers.
21634 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
21635     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
21636
21637 # Include the desktop and laptop task
21638 for test in desktop laptop ; do
21639     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
21640 #!/bin/sh
21641 exit 2
21642 EOF
21643     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
21644 done
21645
21646 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
21647 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
21648 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
21649 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
21650
21651 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
21652 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
21653 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
21654 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
21655 fuser -mv
21656 </pre></blockquote>
21657
21658 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
21659 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
21660 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
21661 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
21662 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
21663 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
21664
21665 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
21666 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
21667 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
21668 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
21669 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
21670 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
21671 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
21672
21673 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
21674 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
21675 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
21676 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
21677 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
21678 packages.</p>
21679
21680       </div>
21681       <div class="tags">
21682
21683
21684         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>.
21685
21686
21687       </div>
21688     </div>
21689     <div class="padding"></div>
21690
21691     <div class="entry">
21692       <div class="title">
21693         <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>
21694       </div>
21695       <div class="date">
21696          6th June 2010
21697       </div>
21698       <div class="body">
21699         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
21700 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
21701 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
21702 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
21703 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
21704 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
21705 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
21706
21707 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
21708 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
21709 COLUMNS):</p>
21710
21711 <blockquote><pre>
21712 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
21713 previous=N
21714 PREVLEVEL=
21715 RUNLEVEL=
21716 runlevel=S
21717 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
21718 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
21719 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
21720 </pre></blockquote>
21721
21722 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
21723 script.</p>
21724
21725 <blockquote><pre>
21726 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
21727 previous=N
21728 PREVLEVEL=N
21729 RUNLEVEL=S
21730 runlevel=S
21731 </pre></blockquote>
21732
21733 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
21734 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
21735 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
21736
21737 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
21738 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
21739 choice.</p>
21740
21741       </div>
21742       <div class="tags">
21743
21744
21745         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>.
21746
21747
21748       </div>
21749     </div>
21750     <div class="padding"></div>
21751
21752     <div class="entry">
21753       <div class="title">
21754         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
21755       </div>
21756       <div class="date">
21757          6th June 2010
21758       </div>
21759       <div class="body">
21760         <p>Via the
21761 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
21762 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
21763 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
21764 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
21765 following the standards wars of today.</p>
21766
21767       </div>
21768       <div class="tags">
21769
21770
21771         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>.
21772
21773
21774       </div>
21775     </div>
21776     <div class="padding"></div>
21777
21778     <div class="entry">
21779       <div class="title">
21780         <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>
21781       </div>
21782       <div class="date">
21783          3rd June 2010
21784       </div>
21785       <div class="body">
21786         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
21787 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
21788 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
21789 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
21790 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
21791
21792 <blockquote><pre>
21793 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
21794   vendor                    count
21795   Dell Computer Corporation     1
21796     PowerEdge 1750              1
21797   IBM                           1
21798     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
21799   Intel                         2
21800   [no-dmi-info]                 3
21801 maintainer:~#
21802 </pre></blockquote>
21803
21804 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
21805 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
21806 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
21807 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
21808 option to list the individual machines.</p>
21809
21810 <p>A larger list is
21811 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
21812 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
21813 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
21814 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
21815 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
21816 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
21817 collector.</p>
21818
21819       </div>
21820       <div class="tags">
21821
21822
21823         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>.
21824
21825
21826       </div>
21827     </div>
21828     <div class="padding"></div>
21829
21830     <div class="entry">
21831       <div class="title">
21832         <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>
21833       </div>
21834       <div class="date">
21835          1st June 2010
21836       </div>
21837       <div class="body">
21838         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
21839 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
21840 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
21841 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
21842 wait.</p>
21843
21844 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
21845 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
21846 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
21847 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
21848 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
21849 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
21850
21851 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
21852 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
21853 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
21854 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
21855 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
21856 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
21857 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
21858 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
21859
21860 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
21861
21862       </div>
21863       <div class="tags">
21864
21865
21866         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>.
