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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "debian".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         12th July 2018
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>A while back, I was asked by a friend how to stream the desktop to
  32 my projector connected to Kodi.  I sadly had to admit that I had no
  33 idea, as it was a task I never had tried.  Since then, I have been
  34 looking for a way to do so, preferable without much extra software to
  35 install on either side.  Today I found a way that seem to kind of
  36 work.  Not great, but it is a start.</p>
  37
  38 <p>I had a look at several approaches, for example
  39 <a href="https://github.com/mfoetsch/dlna_live_streaming">using uPnP
  40 DLNA as described in 2011</a>, but it required a uPnP server, fuse and
  41 local storage enough to store the stream locally.  This is not going
  42 to work well for me, lacking enough free space, and it would
  43 impossible for my friend to get working.</p>
  44
  45 <p>Next, it occurred to me that perhaps I could use VLC to create a
  46 video stream that Kodi could play.  Preferably using
  47 broadcast/multicast, to avoid having to change any setup on the Kodi
  48 side when starting such stream.  Unfortunately, the only recipe I
  49 could find using multicast used the rtp protocol, and this protocol
  50 seem to not be supported by Kodi.</p>
  51
  52 <p>On the other hand, the rtsp protocol is working!  Unfortunately I
  53 have to specify the IP address of the streaming machine in both the
  54 sending command and the file on the Kodi server.  But it is showing my
  55 desktop, and thus allow us to have a shared look on the big screen at
  56 the programs I work on.</p>
  57
  58 <p>I did not spend much time investigating codeces.  I combined the
  59 rtp and rtsp recipes from
  60 <a href="https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Streaming_HowTo/Command_Line_Examples/">the
  61 VLC Streaming HowTo/Command Line Examples</a>, and was able to get
  62 this working on the desktop/streaming end.</p>
  63
  64 <blockquote><pre>
  65 vlc screen:// --sout \
  66   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{dst=projector.local,port=1234,sdp=rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp}'
  67 </pre></blockquote>
  68
  69 <p>I ssh-ed into my Kodi box and created a file like this with the
  70 same IP address:</p>
  71
  72 <blockquote><pre>
  73 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/test.sdp \
  74   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
  75 </pre></blockquote>
  76
  77 <p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address.  As far
  78 as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work.  In other
  79 words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
  80 to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
  81 recipe.  To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
  82 file while the VLC stream is running.  The desktop then show up in my
  83 big screen. :)</p>
  84
  85 <p>When using the same technique to stream a video file with audio,
  86 the audio quality is really bad.  No idea if the problem is package
  87 loss or bad parameters for the transcode.  I do not know VLC nor Kodi
  88 enough to tell.</p>
  89
  90 <p><strong>Update 2018-07-12</strong>: Johannes Schauer send me a few
  91 succestions and reminded me about an important step.  The "screen:"
  92 input source is only available once the vlc-plugin-access-extra
  93 package is installed on Debian.  Without it, you will see this error
  94 message: "VLC is unable to open the MRL 'screen://'.  Check the log
  95 for details."  He further found that it is possible to drop some parts
  96 of the VLC command line to reduce the amount of hardcoded information.
  97 It is also useful to consider using cvlc to avoid having the VLC
  98 window in the desktop view.  In sum, this give us this command line on
  99 the source end
 100
 101 <blockquote><pre>
 102 cvlc screen:// --sout \
 103   '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8080/}'
 104 </pre></blockquote>
 105
 106 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
 107
 108 <blockquote><pre>
 109 echo rtsp://192.168.11.4:8080/ \
 110   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
 111 </pre></blockquote>
 112
 113 <p>Still bad image quality, though.  But I did discover that streaming
 114 a DVD using dvdsimple:///dev/dvd as the source had excellent video and
 115 audio quality, so I guess the issue is in the input or transcoding
 116 parts, not the rtsp part.  I've tried to change the vb and ab
 117 parameters to use more bandwidth, but it did not make a
 118 difference.</p>
 119
 120 <p>I further received a suggestion from Einar Haraldseid to try using
 121 gstreamer instead of VLC, and this proved to work great!  He also
 122 provided me with the trick to get Kodi to use a multicast stream as
 123 its source.  By using this monstrous oneliner, I can stream my desktop
 124 with good video quality in reasonable framerate to the 239.255.0.1
 125 multicast address on port 1234:
 126
 127 <blockquote><pre>
 128 gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
 129   videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
 130   x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
 131   key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
 132   mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
 133   udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
 134   pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
 135     grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' |  cut -d" " -f2|head -1) ! \
 136   audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
 137 </pre></blockquote>
 138
 139 <p>and this on the Kodi end<p>
 140
 141 <blockquote><pre>
 142 echo udp://@239.255.0.1:1234 \
 143   > /storage/videos/screenstream.m3u
 144 </pre></blockquote>
 145
 146 <p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source.  It might not
 147 pick the one you need.  This approach will of course lead to trouble
 148 if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
 149 Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
 150 local network.  If the value is increased, your screen will be
 151 broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
 152 multicast to learn more. :)!</p>
 153
 154 <p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
 155 could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
 156 The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
 157 seem to be doing a better job.</p>
 158
 159 <blockquote><pre>
 160 cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}'
 161 </pre></blockquote>
 162
 163 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 164 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 165 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 166
 167       </div>
 168       <div class="tags">
 169
 170
 171         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/video">video</a>.
 172
 173
 174       </div>
 175     </div>
 176     <div class="padding"></div>
 177
 178     <div class="entry">
 179       <div class="title">
 180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_in_2018_.html">What is the most supported MIME type in Debian in 2018?</a>
 181       </div>
 182       <div class="date">
 183          9th July 2018
 184       </div>
 185       <div class="body">
 186         <p>Five years ago,
 187 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_most_supported_MIME_type_in_Debian_.html">I
 188 measured what the most supported MIME type in Debian was</a>, by
 189 analysing the desktop files in all packages in the archive.  Since
 190 then, the DEP-11 AppStream system has been put into production, making
 191 the task a lot easier.  This made me want to repeat the measurement,
 192 to see how much things changed.  Here are the new numbers, for
 193 unstable only this time:
 194
 195 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 196
 197 <pre>
 198   count MIME type
 199   ----- -----------------------
 200      56 image/jpeg
 201      55 image/png
 202      49 image/tiff
 203      48 image/gif
 204      39 image/bmp
 205      38 text/plain
 206      37 audio/mpeg
 207      34 application/ogg
 208      33 audio/x-flac
 209      32 audio/x-mp3
 210      30 audio/x-wav
 211      30 audio/x-vorbis+ogg
 212      29 image/x-portable-pixmap
 213      27 inode/directory
 214      27 image/x-portable-bitmap
 215      27 audio/x-mpeg
 216      26 application/x-ogg
 217      25 audio/x-mpegurl
 218      25 audio/ogg
 219      24 text/html
 220 </pre>
 221
 222 <p>The list was created like this using a sid chroot: "cat
 223 /var/lib/apt/lists/*sid*_dep11_Components-amd64.yml.gz| zcat | awk '/^
 224 - \S+\/\S+$/ {print $2 }' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -20"</p>
 225
 226 <p>It is interesting to see how image formats have passed text/plain
 227 as the most announced supported MIME type.  These days, thanks to the
 228 AppStream system, if you run into a file format you do not know, and
 229 want to figure out which packages support the format, you can find the
 230 MIME type of the file using "file --mime &lt;filename&gt;", and then
 231 look up all packages announcing support for this format in their
 232 AppStream metadata (XML or .desktop file) using "appstreamcli
 233 what-provides mimetype &lt;mime-type&gt;.  For example if you, like
 234 me, want to know which packages support inode/directory, you can get a
 235 list like this:</p>
 236
 237 <p><blockquote><pre>
 238 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype inode/directory | grep Package: | sort