21867
21868
21869       </div>
21870     </div>
21871     <div class="padding"></div>
21872
21873     <div class="entry">
21874       <div class="title">
21875         <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>
21876       </div>
21877       <div class="date">
21878         27th May 2010
21879       </div>
21880       <div class="body">
21881         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
21882 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
21883 issues are known and should be solved:
21884
21885 <p><ul>
21886
21887 <li>The wicd package seen to
21888 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
21889 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
21890 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
21891 seem to be on the case.</li>
21892
21893 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
21894 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
21895 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
21896 maintainer is on the case.</li>
21897
21898 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
21899 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
21900 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
21901 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
21902 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
21903 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
21904 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
21905 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
21906
21907 </ul></p>
21908
21909 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
21910 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
21911 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
21912 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
21913
21914 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
21915 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
21916 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
21917 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
21918
21919 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
21920
21921       </div>
21922       <div class="tags">
21923
21924
21925         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>.
21926
21927
21928       </div>
21929     </div>
21930     <div class="padding"></div>
21931
21932     <div class="entry">
21933       <div class="title">
21934         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
21935       </div>
21936       <div class="date">
21937         22nd May 2010
21938       </div>
21939       <div class="body">
21940         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
21941 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
21942 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
21943 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
21944
21945 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
21946 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
21947 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
21948 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
21949 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
21950 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
21951 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
21952 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
21953 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
21954 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
21955 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
21956 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
21957 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
21958 going to work.</p>
21959
21960 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
21961 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
21962 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
21963 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
21964 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
21965 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
21966 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
21967 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
21968 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
21969 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
21970 Edu.</p>
21971
21972 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
21973 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
21974 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
21975 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
21976 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
21977 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
21978
21979 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
21980 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
21981
21982       </div>
21983       <div class="tags">
21984
21985
21986         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>.
21987
21988
21989       </div>
21990     </div>
21991     <div class="padding"></div>
21992
21993     <div class="entry">
21994       <div class="title">
21995         <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>
21996       </div>
21997       <div class="date">
21998         19th May 2010
21999       </div>
22000       <div class="body">
22001         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
22002 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
22003 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
22004 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
22005 into unstable.  The
22006 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
22007 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
22008 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
22009 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
22010 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22011 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
22012 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
22013
22014 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
22015 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
22016 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
22017 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
22018 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
22019 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
22020 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
22021 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
22022
22023 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
22024 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
22025 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
22026 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
22027 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
22028 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
22029 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
22030
22031 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
22032 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
22033 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
22034 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
22035 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
22036 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
22037 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
22038 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
22039 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
22040 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
22041 on the home directory servers.</p>
22042
22043 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
22044 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
22045 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
22046 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
22047 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
22048 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
22049
22050 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22051 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22052
22053       </div>
22054       <div class="tags">
22055
22056
22057         Tags: <a href="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>.
22058
22059
22060       </div>
22061     </div>
22062     <div class="padding"></div>
22063
22064     <div class="entry">
22065       <div class="title">
22066         <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>
22067       </div>
22068       <div class="date">
22069         14th May 2010
22070       </div>
22071       <div class="body">
22072         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
22073 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
22074 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
22075 expected, if I am to believe the
22076 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22077 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
22078 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
22079 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
22080 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
22081 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
22082 version.</p>
22083
22084 More information about
22085 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22086 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
22087 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
22088 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22089
22090 <blockquote><pre>
22091 CONCURRENCY=none
22092 </pre></blockquote>
22093
22094 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22095 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22096 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22097 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22098
22099       </div>
22100       <div class="tags">
22101
22102
22103         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>.
22104
22105
22106       </div>
22107     </div>
22108     <div class="padding"></div>
22109
22110     <div class="entry">
22111       <div class="title">
22112         <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>
22113       </div>
22114       <div class="date">
22115         14th May 2010
22116       </div>
22117       <div class="body">
22118         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
22119 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
22120 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
22121 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
22122 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
22123 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
22124 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
22125 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
22126
22127 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
22128 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
22129 this on the collector host:</p>
22130
22131 <blockquote><pre>
22132 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
22133 </pre></blockquote>
22134
22135 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
22136 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
22137
22138 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
22139 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
22140 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
22141 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
22142 written yet.</p>
22143
22144       </div>
22145       <div class="tags">
22146
22147
22148         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>.
22149
22150
22151       </div>
22152     </div>
22153     <div class="padding"></div>
22154
22155     <div class="entry">
22156       <div class="title">
22157         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
22158       </div>
22159       <div class="date">
22160         13th May 2010
22161       </div>
22162       <div class="body">
22163         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
22164 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
22165 has been
22166 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
22167
22168 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
22169 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
22170 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
22171 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
22172 based boot system.  Tollef is
22173 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
22174 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
22175 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
22176 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
22177 at the moment do not.</p>
22178
22179 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
22180 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
22181 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
22182 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
22183 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
22184 way forward.</p>
22185
22186 <p>In the mean time, based on the
22187 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
22188 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
22189 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
22190 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
22191 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
22192 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
22193 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
22194 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
22195
22196       </div>
22197       <div class="tags">
22198
22199
22200         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>.