 239 Package: anjuta
 240 Package: audacious
 241 Package: baobab
 242 Package: cervisia
 243 Package: chirp
 244 Package: dolphin
 245 Package: doublecmd-common
 246 Package: easytag
 247 Package: enlightenment
 248 Package: ephoto
 249 Package: filelight
 250 Package: gwenview
 251 Package: k4dirstat
 252 Package: kaffeine
 253 Package: kdesvn
 254 Package: kid3
 255 Package: kid3-qt
 256 Package: nautilus
 257 Package: nemo
 258 Package: pcmanfm
 259 Package: pcmanfm-qt
 260 Package: qweborf
 261 Package: ranger
 262 Package: sirikali
 263 Package: spacefm
 264 Package: spacefm
 265 Package: vifm
 266 %
 267 </pre></blockquote></p>
 268
 269 <p>Using the same method, I can quickly discover that the Sketchup file
 270 format is not yet supported by any package in Debian:</p>
 271
 272 <p><blockquote><pre>
 273 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/vnd.sketchup.skp
 274 Could not find component providing 'mimetype::application/vnd.sketchup.skp'.
 275 %
 276 </pre></blockquote></p>
 277
 278 <p>Yesterday I used it to figure out which packages support the STL 3D
 279 format:</p>
 280
 281 <p><blockquote><pre>
 282 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype  application/sla|grep Package
 283 Package: cura
 284 Package: meshlab
 285 Package: printrun
 286 %
 287 </pre></blockquote></p>
 288
 289 <p>PS: A new version of Cura was uploaded to Debian yesterday.</p>
 290
 291 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 292 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 293 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 294
 295       </div>
 296       <div class="tags">
 297
 298
 299         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>.
 300
 301
 302       </div>
 303     </div>
 304     <div class="padding"></div>
 305
 306     <div class="entry">
 307       <div class="title">
 308         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_APT_upgrade_without_enough_free_space_on_the_disk___.html">Debian APT upgrade without enough free space on the disk...</a>
 309       </div>
 310       <div class="date">
 311          8th July 2018
 312       </div>
 313       <div class="body">
 314         <p>Quite regularly, I let my Debian Sid/Unstable chroot stay untouch
 315 for a while, and when I need to update it there is not enough free
 316 space on the disk for apt to do a normal 'apt upgrade'.  I normally
 317 would resolve the issue by doing 'apt install &lt;somepackages&gt;' to
 318 upgrade only some of the packages in one batch, until the amount of
 319 packages to download fall below the amount of free space available.
 320 Today, I had about 500 packages to upgrade, and after a while I got
 321 tired of trying to install chunks of packages manually.  I concluded
 322 that I did not have the spare hours required to complete the task, and
 323 decided to see if I could automate it.  I came up with this small
 324 script which I call 'apt-in-chunks':</p>
 325
 326 <p><blockquote><pre>
 327 #!/bin/sh
 328 #
 329 # Upgrade packages when the disk is too full to upgrade every
 330 # upgradable package in one lump.  Fetching packages to upgrade using
 331 # apt, and then installing using dpkg, to avoid changing the package
 332 # flag for manual/automatic.
 333
 334 set -e
 335
 336 ignore() {
 337     if [ "$1" ]; then
 338         grep -v "$1"
 339     else
 340         cat
 341     fi
 342 }
 343
 344 for p in $(apt list --upgradable | ignore "$@" |cut -d/ -f1 | grep -v '^Listing...'); do
 345     echo "Upgrading $p"
 346     apt clean
 347     apt install --download-only -y $p
 348     for f in /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb; do
 349         if [ -e "$f" ]; then
 350             dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
 351             break
 352         fi
 353     done
 354 done
 355 </pre></blockquote></p>
 356
 357 <p>The script will extract the list of packages to upgrade, try to
 358 download the packages needed to upgrade one package, install the
 359 downloaded packages using dpkg.  The idea is to upgrade packages
 360 without changing the APT mark for the package (ie the one recording of
 361 the package was manually requested or pulled in as a dependency).  To
 362 use it, simply run it as root from the command line.  If it fail, try
 363 'apt install -f' to clean up the mess and run the script again.  This
 364 might happen if the new packages conflict with one of the old
 365 packages.  dpkg is unable to remove, while apt can do this.</p>
 366
 367 <p>It take one option, a package to ignore in the list of packages to
 368 upgrade.  The option to ignore a package is there to be able to skip
 369 the packages that are simply too large to unpack.  Today this was
 370 'ghc', but I have run into other large packages causing similar
 371 problems earlier (like TeX).</p>
 372
 373 <p>Update 2018-07-08: Thanks to Paul Wise, I am aware of two
 374 alternative ways to handle this.  The "unattended-upgrades
 375 --minimal-upgrade-steps" option will try to calculate upgrade sets for
 376 each package to upgrade, and then upgrade them in order, smallest set
 377 first.  It might be a better option than my above mentioned script.
 378 Also, "aptutude upgrade" can upgrade single packages, thus avoiding
 379 the need for using "dpkg -i" in the script above.</p>
 380
 381 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 382 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 383 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 384
 385       </div>
 386       <div class="tags">
 387
 388
 389         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>.
 390
 391
 392       </div>
 393     </div>
 394     <div class="padding"></div>
 395
 396     <div class="entry">
 397       <div class="title">
 398         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Version_3_1_of_Cura__the_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian.html">Version 3.1 of Cura, the 3D print slicer, is now in Debian</a>
 399       </div>
 400       <div class="date">
 401         13th February 2018
 402       </div>
 403       <div class="body">
 404         <p>A new version of the
 405 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">3D printer slicer
 406 software Cura</a>, version 3.1.0, is now available in Debian Testing
 407 (aka Buster) and Debian Unstable (aka Sid).  I hope you find it
 408 useful.  It was uploaded the last few days, and the last update will
 409 enter testing tomorrow.  See the
 410 <a href="https://ultimaker.com/en/products/cura-software/release-notes">release
 411 notes</a> for the list of bug fixes and new features.  Version 3.2
 412 was announced 6 days ago.  We will try to get it into Debian as
 413 well.</p>
 414
 415 <p>More information related to 3D printing is available on the
 416 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3DPrinting">3D printing</a> and
 417 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/3D-printer">3D printer</a> wiki pages
 418 in Debian.</p>
 419
 420 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 421 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 422 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 423
 424       </div>
 425       <div class="tags">
 426
 427
 428         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>.
 429
 430
 431       </div>
 432     </div>
 433     <div class="padding"></div>
 434
 435     <div class="entry">
 436       <div class="title">
 437         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cura__the_nice_3D_print_slicer__is_now_in_Debian_Unstable.html">Cura, the nice 3D print slicer, is now in Debian Unstable</a>
 438       </div>
 439       <div class="date">
 440         17th December 2017
 441       </div>
 442       <div class="body">
 443         <p>After several months of working and waiting, I am happy to report
 444 that the nice and user friendly 3D printer slicer software Cura just
 445 entered Debian Unstable.  It consist of five packages,
 446 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura">cura</a>,
 447 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cura-engine">cura-engine</a>,
 448 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libarcus">libarcus</a>,
 449 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdm-materials">fdm-materials</a>,
 450 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libsavitar">libsavitar</a> and
 451 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/uranium">uranium</a>.  The last
 452 two, uranium and cura, entered Unstable yesterday.  This should make
 453 it easier for Debian users to print on at least the Ultimaker class of
 454 3D printers.  My nearest 3D printer is an Ultimaker 2+, so it will
 455 make life easier for at least me. :)</p>
 456
 457 <p>The work to make this happen was done by Gregor Riepl, and I was
 458 happy to assist him in sponsoring the packages.  With the introduction
 459 of Cura, Debian is up to three 3D printer slicers at your service,
 460 Cura, Slic3r and Slic3r Prusa.  If you own or have access to a 3D
 461 printer, give it a go. :)</p>
 462
 463 <p>The 3D printer software is maintained by the 3D printer Debian
 464 team, flocking together on the
 465 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/3dprinter-general">3dprinter-general</a>
 466 mailing list and the
 467 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-3dprinting">#debian-3dprinting</a>
 468 IRC channel.</p>
 469
 470 <p>The next step for Cura in Debian is to update the cura package to
 471 version 3.0.3 and then update the entire set of packages to version
 472 3.1.0 which showed up the last few days.</p>
 473
 474       </div>
 475       <div class="tags">
 476
 477
 478         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>.
 479
 480
 481       </div>
 482     </div>
 483     <div class="padding"></div>
 484
 485     <div class="entry">
 486       <div class="title">
 487         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Generating_3D_prints_in_Debian_using_Cura_and_Slic3r__prusa_.html">Generating 3D prints in Debian using Cura and Slic3r(-prusa)</a>
 488       </div>
 489       <div class="date">
 490          9th October 2017
 491       </div>
 492       <div class="body">
 493         <p>At my nearby maker space,
 494 <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Sonen</a>, I heard the story that it
 495 was easier to generate gcode files for theyr 3D printers (Ultimake 2+)
 496 on Windows and MacOS X than Linux, because the software involved had
 497 to be manually compiled and set up on Linux while premade packages
 498 worked out of the box on Windows and MacOS X.  I found this annoying,
 499 as the software involved,
 500 <a href="https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura">Cura</a>, is free software
 501 and should be trivial to get up and running on Linux if someone took
 502 the time to package it for the relevant distributions.  I even found
 503 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/706656">a request for adding into
 504 Debian</a> from 2013, which had seem some activity over the years but
 505 never resulted in the software showing up in Debian.  So a few days
 506 ago I offered my help to try to improve the situation.</p>
 507
 508 <p>Now I am very happy to see that all the packages required by a
 509 working Cura in Debian are uploaded into Debian and waiting in the NEW
 510 queue for the ftpmasters to have a look.  You can track the progress
 511 on
 512 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=3dprinter-general%40lists.alioth.debian.org">the
 513 status page for the 3D printer team</a>.</p>
 514
 515 <p>The uploaded packages are a bit behind upstream, and was uploaded
 516 now to get slots in <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW
 517 queue</a> while we work up updating the packages to the latest
 518 upstream version.</p>
 519
 520 <p>On a related note, two competitors for Cura, which I found harder
 521 to use and was unable to configure correctly for Ultimaker 2+ in the
 522 short time I spent on it, are already in Debian.  If you are looking
 523 for 3D printer "slicers" and want something already available in
 524 Debian, check out
 525 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r">slic3r</a> and
 526 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/slic3r-prusa">slic3r-prusa</a>.
 527 The latter is a fork of the former.</p>
 528
 529 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 530 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 531 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 532
 533       </div>
 534       <div class="tags">
 535
 536
 537         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>.
 538
 539
 540       </div>
 541     </div>
 542     <div class="padding"></div>
 543
 544     <div class="entry">
 545       <div class="title">
 546         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Visualizing_GSM_radio_chatter_using_gr_gsm_and_Hopglass.html">Visualizing GSM radio chatter using gr-gsm and Hopglass</a>
 547       </div>
 548       <div class="date">
 549         29th September 2017
 550       </div>
 551       <div class="body">
 552         <p>Every mobile phone announce its existence over radio to the nearby
 553 mobile cell towers.  And this radio chatter is available for anyone
 554 with a radio receiver capable of receiving them.  Details about the
 555 mobile phones with very good accuracy is of course collected by the
 556 phone companies, but this is not the topic of this blog post.  The
 557 mobile phone radio chatter make it possible to figure out when a cell
 558 phone is nearby, as it include the SIM card ID (IMSI).  By paying
 559 attention over time, one can see when a phone arrive and when it leave
 560 an area.  I believe it would be nice to make this information more
 561 available to the general public, to make more people aware of how
 562 their phones are announcing their whereabouts to anyone that care to
 563 listen.</p>
 564
 565 <p>I am very happy to report that we managed to get something
 566 visualizing this information up and running for
 567 <a href="http://norwaymakers.org/osf17">Oslo Skaperfestival 2017</a>
 568 (Oslo Makers Festival) taking place today and tomorrow at Deichmanske
 569 library.  The solution is based on the
 570 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">simple
 571 recipe for listening to GSM chatter</a> I posted a few days ago, and
 572 will show up at the stand of <a href="http://sonen.ifi.uio.no/">Åpen
 573 Sone from the Computer Science department of the University of
 574 Oslo</a>.  The presentation will show the nearby mobile phones (aka
 575 IMSIs) as dots in a web browser graph, with lines to the dot
 576 representing mobile base station it is talking to. It was working in
 577 the lab yesterday, and was moved into place this morning.</p>
 578
 579 <p>We set up a fairly powerful desktop machine using Debian
 580 Buster/Testing with several (five, I believe) RTL2838 DVB-T receivers
 581 connected and visualize the visible cell phone towers using an
 582 <a href="https://github.com/marlow925/hopglass">English version of
 583 Hopglass</a>.  A fairly powerfull machine is needed as the
 584 grgsm_livemon_headless processes from
 585 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a> converting
 586 the radio signal to data packages is quite CPU intensive.</p>
 587
 588 <p>The frequencies to listen to, are identified using a slightly
 589 patched scan-and-livemon (to set the --args values for each receiver),
 590 and the Hopglass data is generated using the
 591 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/IMSI-catcher/tree/meshviewer-output">patches
 592 in my meshviewer-output branch</a>.  For some reason we could not get
 593 more than four SDRs working.  There is also a geographical map trying
 594 to show the location of the base stations, but I believe their
 595 coordinates are hardcoded to some random location in Germany, I
 596 believe.  The code should be replaced with code to look up location in
 597 a text file, a sqlite database or one of the online databases
 598 mentioned in
 599 <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher/issues/14">the github
 600 issue for the topic</a>.