22201
22202
22203       </div>
22204     </div>
22205     <div class="padding"></div>
22206
22207     <div class="entry">
22208       <div class="title">
22209         <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>
22210       </div>
22211       <div class="date">
22212          6th May 2010
22213       </div>
22214       <div class="body">
22215         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
22216 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
22217 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
22218 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
22219 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22220 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
22221 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
22222
22223 <blockquote><pre>
22224 CONCURRENCY=makefile
22225 </pre></blockquote>
22226
22227 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
22228 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
22229 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
22230 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
22231 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
22232 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
22233 make this happen.</p>
22234
22235 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
22236 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
22237 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
22238 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
22239 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
22240
22241 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
22242 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
22243 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
22244 fix the remaining issues.</p>
22245
22246 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
22247 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
22248 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
22249 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
22250
22251       </div>
22252       <div class="tags">
22253
22254
22255         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>.
22256
22257
22258       </div>
22259     </div>
22260     <div class="padding"></div>
22261
22262     <div class="entry">
22263       <div class="title">
22264         <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>
22265       </div>
22266       <div class="date">
22267          2nd May 2010
22268       </div>
22269       <div class="body">
22270         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
22271 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
22272 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
22273
22274 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
22275 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
22276 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
22277 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
22278 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
22279
22280 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
22281 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
22282
22283 <blockquote><pre>
22284 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22285 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
22286 Password expires                                        : never
22287 Password inactive                                       : never
22288 Account expires                                         : never
22289 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22290 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
22291 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22292 root@tjener:~#
22293 </pre></blockquote>
22294
22295 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
22296 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
22297 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
22298 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
22299 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
22300 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
22301
22302 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
22303 intended:</p>
22304
22305 <blockquote><pre>
22306 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
22307 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
22308 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
22309 Password expires                                        : never
22310 Password inactive                                       : never
22311 Account expires                                         : never
22312 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
22313 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
22314 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
22315 root@tjener:~#
22316 </pre></blockquote>
22317
22318 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
22319 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
22320 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
22321
22322 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
22323 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
22324
22325 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
22326 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22327
22328 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
22329 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
22330 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
22331 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
22332 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
22333 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
22334 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
22335
22336 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
22337 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
22338 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
22339 change.</p>
22340
22341       </div>
22342       <div class="tags">
22343
22344
22345         Tags: <a href="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>.
22346
22347
22348       </div>
22349     </div>
22350     <div class="padding"></div>
22351
22352     <div class="entry">
22353       <div class="title">
22354         <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>
22355       </div>
22356       <div class="date">
22357         28th April 2010
22358       </div>
22359       <div class="body">
22360         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
22361 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
22362 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
22363 and go.</p>
22364
22365 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
22366 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
22367 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
22368 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
22369
22370 <ul>
22371
22372  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
22373    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
22374    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
22375    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
22376    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
22377    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
22378    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
22379    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
22380    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
22381    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
22382    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
22383    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
22384
22385  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
22386    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
22387    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
22388    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
22389    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
22390    or the Fedora developed
22391    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
22392    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
22393
22394  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
22395    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
22396    directory, using unison.</li>
22397
22398  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
22399    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
22400    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
22401    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
22402    implemented.</li>
22403
22404  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
22405    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
22406
22407  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
22408    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
22409    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
22410
22411 </ul>
22412
22413 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
22414 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
22415 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
22416 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
22417 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
22418 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
22419 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
22420 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
22421 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
22422
22423 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
22424 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
22425
22426       </div>
22427       <div class="tags">
22428
22429
22430         Tags: <a href="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>.
22431
22432
22433       </div>
22434     </div>
22435     <div class="padding"></div>
22436
22437     <div class="entry">
22438       <div class="title">
22439         <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>
22440       </div>
22441       <div class="date">
22442         19th April 2010
22443       </div>
22444       <div class="body">
22445         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
22446 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
22447 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
22448 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
22449 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
22450 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
22451 restrictions on the web, for example from
22452 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
22453 epub-version from
22454 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
22455 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
22456 strongly recommend this book.</p>
22457
22458       </div>
22459       <div class="tags">
22460
22461
22462         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>.
22463
22464
22465       </div>
22466     </div>
22467     <div class="padding"></div>
22468
22469     <div class="entry">
22470       <div class="title">
22471         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
22472       </div>
22473       <div class="date">
22474         14th April 2010
22475       </div>
22476       <div class="body">
22477         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
22478 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
22479 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
22480 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
22481 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
22482 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
22483 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
22484 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
22485 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
22486
22487 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
22488 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
22489 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
22490 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
22491 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
22492
22493 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
22494 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
22495
22496 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
22497 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
22498 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
22499 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
22500 to work properly.</p>
22501
22502 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
22503 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
22504 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
22505 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
22506 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
22507 time.</p>
22508
22509 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
22510 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
22511 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
22512 up in a few days.</p>
22513
22514       </div>
22515       <div class="tags">
22516
22517
22518         Tags: <a href="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>.
22519
22520
22521       </div>
22522     </div>
22523     <div class="padding"></div>
22524
22525     <div class="entry">
22526       <div class="title">
22527         <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>
22528       </div>
22529       <div class="date">
22530          6th March 2010
22531       </div>
22532       <div class="body">
22533         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
22534 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
22535 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
22536 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
22537 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
22538 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
22539
22540 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
22541 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
22542 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
22543 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
22544
22545 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
22546 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
22547 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
22548 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
22549 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
22550 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
22551
22552       </div>
22553       <div class="tags">
22554
22555
22556         Tags: <a href="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>.
22557
22558
22559       </div>
22560     </div>
22561     <div class="padding"></div>
22562
22563     <div class="entry">
22564       <div class="title">
22565         <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>
22566       </div>
22567       <div class="date">
22568         11th February 2010
22569       </div>
22570       <div class="body">
22571         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
22572 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
22573 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
22574 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
22575 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
22576 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
22577 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
22578
22579 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
22580
22581 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
22582 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
22583 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
22584 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
22585
22586       </div>
22587       <div class="tags">
22588
22589
22590         Tags: <a href="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>.
22591
22592
22593       </div>
22594     </div>
22595     <div class="padding"></div>
22596
22597     <div class="entry">
22598       <div class="title">
22599         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
22600       </div>
22601       <div class="date">
22602         27th January 2010
22603       </div>
22604       <div class="body">
22605         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
22606 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
22607 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
22608 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
22609 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
22610 further.</p>
22611
22612 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
22613 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
22614 configured to be a server for the
22615 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
22616 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
22617 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
22618 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
22619 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
22620 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
22621 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
22622 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
22623 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
22624 and Nagios configuration.</p>
22625
22626 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
22627 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
22628 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
22629 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
22630
22631 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
22632 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
22633 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
22634 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
22635 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
22636 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
22637 the machine.</p>
22638
22639 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
22640 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
22641 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
22642 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
22643
22644 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
22645 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
22646 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
22647 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
22648 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
22649 everything is taken care of.</p>
22650
22651       </div>
22652       <div class="tags">
22653
22654
22655         Tags: <a href="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>.
22656
22657
22658       </div>
22659     </div>
22660     <div class="padding"></div>
22661
22662     <div class="entry">
22663       <div class="title">
22664         <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>
22665       </div>
22666       <div class="date">
22667         12th August 2009
22668       </div>
22669       <div class="body">
22670         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
22671 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
22672 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
22673 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
22674
22675 <table>
22676 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22677 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22678 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
22679 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
22680 </table>
22681
22682 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
22683 got these numbers:</p>
22684
22685 <table>
22686 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22687 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
22688 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
22689 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
22690 </table>
22691
22692 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
22693
22694 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
22695 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
22696 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
22697 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
22698 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
22699
22700
22701 <table>
22702 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22703 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
22704 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
22705 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
22706 </table>
22707
22708 <p>And with 'site:no':
22709
22710 <table>
22711 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
22712 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
22713 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
22714 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
22715 </table>
22716
22717 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
22718 numbers.</p>
22719
22720       </div>
22721       <div class="tags">
22722
22723
22724         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>.
22725
22726
22727       </div>
22728     </div>
22729     <div class="padding"></div>
22730
22731     <div class="entry">
22732       <div class="title">
22733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
22734       </div>
22735       <div class="date">
22736          8th August 2009
22737       </div>
22738       <div class="body">
22739         <p>According to <a
22740 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
22741 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
22742 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
22743 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
22744 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
22745 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
22746 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
22747 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
22748 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
22749 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
22750
22751 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
22752 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
22753 seminar this autumn.</p>
22754
22755       </div>
22756       <div class="tags">
22757
22758
22759         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>.