 601
 602 <p>If this sound interesting, visit the stand at the festival!</p>
 603
 604       </div>
 605       <div class="tags">
 606
 607
 608         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 609
 610
 611       </div>
 612     </div>
 613     <div class="padding"></div>
 614
 615     <div class="entry">
 616       <div class="title">
 617         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Easier_recipe_to_observe_the_cell_phones_around_you.html">Easier recipe to observe the cell phones around you</a>
 618       </div>
 619       <div class="date">
 620         24th September 2017
 621       </div>
 622       <div class="body">
 623         <p>A little more than a month ago I wrote
 624 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">how
 625 to observe the SIM card ID (aka IMSI number) of mobile phones talking
 626 to nearby mobile phone base stations using Debian GNU/Linux and a
 627 cheap USB software defined radio</a>, and thus being able to pinpoint
 628 the location of people and equipment (like cars and trains) with an
 629 accuracy of a few kilometer.  Since then we have worked to make the
 630 procedure even simpler, and it is now possible to do this without any
 631 manual frequency tuning and without building your own packages.</p>
 632
 633 <p>The <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gr-gsm">gr-gsm</a>
 634 package is now included in Debian testing and unstable, and the
 635 IMSI-catcher code no longer require root access to fetch and decode
 636 the GSM data collected using gr-gsm.</p>
 637
 638 <p>Here is an updated recipe, using packages built by Debian and a git
 639 clone of two python scripts:</p>
 640
 641 <ol>
 642
 643 <li>Start with a Debian machine running the Buster version (aka
 644   testing).</li>
 645
 646 <li>Run '<tt>apt install gr-gsm python-numpy python-scipy
 647   python-scapy</tt>' as root to install required packages.</li>
 648
 649 <li>Fetch the code decoding GSM packages using '<tt>git clone
 650   github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher.git</tt>'.</li>
 651
 652 <li>Insert USB software defined radio supported by GNU Radio.</li>
 653
 654 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 655   scan-and-livemon</tt>' to locate the frequency of nearby base
 656   stations and start listening for GSM packages on one of them.</li>
 657
 658 <li>Enter the IMSI-catcher directory and run '<tt>python
 659   simple_IMSI-catcher.py</tt>' to display the collected information.</li>
 660
 661 </ol>
 662
 663 <p>Note, due to a bug somewhere the scan-and-livemon program (actually
 664 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/issues/336">its underlying
 665 program grgsm_scanner</a>) do not work with the HackRF radio.  It does
 666 work with RTL 8232 and other similar USB radio receivers you can get
 667 very cheaply
 668 (<a href="https://www.ebay.com/sch/items/?_nkw=rtl+2832">for example
 669 from ebay</a>), so for now the solution is to scan using the RTL radio
 670 and only use HackRF for fetching GSM data.</p>
 671
 672 <p>As far as I can tell, a cell phone only show up on one of the
 673 frequencies at the time, so if you are going to track and count every
 674 cell phone around you, you need to listen to all the frequencies used.
 675 To listen to several frequencies, use the --numrecv argument to
 676 scan-and-livemon to use several receivers.  Further, I am not sure if
 677 phones using 3G or 4G will show as talking GSM to base stations, so
 678 this approach might not see all phones around you.  I typically see
 679 0-400 IMSI numbers an hour when looking around where I live.</p>
 680
 681 <p>I've tried to run the scanner on a
 682 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi 2 and 3
 683 running Debian Buster</a>, but the grgsm_livemon_headless process seem
 684 to be too CPU intensive to keep up.  When GNU Radio print 'O' to
 685 stdout, I am told there it is caused by a buffer overflow between the
 686 radio and GNU Radio, caused by the program being unable to read the
 687 GSM data fast enough.  If you see a stream of 'O's from the terminal
 688 where you started scan-and-livemon, you need a give the process more
 689 CPU power.  Perhaps someone are able to optimize the code to a point
 690 where it become possible to set up RPi3 based GSM sniffers?  I tried
 691 using Raspbian instead of Debian, but there seem to be something wrong
 692 with GNU Radio on raspbian, causing glibc to abort().</p>
 693
 694       </div>
 695       <div class="tags">
 696
 697
 698         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 699
 700
 701       </div>
 702     </div>
 703     <div class="padding"></div>
 704
 705     <div class="entry">
 706       <div class="title">
 707         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simpler_recipe_on_how_to_make_a_simple__7_IMSI_Catcher_using_Debian.html">Simpler recipe on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher using Debian</a>
 708       </div>
 709       <div class="date">
 710          9th August 2017
 711       </div>
 712       <div class="body">
 713         <p>On friday, I came across an interesting article in the Norwegian
 714 web based ICT news magazine digi.no on
 715 <a href="https://www.digi.no/artikler/sikkerhetsforsker-lagde-enkel-imsi-catcher-for-60-kroner-na-kan-mobiler-kartlegges-av-alle/398588">how
 716 to collect the IMSI numbers of nearby cell phones</a> using the cheap
 717 DVB-T software defined radios.  The article refered to instructions
 718 and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjwgNd_as30">a recipe by
 719 Keld Norman on Youtube on how to make a simple $7 IMSI Catcher</a>, and I decided to test them out.</p>
 720
 721 <p>The instructions said to use Ubuntu, install pip using apt (to
 722 bypass apt), use pip to install pybombs (to bypass both apt and pip),
 723 and the ask pybombs to fetch and build everything you need from
 724 scratch.  I wanted to see if I could do the same on the most recent
 725 Debian packages, but this did not work because pybombs tried to build
 726 stuff that no longer build with the most recent openssl library or
 727 some other version skew problem.  While trying to get this recipe
 728 working, I learned that the apt->pip->pybombs route was a long detour,
 729 and the only piece of software dependency missing in Debian was the
 730 gr-gsm package.  I also found out that the lead upstream developer of
 731 gr-gsm (the name stand for GNU Radio GSM) project already had a set of
 732 Debian packages provided in an Ubuntu PPA repository.  All I needed to
 733 do was to dget the Debian source package and built it.</p>
 734
 735 <p>The IMSI collector is a python script listening for packages on the
 736 loopback network device and printing to the terminal some specific GSM
 737 packages with IMSI numbers in them.  The code is fairly short and easy
 738 to understand.  The reason this work is because gr-gsm include a tool
 739 to read GSM data from a software defined radio like a DVB-T USB stick
 740 and other software defined radios, decode them and inject them into a
 741 network device on your Linux machine (using the loopback device by
 742 default).  This proved to work just fine, and I've been testing the
 743 collector for a few days now.</p>
 744
 745 <p>The updated and simpler recipe is thus to</p>
 746
 747 <ol>
 748
 749 <li>start with a Debian machine running Stretch or newer,</li>
 750
 751 <li>build and install the gr-gsm package available from
 752 <a href="http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/">http://ppa.launchpad.net/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gr-gsm/</a>,</li>
 753
 754 <li>clone the git repostory from <a href="https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher">https://github.com/Oros42/IMSI-catcher</a>,</li>
 755
 756 <li>run grgsm_livemon and adjust the frequency until the terminal
 757 where it was started is filled with a stream of text (meaning you
 758 found a GSM station).</li>
 759
 760 <li>go into the IMSI-catcher directory and run 'sudo python simple_IMSI-catcher.py' to extract the IMSI numbers.</li>
 761
 762 </ol>
 763
 764 <p>To make it even easier in the future to get this sniffer up and
 765 running, I decided to package
 766 <a href="https://github.com/ptrkrysik/gr-gsm/">the gr-gsm project</a>
 767 for Debian (<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/871055">WNPP
 768 #871055</a>), and the package was uploaded into the NEW queue today.
 769 Luckily the gnuradio maintainer has promised to help me, as I do not
 770 know much about gnuradio stuff yet.</p>
 771
 772 <p>I doubt this "IMSI cacher" is anywhere near as powerfull as
 773 commercial tools like
 774 <a href="https://www.thespyphone.com/portable-imsi-imei-catcher/">The
 775 Spy Phone Portable IMSI / IMEI Catcher</a> or the
 776 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker">Harris
 777 Stingray</a>, but I hope the existance of cheap alternatives can make
 778 more people realise how their whereabouts when carrying a cell phone
 779 is easily tracked.  Seeing the data flow on the screen, realizing that
 780 I live close to a police station and knowing that the police is also
 781 wearing cell phones, I wonder how hard it would be for criminals to
 782 track the position of the police officers to discover when there are
 783 police near by, or for foreign military forces to track the location
 784 of the Norwegian military forces, or for anyone to track the location
 785 of government officials...</p>
 786
 787 <p>It is worth noting that the data reported by the IMSI-catcher
 788 script mentioned above is only a fraction of the data broadcasted on
 789 the GSM network.  It will only collect one frequency at the time,
 790 while a typical phone will be using several frequencies, and not all
 791 phones will be using the frequencies tracked by the grgsm_livemod
 792 program.  Also, there is a lot of radio chatter being ignored by the
 793 simple_IMSI-catcher script, which would be collected by extending the
 794 parser code.  I wonder if gr-gsm can be set up to listen to more than
 795 one frequency?</p>
 796
 797       </div>
 798       <div class="tags">
 799
 800
 801         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/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
 802
 803
 804       </div>
 805     </div>
 806     <div class="padding"></div>
 807
 808     <div class="entry">
 809       <div class="title">
 810         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_is_now_available.html">Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator's Handbook is now available</a>
 811       </div>
 812       <div class="date">
 813         25th July 2017
 814       </div>
 815       <div class="body">
 816         <p align="center"><img align="center" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-07-25-debian-handbook-nb-testprint.png"/></p>
 817
 818 <p>I finally received a copy of the Norwegian Bokmål edition of
 819 "<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian Administrator's
 820 Handbook</a>".  This test copy arrived in the mail a few days ago, and
 821 I am very happy to hold the result in my hand.   We spent around one and a half year translating it. This paperbook edition
 822 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/#norwegian">is available
 823 from lulu.com</a>.  If you buy it quickly, you save 25% on the list
 824 price.  The book is also available for download in electronic form as
 825 PDF, EPUB and Mobipocket, as can be
 826 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/browse/nb-NO/stable/">read online
 827 as a web page</a>.</p>
 828
 829 <p>This is the second book I publish (the first was the book
 830 "<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a>" by Lawrence Lessig
 831 in
 832 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">English</a>,
 833 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">French</a>
 834 and
 835 <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Norwegian
 836 Bokmål</a>), and I am very excited to finally wrap up this
 837 project.  I hope
 838 "<a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/rapha%C3%ABl-hertzog-and-roland-mas/h%C3%A5ndbok-for-debian-administratoren/paperback/product-23262290.html">Håndbok
 839 for Debian-administratoren</a>" will be well received.</p>
 840
 841       </div>
 842       <div class="tags">
 843
 844
 845         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 846
 847
 848       </div>
 849     </div>
 850     <div class="padding"></div>
 851
 852     <div class="entry">
 853       <div class="title">
 854         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/N_r_nynorskoversettelsen_svikter_til_eksamen___.html">Når nynorskoversettelsen svikter til eksamen...</a>
 855       </div>
 856       <div class="date">
 857          3rd June 2017
 858       </div>
 859       <div class="body">
 860         <p><a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Krever-at-elever-ma-fa-annullert-eksamen-etter-rot-med-oppgavetekster-622459b.html">Aftenposten
 861 melder i dag</a> om feil i eksamensoppgavene for eksamen i politikk og
 862 menneskerettigheter, der teksten i bokmåls og nynorskutgaven ikke var
 863 like.  Oppgaveteksten er gjengitt i artikkelen, og jeg ble nysgjerring
 864 på om den fri oversetterløsningen
 865 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium</a> ville gjort en bedre
 866 jobb enn Utdanningsdirektoratet.  Det kan se slik ut.</p>
 867
 868 <p>Her er bokmålsoppgaven fra eksamenen:</p>
 869
 870 <blockquote>
 871 <p>Drøft utfordringene knyttet til nasjonalstatenes og andre aktørers
 872 rolle og muligheter til å håndtere internasjonale utfordringer, som
 873 for eksempel flykningekrisen.</p>
 874
 875 <p>Vedlegge er eksempler på tekster som kan gi relevante perspektiver
 876 på temaet:</p>
 877 <ol>
 878 <li>Flykningeregnskapet 2016, UNHCR og IDMC
 879 <li>«Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015
 880 </ol>
 881
 882 </blockquote>
 883
 884 <p>Dette oversetter Apertium slik:</p>
 885
 886 <blockquote>
 887 <p>Drøft utfordringane knytte til nasjonalstatane sine og rolla til
 888 andre aktørar og høve til å handtera internasjonale utfordringar, som
 889 til dømes *flykningekrisen.</p>
 890
 891 <p>Vedleggja er døme på tekster som kan gje relevante perspektiv på
 892 temaet:</p>
 893
 894 <ol>
 895 <li>*Flykningeregnskapet 2016, *UNHCR og *IDMC</li>
 896 <li>«*Grenseløst Europa for fall» A-Magasinet, 26. november 2015</li>
 897 </ol>
 898
 899 </blockquote>
 900
 901 <p>Ord som ikke ble forstått er markert med stjerne (*), og trenger
 902 ekstra språksjekk.  Men ingen ord er forsvunnet, slik det var i
 903 oppgaven elevene fikk presentert på eksamen.  Jeg mistenker dog at
 904 "andre aktørers rolle og muligheter til ..." burde vært oversatt til
 905 "rolla til andre aktørar og deira høve til ..." eller noe slikt, men
 906 det er kanskje flisespikking.  Det understreker vel bare at det alltid
 907 trengs korrekturlesning etter automatisk oversettelse.</p>
 908
 909       </div>
 910       <div class="tags">
 911
 912
 913         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
 914
 915
 916       </div>
 917     </div>
 918     <div class="padding"></div>
 919
 920     <div class="entry">
 921       <div class="title">
 922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Detecting_NFS_hangs_on_Linux_without_hanging_yourself___.html">Detecting NFS hangs on Linux without hanging yourself...</a>
 923       </div>
 924       <div class="date">
 925          9th March 2017
 926       </div>
 927       <div class="body">
 928         <p>Over the years, administrating thousand of NFS mounting linux
 929 computers at the time, I often needed a way to detect if the machine
 930 was experiencing NFS hang.  If you try to use <tt>df</tt> or look at a
 931 file or directory affected by the hang, the process (and possibly the
 932 shell) will hang too.  So you want to be able to detect this without
 933 risking the detection process getting stuck too.  It has not been
 934 obvious how to do this.  When the hang has lasted a while, it is
 935 possible to find messages like these in dmesg:</p>
 936
 937 <p><blockquote>
 938 nfs: server nfsserver not responding, still trying
 939 <br>nfs: server nfsserver OK
 940 </blockquote></p>
 941
 942 <p>It is hard to know if the hang is still going on, and it is hard to
 943 be sure looking in dmesg is going to work.  If there are lots of other
 944 messages in dmesg the lines might have rotated out of site before they
 945 are noticed.</p>
 946
 947 <p>While reading through the nfs client implementation in linux kernel
 948 code, I came across some statistics that seem to give a way to detect
 949 it.  The om_timeouts sunrpc value in the kernel will increase every
 950 time the above log entry is inserted into dmesg.  And after digging a
 951 bit further, I discovered that this value show up in
 952 /proc/self/mountstats on Linux.</p>
 953
 954 <p>The mountstats content seem to be shared between files using the
 955 same file system context, so it is enough to check one of the
 956 mountstats files to get the state of the mount point for the machine.
 957 I assume this will not show lazy umounted NFS points, nor NFS mount
 958 points in a different process context (ie with a different filesystem
 959 view), but that does not worry me.</p>
 960
 961 <p>The content for a NFS mount point look similar to this:</p>
 962
 963 <p><blockquote><pre>
 964 [...]