22760
22761
22762       </div>
22763     </div>
22764     <div class="padding"></div>
22765
22766     <div class="entry">
22767       <div class="title">
22768         <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>
22769       </div>
22770       <div class="date">
22771         27th July 2009
22772       </div>
22773       <div class="body">
22774         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
22775 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
22776 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
22777 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
22778 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
22779 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
22780 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
22781
22782 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
22783 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
22784 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
22785
22786       </div>
22787       <div class="tags">
22788
22789
22790         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>.
22791
22792
22793       </div>
22794     </div>
22795     <div class="padding"></div>
22796
22797     <div class="entry">
22798       <div class="title">
22799         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
22800       </div>
22801       <div class="date">
22802         22nd July 2009
22803       </div>
22804       <div class="body">
22805         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
22806 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
22807 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
22808 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
22809 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
22810 the package up to date.</p>
22811
22812 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
22813 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
22814 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
22815 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
22816 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
22817 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
22818 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
22819 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
22820 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
22821 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
22822 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
22823 working on the future release.</p>
22824
22825 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
22826 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
22827
22828       </div>
22829       <div class="tags">
22830
22831
22832         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>.
22833
22834
22835       </div>
22836     </div>
22837     <div class="padding"></div>
22838
22839     <div class="entry">
22840       <div class="title">
22841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
22842       </div>
22843       <div class="date">
22844         24th June 2009
22845       </div>
22846       <div class="body">
22847         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
22848 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
22849 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
22850 funded
22851 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
22852 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
22853 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
22854 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
22855 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
22856 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
22857
22858 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
22859 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
22860 boot:</p>
22861
22862 <ul>
22863
22864 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
22865
22866 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
22867    clock is in UTC.</li>
22868
22869 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
22870    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
22871    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
22872
22873 </ul>
22874
22875 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
22876 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
22877 Villegas</a>.
22878
22879 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
22880 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
22881 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
22882 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
22883 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
22884 using this.</p>
22885
22886 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
22887 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
22888 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
22889 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
22890 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
22891 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
22892 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
22893
22894       </div>
22895       <div class="tags">
22896
22897
22898         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>.
22899
22900
22901       </div>
22902     </div>
22903     <div class="padding"></div>
22904
22905     <div class="entry">
22906       <div class="title">
22907         <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>
22908       </div>
22909       <div class="date">
22910          2nd May 2009
22911       </div>
22912       <div class="body">
22913         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
22914 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
22915 do not yet know them.</p>
22916
22917 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
22918 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
22919 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
22920 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
22921 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
22922 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
22923 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
22924 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
22925 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
22926 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
22927 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
22928
22929 <p>The second one is
22930 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
22931 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
22932 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
22933 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
22934 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
22935 and the company behind it is running
22936 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
22937 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
22938 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
22939 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
22940 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
22941 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
22942 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
22943 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
22944
22945 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
22946 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
22947 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
22948 surrounded by today.</p>
22949
22950       </div>
22951       <div class="tags">
22952
22953
22954         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
22955
22956
22957       </div>
22958     </div>
22959     <div class="padding"></div>
22960
22961     <div class="entry">
22962       <div class="title">
22963         <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>
22964       </div>
22965       <div class="date">
22966         28th April 2009
22967       </div>
22968       <div class="body">
22969         <p>Julien Blache
22970 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
22971 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
22972 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
22973 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
22974 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
22975 properties.</p>
22976
22977       </div>
22978       <div class="tags">
22979
22980
22981         Tags: <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>.
22982
22983
22984       </div>
22985     </div>
22986     <div class="padding"></div>
22987
22988     <div class="entry">
22989       <div class="title">
22990         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
22991       </div>
22992       <div class="date">
22993          5th April 2009
22994       </div>
22995       <div class="body">
22996         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
22997 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
22998 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
22999 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
23000 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
23001 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
23002 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
23003 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
23004
23005 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
23006 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
23007 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
23008   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23009   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
23010
23011 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
23012 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
23013 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
23014 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
23015
23016 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
23017 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
23018 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
23019 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
23020
23021 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
23022 set -e
23023 URL="$1"
23024 SAVEFILE="$2"
23025 DURATION="$3"
23026 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
23027   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
23028   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
23029 pid=$!