 965 device /dev/mapper/Debian-var mounted on /var with fstype ext3
 966 device nfsserver:/mnt/nfsserver/home0 mounted on /mnt/nfsserver/home0 with fstype nfs statvers=1.1
 967         opts:   rw,vers=3,rsize=65536,wsize=65536,namlen=255,acregmin=3,acregmax=60,acdirmin=30,acdirmax=60,soft,nolock,proto=tcp,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=129.240.3.145,mountvers=3,mountport=4048,mountproto=udp,local_lock=all
 968         age:    7863311
 969         caps:   caps=0x3fe7,wtmult=4096,dtsize=8192,bsize=0,namlen=255
 970         sec:    flavor=1,pseudoflavor=1
 971         events: 61063112 732346265 1028140 35486205 16220064 8162542 761447191 71714012 37189 3891185 45561809 110486139 4850138 420353 15449177 296502 52736725 13523379 0 52182 9016896 1231 0 0 0 0 0
 972         bytes:  166253035039 219519120027 0 0 40783504807 185466229638 11677877 45561809
 973         RPC iostats version: 1.0  p/v: 100003/3 (nfs)
 974         xprt:   tcp 925 1 6810 0 0 111505412 111480497 109 2672418560317 0 248 53869103 22481820
 975         per-op statistics
 976                 NULL: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 977              GETATTR: 61063106 61063108 0 9621383060 6839064400 453650 77291321 78926132
 978              SETATTR: 463469 463470 0 92005440 66739536 63787 603235 687943
 979               LOOKUP: 17021657 17021657 0 3354097764 4013442928 57216 35125459 35566511
 980               ACCESS: 14281703 14290009 5 2318400592 1713803640 1709282 4865144 7130140
 981             READLINK: 125 125 0 20472 18620 0 1112 1118
 982                 READ: 4214236 4214237 0 715608524 41328653212 89884 22622768 22806693
 983                WRITE: 8479010 8494376 22 187695798568 1356087148 178264904 51506907 231671771
 984               CREATE: 171708 171708 0 38084748 46702272 873 1041833 1050398
 985                MKDIR: 3680 3680 0 773980 993920 26 23990 24245
 986              SYMLINK: 903 903 0 233428 245488 6 5865 5917
 987                MKNOD: 80 80 0 20148 21760 0 299 304
 988               REMOVE: 429921 429921 0 79796004 61908192 3313 2710416 2741636
 989                RMDIR: 3367 3367 0 645112 484848 22 5782 6002
 990               RENAME: 466201 466201 0 130026184 121212260 7075 5935207 5961288
 991                 LINK: 289155 289155 0 72775556 67083960 2199 2565060 2585579
 992              READDIR: 2933237 2933237 0 516506204 13973833412 10385 3190199 3297917
 993          READDIRPLUS: 1652839 1652839 0 298640972 6895997744 84735 14307895 14448937
 994               FSSTAT: 6144 6144 0 1010516 1032192 51 9654 10022
 995               FSINFO: 2 2 0 232 328 0 1 1
 996             PATHCONF: 1 1 0 116 140 0 0 0
 997               COMMIT: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
 998
 999 device binfmt_misc mounted on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc with fstype binfmt_misc
1000 [...]
1001 </pre></blockquote></p>
1002
1003 <p>The key number to look at is the third number in the per-op list.
1004 It is the number of NFS timeouts experiences per file system
1005 operation.  Here 22 write timeouts and 5 access timeouts.  If these
1006 numbers are increasing, I believe the machine is experiencing NFS
1007 hang.  Unfortunately the timeout value do not start to increase right
1008 away.  The NFS operations need to time out first, and this can take a
1009 while.  The exact timeout value depend on the setup.  For example the
1010 defaults for TCP and UDP mount points are quite different, and the
1011 timeout value is affected by the soft, hard, timeo and retrans NFS
1012 mount options.</p>
1013
1014 <p>The only way I have been able to get working on Debian and RedHat
1015 Enterprise Linux for getting the timeout count is to peek in /proc/.
1016 But according to
1017 <ahref="http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4555/netmonitor-12/index.html">Solaris
1018 10 System Administration Guide: Network Services</a>, the 'nfsstat -c'
1019 command can be used to get these timeout values.  But this do not work
1020 on Linux, as far as I can tell.  I
1021 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/857043">asked Debian about this</a>,
1022 but have not seen any replies yet.</p>
1023
1024 <p>Is there a better way to figure out if a Linux NFS client is
1025 experiencing NFS hangs?  Is there a way to detect which processes are
1026 affected?  Is there a way to get the NFS mount going quickly once the
1027 network problem causing the NFS hang has been cleared?  I would very
1028 much welcome some clues, as we regularly run into NFS hangs.</p>
1029
1030       </div>
1031       <div class="tags">
1032
1033
1034         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/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1035
1036
1037       </div>
1038     </div>
1039     <div class="padding"></div>
1040
1041     <div class="entry">
1042       <div class="title">
1043         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_Bokm_l_translation_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_complete__proofreading_in_progress.html">Norwegian Bokmål translation of The Debian Administrator's Handbook complete, proofreading in progress</a>
1044       </div>
1045       <div class="date">
1046          3rd March 2017
1047       </div>
1048       <div class="body">
1049         <p>For almost a year now, we have been working on making a Norwegian
1050 Bokmål edition of <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/">The Debian
1051 Administrator's Handbook</a>.  Now, thanks to the tireless effort of
1052 Ole-Erik, Ingrid and Andreas, the initial translation is complete, and
1053 we are working on the proof reading to ensure consistent language and
1054 use of correct computer science terms.  The plan is to make the book
1055 available on paper, as well as in electronic form.  For that to
1056 happen, the proof reading must be completed and all the figures need
1057 to be translated.  If you want to help out, get in touch.</p>
1058
1059 <p><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-handbook/debian-handbook-nb-NO.pdf">A
1060
1061 fresh PDF edition</a> in A4 format (the final book will have smaller
1062 pages) of the book created every morning is available for
1063 proofreading.  If you find any errors, please
1064 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">visit
1065 Weblate and correct the error</a>.  The
1066 <a href="http://l.github.io/debian-handbook/stat/nb-NO/index.html">state
1067 of the translation including figures</a> is a useful source for those
1068 provide Norwegian bokmål screen shots and figures.</p>
1069
1070       </div>
1071       <div class="tags">
1072
1073
1074         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1075
1076
1077       </div>
1078     </div>
1079     <div class="padding"></div>
1080
1081     <div class="entry">
1082       <div class="title">
1083         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlimited_randomness_with_the_ChaosKey_.html">Unlimited randomness with the ChaosKey?</a>
1084       </div>
1085       <div class="date">
1086          1st March 2017
1087       </div>
1088       <div class="body">
1089         <p>A few days ago I ordered a small batch of
1090 <a href="http://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/">the ChaosKey</a>, a small
1091 USB dongle for generating entropy created by Bdale Garbee and Keith
1092 Packard.  Yesterday it arrived, and I am very happy to report that it
1093 work great!  According to its designers, to get it to work out of the
1094 box, you need the Linux kernel version 4.1 or later.  I tested on a
1095 Debian Stretch machine (kernel version 4.9), and there it worked just
1096 fine, increasing the available entropy very quickly.  I wrote a small
1097 test oneliner to test.  It first print the current entropy level,
1098 drain /dev/random, and then print the entropy level for five seconds.
1099 Here is the situation without the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1100
1101 <blockquote><pre>
1102 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1103   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1104   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1105      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1106      sleep 1; \
1107   done
1108 300
1109 0+1 oppføringer inn
1110 0+1 oppføringer ut
1111 28 byte kopiert, 0,000264565 s, 106 kB/s
1112 4
1113 8
1114 12
1115 17
1116 21
1117 %
1118 </pre></blockquote>
1119
1120 <p>The entropy level increases by 3-4 every second.  In such case any
1121 application requiring random bits (like a HTTPS enabled web server)
1122 will halt and wait for more entrpy.  And here is the situation with
1123 the ChaosKey inserted:</p>
1124
1125 <blockquote><pre>
1126 % cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1127   dd bs=1M if=/dev/random of=/dev/null count=1; \
1128   for n in $(seq 1 5); do \
1129      cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail; \
1130      sleep 1; \
1131   done
1132 1079
1133 0+1 oppføringer inn
1134 0+1 oppføringer ut
1135 104 byte kopiert, 0,000487647 s, 213 kB/s
1136 433
1137 1028
1138 1031
1139 1035
1140 1038
1141 %
1142 </pre></blockquote>
1143
1144 <p>Quite the difference. :) I bought a few more than I need, in case
1145 someone want to buy one here in Norway. :)</p>
1146
1147 <p>Update: The dongle was presented at Debconf last year.  You might
1148 find <a href="https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/94/">the talk
1149 recording illuminating</a>.  It explains exactly what the source of
1150 randomness is, if you are unable to spot it from the schema drawing
1151 available from the ChaosKey web site linked at the start of this blog
1152 post.</p>
1153
1154       </div>
1155       <div class="tags">
1156
1157
1158         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>.
1159
1160
1161       </div>
1162     </div>
1163     <div class="padding"></div>
1164
1165     <div class="entry">
1166       <div class="title">
1167         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Where_did_that_package_go___mdash__geolocated_IP_traceroute.html">Where did that package go? &mdash; geolocated IP traceroute</a>
1168       </div>
1169       <div class="date">
1170          9th January 2017
1171       </div>
1172       <div class="body">
1173         <p>Did you ever wonder where the web trafic really flow to reach the
1174 web servers, and who own the network equipment it is flowing through?
1175 It is possible to get a glimpse of this from using traceroute, but it
1176 is hard to find all the details.  Many years ago, I wrote a system to
1177 map the Norwegian Internet (trying to figure out if our plans for a
1178 network game service would get low enough latency, and who we needed
1179 to talk to about setting up game servers close to the users.  Back
1180 then I used traceroute output from many locations (I asked my friends
1181 to run a script and send me their traceroute output) to create the
1182 graph and the map.  The output from traceroute typically look like
1183 this:
1184
1185 <p><pre>
1186 traceroute to www.stortinget.no (85.88.67.10), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1187  1  uio-gw10.uio.no (129.240.202.1)  0.447 ms  0.486 ms  0.621 ms
1188  2  uio-gw8.uio.no (129.240.24.229)  0.467 ms  0.578 ms  0.675 ms
1189  3  oslo-gw1.uninett.no (128.39.65.17)  0.385 ms  0.373 ms  0.358 ms
1190  4  te3-1-2.br1.fn3.as2116.net (193.156.90.3)  1.174 ms  1.172 ms  1.153 ms
1191  5  he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.627 ms he16-1-1.cr2.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.244.48)  3.172 ms he16-1-1.cr1.san110.as2116.net (195.0.244.234)  2.857 ms
1192  6  ae1.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.39)  0.662 ms  0.637 ms ae0.ar8.oslosda310.as2116.net (195.0.242.23)  0.622 ms
1193  7  89.191.10.146 (89.191.10.146)  0.931 ms  0.917 ms  0.955 ms
1194  8  * * *
1195  9  * * *
1196 [...]
1197 </pre></p>
1198
1199 <p>This show the DNS names and IP addresses of (at least some of the)
1200 network equipment involved in getting the data traffic from me to the
1201 www.stortinget.no server, and how long it took in milliseconds for a
1202 package to reach the equipment and return to me.  Three packages are
1203 sent, and some times the packages do not follow the same path.  This
1204 is shown for hop 5, where three different IP addresses replied to the
1205 traceroute request.</p>
1206
1207 <p>There are many ways to measure trace routes.  Other good traceroute
1208 implementations I use are traceroute (using ICMP packages) mtr (can do
1209 both ICMP, UDP and TCP) and scapy (python library with ICMP, UDP, TCP
1210 traceroute and a lot of other capabilities).  All of them are easily
1211 available in <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>.</p>
1212
1213 <p>This time around, I wanted to know the geographic location of
1214 different route points, to visualize how visiting a web page spread
1215 information about the visit to a lot of servers around the globe.  The
1216 background is that a web site today often will ask the browser to get
1217 from many servers the parts (for example HTML, JSON, fonts,
1218 JavaScript, CSS, video) required to display the content.  This will
1219 leak information about the visit to those controlling these servers
1220 and anyone able to peek at the data traffic passing by (like your ISP,
1221 the ISPs backbone provider, FRA, GCHQ, NSA and others).</p>
1222
1223 <p>Lets pick an example, the Norwegian parliament web site
1224 www.stortinget.no.  It is read daily by all members of parliament and
1225 their staff, as well as political journalists, activits and many other
1226 citizens of Norway.  A visit to the www.stortinget.no web site will
1227 ask your browser to contact 8 other servers: ajax.googleapis.com,
1228 insights.hotjar.com, script.hotjar.com, static.hotjar.com,
1229 stats.g.doubleclick.net, www.google-analytics.com,
1230 www.googletagmanager.com and www.netigate.se.  I extracted this by
1231 asking <a href="http://phantomjs.org/">PhantomJS</a> to visit the
1232 Stortinget web page and tell me all the URLs PhantomJS downloaded to
1233 render the page (in HAR format using
1234 <a href="https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/netsniff.js">their
1235 netsniff example</a>.  I am very grateful to Gorm for showing me how
1236 to do this).  My goal is to visualize network traces to all IP
1237 addresses behind these DNS names, do show where visitors personal
1238 information is spread when visiting the page.</p>
1239
1240 <p align="center"><a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml"><img
1241 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geoip-small.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using GeoIP"/></a></p>
1242
1243 <p>When I had a look around for options, I could not find any good
1244 free software tools to do this, and decided I needed my own traceroute
1245 wrapper outputting KML based on locations looked up using GeoIP.  KML
1246 is easy to work with and easy to generate, and understood by several
1247 of the GIS tools I have available.  I got good help from by NUUG
1248 colleague Anders Einar with this, and the result can be seen in
1249 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/kmltraceroute">my
1250 kmltraceroute git repository</a>.  Unfortunately, the quality of the
1251 free GeoIP databases I could find (and the for-pay databases my
1252 friends had access to) is not up to the task.  The IP addresses of
1253 central Internet infrastructure would typically be placed near the
1254 controlling companies main office, and not where the router is really
1255 located, as you can see from <a href="www.stortinget.no-geoip.kml">the
1256 KML file I created</a> using the GeoLite City dataset from MaxMind.
1257
1258 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg"><img
1259 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy-small.png" alt="scapy traceroute graph for URLs used by www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1260
1261 <p>I also had a look at the visual traceroute graph created by
1262 <a href="http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/">the scrapy project</a>,
1263 showing IP network ownership (aka AS owner) for the IP address in
1264 question.