23030 sleep $DURATION
23031 kill $pid
23032 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
23033
23034       </div>
23035       <div class="tags">
23036
23037
23038         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>.
23039
23040
23041       </div>
23042     </div>
23043     <div class="padding"></div>
23044
23045     <div class="entry">
23046       <div class="title">
23047         <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>
23048       </div>
23049       <div class="date">
23050         30th March 2009
23051       </div>
23052       <div class="body">
23053         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
23054 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
23055 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
23056 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
23057 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
23058 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
23059 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
23060 application.</p>
23061
23062 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
23063 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
23064 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
23065 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
23066 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
23067 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
23068 blocked from doing so.</p>
23069
23070 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
23071 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
23072 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
23073 requirements change.</p>
23074
23075 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
23076 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
23077 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
23078
23079       </div>
23080       <div class="tags">
23081
23082
23083         Tags: <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>.
23084
23085
23086       </div>
23087     </div>
23088     <div class="padding"></div>
23089
23090     <div class="entry">
23091       <div class="title">
23092         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
23093       </div>
23094       <div class="date">
23095         29th March 2009
23096       </div>
23097       <div class="body">
23098         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
23099 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
23100 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
23101 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
23102 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
23103 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
23104 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
23105 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
23106 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
23107 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
23108 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
23109 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
23110 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
23111 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
23112 now. :)</p>
23113
23114       </div>
23115       <div class="tags">
23116
23117
23118         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>.
23119
23120
23121       </div>
23122     </div>
23123     <div class="padding"></div>
23124
23125     <div class="entry">
23126       <div class="title">
23127         <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>
23128       </div>
23129       <div class="date">
23130         29th March 2009
23131       </div>
23132       <div class="body">
23133         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
23134 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
23135 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
23136 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
23137 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
23138 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
23139
23140 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
23141 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
23142 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
23143 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
23144 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
23145 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
23146 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
23147 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
23148 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
23149 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
23150 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
23151 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
23152 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
23153
23154 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
23155 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
23156 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
23157 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
23158
23159 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
23160 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
23161
23162 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
23163 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
23164 new IETF work group?</p>
23165
23166       </div>
23167       <div class="tags">
23168
23169
23170         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>.
23171
23172
23173       </div>
23174     </div>
23175     <div class="padding"></div>
23176
23177     <div class="entry">
23178       <div class="title">
23179         <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>
23180       </div>
23181       <div class="date">
23182         28th February 2009
23183       </div>
23184       <div class="body">
23185         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
23186 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
23187 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
23188 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
23189 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
23190 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
23191 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
23192 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
23193 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
23194 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
23195 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
23196 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
23197 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
23198 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
23199 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
23200 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
23201 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
23202 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
23203 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
23204 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
23205 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
23206 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
23207 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
23208 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
23209 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
23210 machine.</p>
23211
23212 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
23213 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
23214 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
23215 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
23216 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
23217 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
23218 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
23219
23220 <pre>
23221 use LWP::Simple;
23222 use POSIX;
23223 use WWW::Mechanize;
23224 use Date::Parse;
23225 [...]
23226 sub get_support_info {
23227     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
23228     my $str;
23229
23230     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
23231         # fetch website from Dell support
23232         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
23233         my $webpage = get($url);
23234         return undef unless ($webpage);
23235
23236         my $daysleft = -1;
23237         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
23238         foreach my $line (@lines) {
23239             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
23240             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23241             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
23242
23243             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
23244             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
23245             my $lastend = "";
23246             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
23247                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
23248
23249                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23250                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23251                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23252                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
23253                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
23254                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
23255                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
23256             }
23257             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23258             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23259                 if ($lastend lt $today);
23260         }
23261     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
23262         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
23263         my $url =
23264             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
23265         $mech->get($url);
23266         my $fields = {
23267             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
23268             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
23269             'country' => 'NO',
23270             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
23271             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
23272         };
23273         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
23274                             fields      => $fields );
23275         # Next step is screen scraping
23276         my $content = $mech->content();
23277
23278         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23279         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23280         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23281         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23282
23283         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23284
23285         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
23286             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
23287                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
23288             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
23289             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23290                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
23291             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
23292                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
23293
23294             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
23295
23296             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23297                 if ($end lt $today);
23298         }
23299     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
23300         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
23301         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
23302         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
23303             my $content =
23304                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
23305             if ($content) {
23306                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
23307                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
23308                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
23309                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
23310
23311                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
23312                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
23313
23314                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
23315
23316                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
23317                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
23318                     if ($end lt $today);
23319             }
23320         }
23321     }
23322     return $str;
23323 }
23324 </pre>
23325
23326 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
23327 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
23328 from dmidecode.</p>
23329
23330 <pre>
23331 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
23332                        "447707-B21");
23333 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
23334 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
23335                        "1234567");
23336 </pre>
23337
23338 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
23339 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
23340
23341 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
23342 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
23343 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
23344 do so.</p>
23345
23346       </div>
23347       <div class="tags">
23348
23349
23350         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>.
23351
23352
23353       </div>
23354     </div>
23355     <div class="padding"></div>
23356
23357     <div class="entry">
23358       <div class="title">
23359         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
23360       </div>
23361       <div class="date">
23362         20th February 2009
23363       </div>
23364       <div class="body">
23365         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
23366 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
23367 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
23368 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
23369 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
23370 the "missing" computer.</p>
23371
23372 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
23373 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
23374 code blocks as defined in the
23375 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
23376 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
23377 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
23378 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
23379 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
23380 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
23381 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
23382 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
23383 codes.</p>
23384
23385 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
23386 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
23387 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
23388 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
23389 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
23390 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
23391
23392 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
23393 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
23394 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
23395 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
23396 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
23397 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
23398 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
23399 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
23400 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
23401 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
23402
23403 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
23404 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
23405 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
23406
23407       </div>
23408       <div class="tags">
23409
23410
23411         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>.
23412
23413
23414       </div>
23415     </div>
23416     <div class="padding"></div>
23417
23418     <div class="entry">
23419       <div class="title">
23420         <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>
23421       </div>
23422       <div class="date">
23423         17th January 2009
23424       </div>
23425       <div class="body">
23426         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
23427 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
23428 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
23429 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
23430 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
23431 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
23432 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
23433 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
23434 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
23435 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
23436 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
23437 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
23438 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
23439 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
23440
23441 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
23442 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
23443 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
23444 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
23445 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
23446 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
23447 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
23448 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
23449 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
23450 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
23451 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
23452 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
23453 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
23454 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
23455 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
23456 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
23457 playing when the download is done.</p>
23458
23459 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
23460 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
23461 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
23462 too.</p>
23463
23464 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
23465 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
23466 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
23467 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
23468
23469       </div>
23470       <div class="tags">
23471
23472
23473         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
23474
23475
23476       </div>
23477     </div>
23478     <div class="padding"></div>
23479
23480     <div class="entry">
23481       <div class="title">
23482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
23483       </div>
23484       <div class="date">
23485         28th December 2008
23486       </div>
23487       <div class="body">
23488         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
23489 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
23490 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
23491 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
23492 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
23493 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
23494 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
23495 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
23496 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
23497 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
23498 source, sink and mixer applications and
23499 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
23500 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
23501 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
23502 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
23503 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
23504 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
23505 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
23506 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
23507 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
23508
23509 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
23510 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
23511 larger stick as well.</p>
23512
23513       </div>
23514       <div class="tags">
23515
23516
23517         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>.
23518
23519
23520       </div>
23521     </div>
23522     <div class="padding"></div>
23523
23524     <div class="entry">
23525       <div class="title">
23526         <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>
23527       </div>
23528       <div class="date">
23529          7th December 2008
23530       </div>
23531       <div class="body">
23532         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
23533 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
23534 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
23535 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
23536 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
23537 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
23538 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
23539 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
23540
23541 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
23542 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
23543 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
23544 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
23545 of these cards.</p>
23546
23547       </div>
23548       <div class="tags">
23549
23550
23551         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>.
23552
23553
23554       </div>
23555     </div>
23556     <div class="padding"></div>
23557
23558     <div class="entry">
23559       <div class="title">
23560         <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>
23561       </div>
23562       <div class="date">
23563         25th November 2008
23564       </div>
23565       <div class="body">
23566         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
23567 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
23568 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
23569 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
23570 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
23571 notes are available on
23572 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
23573 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
23574 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
23575 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
23576 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
23577 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
23578 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
23579 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
23580 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
23581
23582 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
23583 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
23584
23585       </div>
23586       <div class="tags">
23587
23588
23589         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>.
23590
23591
23592       </div>
23593     </div>
23594     <div class="padding"></div>
23595
23596     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
23597     <div id="sidebar">
23598
23599
23600
23601 <h2>Archive</h2>
23602 <ul>
23603
23604 <li>2015
23605 <ul>
23606
23607 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23608
23609 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23610
23611 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
23612
23613 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
23614
23615 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23616
23617 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
23618
23619 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
23620
23621 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23622
23623 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
23624
23625 </ul></li>
23626
23627 <li>2014
23628 <ul>
23629
23630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23631
23632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
23633
23634 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
23635
23636 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23637
23638 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
23639
23640 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23641
23642 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
23643
23644 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
23645
23646 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23647
23648 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
23649
23650 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23651
23652 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
23653
23654 </ul></li>
23655
23656 <li>2013
23657 <ul>
23658
23659 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
23660
23661 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
23662
23663 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
23664
23665 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
23666
23667 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23668
23669 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
23670
23671 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23672
23673 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23674
23675 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
23676
23677 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
23678
23679 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
23680
23681 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23682
23683 </ul></li>
23684
23685 <li>2012
23686 <ul>
23687
23688 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
23689
23690 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
23691
23692 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
23693
23694 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
23695
23696 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
23697
23698 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
23699
23700 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
23701
23702 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23703
23704 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
23705
23706 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
23707
23708 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
23709
23710 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23711
23712 </ul></li>
23713
23714 <li>2011
23715 <ul>
23716
23717 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
23718
23719 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
23720
23721 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
23722
23723 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
23724
23725 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
23726
23727 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
23728
23729 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
23730
23731 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
23732
23733 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
23734
23735 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23736
23737 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23738
23739 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
23740
23741 </ul></li>
23742
23743 <li>2010
23744 <ul>
23745
23746 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
23747
23748 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
23749
23750 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
23751
23752 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
23753
23754 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23755
23756 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
23757
23758 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
23759
23760 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
23761
23762 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
23763
23764 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
23765
23766 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
23767
23768 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
23769
23770 </ul></li>
23771
23772 <li>2009
23773 <ul>
23774
23775 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
23776
23777 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
23778
23779 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
23780
23781 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
23782
23783 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
23784
23785 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
23786
23787 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
23788
23789 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
23790
23791 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
23792
23793 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
23794
23795 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
23796
23797 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
23798
23799 </ul></li>
23800
23801 <li>2008
23802 <ul>
23803
23804 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
23805
23806 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
23807
23808 </ul></li>
23809
23810 </ul>
23811
23812
23813
23814 <h2>Tags</h2>
23815 <ul>
23816
23817  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
23818
23819  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
23820
23821  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
23822
23823  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
23824
23825  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (8)</a></li>
23826
23827  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (15)</a></li>
23828
23829  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
23830
23831  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
23832
23833  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (112)</a></li>
23834
23835  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (153)</a></li>
23836
23837  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
23838
23839  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (15)</a></li>
23840
23841  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (17)</a></li>
23842
23843  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
23844
23845  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (288)</a></li>
23846
23847  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
23848
23849  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
23850
23851  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (19)</a></li>
23852
23853  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
23854
23855  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (16)</a></li>
23856
23857  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
23858
23859  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
23860
23861  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (10)</a></li>
23862
23863  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (19)</a></li>
23864
23865  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
23866
23867  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
23868
23869  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
23870
23871  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
23872
23873  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
23874
23875  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (36)</a></li>
23876
23877  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (264)</a></li>
23878
23879  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (177)</a></li>
23880
23881  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (19)</a></li>
23882
23883  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
23884
23885  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (53)</a></li>
23886
23887  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (86)</a></li>
23888
23889  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
23890
23891  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
23892
23893  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
23894
23895  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
23896
23897  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (9)</a></li>
23898
23899  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
23900
23901  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
23902
23903  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
23904
23905  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (41)</a></li>
23906
23907  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
23908
23909  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
23910
23911  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (48)</a></li>
23912
23913  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
23914
23915  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (9)</a></li>
23916
23917  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (33)</a></li>
23918
23919  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (2)</a></li>
23920
23921  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
23922
23923  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (8)</a></li>
23924
23925  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (54)</a></li>
23926
23927  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
23928
23929  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (37)</a></li>
23930
23931 </ul>
23932
23933
23934     </div>
23935     <p style="text-align: right">
23936  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
23937 </p>
23938
23939   </body>
23940 </html>