1265 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-scapy.svg">The
1266 graph display a lot of useful information about the traceroute in SVG
1267 format</a>, and give a good indication on who control the network
1268 equipment involved, but it do not include geolocation.  This graph
1269 make it possible to see the information is made available at least for
1270 UNINETT, Catchcom, Stortinget, Nordunet, Google, Amazon, Telia, Level
1271 3 Communications and NetDNA.</p>
1272
1273 <p align="center"><a href="https://geotraceroute.com/index.php?node=4&host=www.stortinget.no"><img
1274 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-small.png" alt="example geotraceroute view for www.stortinget.no"/></a></p>
1275
1276 <p>In the process, I came across the
1277 <a href="https://geotraceroute.com/">web service GeoTraceroute</a> by
1278 Salim Gasmi.  Its methology of combining guesses based on DNS names,
1279 various location databases and finally use latecy times to rule out
1280 candidate locations seemed to do a very good job of guessing correct
1281 geolocation.  But it could only do one trace at the time, did not have
1282 a sensor in Norway and did not make the geolocations easily available
1283 for postprocessing.  So I contacted the developer and asked if he
1284 would be willing to share the code (he refused until he had time to
1285 clean it up), but he was interested in providing the geolocations in a
1286 machine readable format, and willing to set up a sensor in Norway.  So
1287 since yesterday, it is possible to run traces from Norway in this
1288 service thanks to a sensor node set up by
1289 <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG assosiation</a>, and get the
1290 trace in KML format for further processing.</p>
1291
1292 <p align="center"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.kml"><img
1293 src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2017-01-09-www.stortinget.no-geotraceroute-kml-join.png" alt="map of combined traces for URLs used by www.stortinget.no using geotraceroute"/></a></p>
1294
1295 <p>Here we can see a lot of trafic passes Sweden on its way to
1296 Denmark, Germany, Holland and Ireland.  Plenty of places where the
1297 Snowden confirmations verified the traffic is read by various actors
1298 without your best interest as their top priority.</p>
1299
1300 <p>Combining KML files is trivial using a text editor, so I could loop
1301 over all the hosts behind the urls imported by www.stortinget.no and
1302 ask for the KML file from GeoTraceroute, and create a combined KML
1303 file with all the traces (unfortunately only one of the IP addresses
1304 behind the DNS name is traced this time.  To get them all, one would
1305 have to request traces using IP number instead of DNS names from
1306 GeoTraceroute).  That might be the next step in this project.</p>
1307
1308 <p>Armed with these tools, I find it a lot easier to figure out where
1309 the IP traffic moves and who control the boxes involved in moving it.
1310 And every time the link crosses for example the Swedish border, we can
1311 be sure Swedish Signal Intelligence (FRA) is listening, as GCHQ do in
1312 Britain and NSA in USA and cables around the globe.  (Hm, what should
1313 we tell them? :) Keep that in mind if you ever send anything
1314 unencrypted over the Internet.</p>
1315
1316 <p>PS: KML files are drawn using
1317 <a href="http://ivanrublev.me/kml/">the KML viewer from Ivan
1318 Rublev<a/>, as it was less cluttered than the local Linux application
1319 Marble.  There are heaps of other options too.</p>
1320
1321 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1322 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1323 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1324
1325       </div>
1326       <div class="tags">
1327
1328
1329         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/kart">kart</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/stortinget">stortinget</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>.
1330
1331
1332       </div>
1333     </div>
1334     <div class="padding"></div>
1335
1336     <div class="entry">
1337       <div class="title">
1338         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Appstream_just_learned_how_to_map_hardware_to_packages_too_.html">Appstream just learned how to map hardware to packages too!</a>
1339       </div>
1340       <div class="date">
1341         23rd December 2016
1342       </div>
1343       <div class="body">
1344         <p>I received a very nice Christmas present today.  As my regular
1345 readers probably know, I have been working on the
1346 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the Isenkram
1347 system</a> for many years.  The goal of the Isenkram system is to make
1348 it easier for users to figure out what to install to get a given piece
1349 of hardware to work in Debian, and a key part of this system is a way
1350 to map hardware to packages.  Isenkram have its own mapping database,
1351 and also uses data provided by each package using the AppStream
1352 metadata format.  And today,
1353 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream">AppStream</a> in
1354 Debian learned to look up hardware the same way Isenkram is doing it,
1355 ie using fnmatch():</p>
1356
1357 <p><pre>
1358 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias \
1359   usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1360 Identifier: pymissile [generic]
1361 Name: pymissile
1362 Summary: Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher
1363 Package: pymissile
1364 % appstreamcli what-provides modalias usb:v0694p0002d0000
1365 Identifier: libnxt [generic]
1366 Name: libnxt
1367 Summary: utility library for talking to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick
1368 Package: libnxt
1369 ---
1370 Identifier: t2n [generic]
1371 Name: t2n
1372 Summary: Simple command-line tool for Lego NXT
1373 Package: t2n
1374 ---
1375 Identifier: python-nxt [generic]
1376 Name: python-nxt
1377 Summary: Python driver/interface/wrapper for the Lego Mindstorms NXT robot
1378 Package: python-nxt
1379 ---
1380 Identifier: nbc [generic]
1381 Name: nbc
1382 Summary: C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks
1383 Package: nbc
1384 %
1385 </pre></p>
1386
1387 <p>A similar query can be done using the combined AppStream and
1388 Isenkram databases using the isenkram-lookup tool:</p>
1389
1390 <p><pre>
1391 % isenkram-lookup usb:v1130p0202d0100dc00dsc00dp00ic03isc00ip00in00
1392 pymissile
1393 % isenkram-lookup usb:v0694p0002d0000
1394 libnxt
1395 nbc
1396 python-nxt
1397 t2n
1398 %
1399 </pre></p>
1400
1401 <p>You can find modalias values relevant for your machine using
1402 <tt>cat $(find /sys/devices/ -name modalias)</tt>.
1403
1404 <p>If you want to make this system a success and help Debian users
1405 make the most of the hardware they have, please
1406 help<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add
1407 AppStream metadata for your package following the guidelines</a>
1408 documented in the wiki.  So far only 11 packages provide such
1409 information, among the several hundred hardware specific packages in
1410 Debian. The Isenkram database on the other hand contain 101 packages,
1411 mostly related to USB dongles.  Most of the packages with hardware
1412 mapping in AppStream are LEGO Mindstorms related, because I have, as
1413 part of my involvement in
1414 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the Debian LEGO
1415 team</a> given priority to making sure LEGO users get proposed the
1416 complete set of packages in Debian for that particular hardware.  The
1417 team also got a nice Christmas present today.  The
1418 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nxt-firmware">nxt-firmware
1419 package</a> made it into Debian.  With this package in place, it is
1420 now possible to use the LEGO Mindstorms NXT unit with only free
1421 software, as the nxt-firmware package contain the source and firmware
1422 binaries for the NXT brick.</p>
1423
1424 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1425 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1426 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1427
1428       </div>
1429       <div class="tags">
1430
1431
1432         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>.
1433
1434
1435       </div>
1436     </div>
1437     <div class="padding"></div>
1438
1439     <div class="entry">
1440       <div class="title">
1441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_updated_with_a_lot_more_hardware_package_mappings.html">Isenkram updated with a lot more hardware-package mappings</a>
1442       </div>
1443       <div class="date">
1444         20th December 2016
1445       </div>
1446       <div class="body">
1447         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
1448 system</a> I wrote two years ago to make it easier in Debian to find
1449 and install packages to get your hardware dongles to work, is still
1450 going strong.  It is a system to look up the hardware present on or
1451 connected to the current system, and map the hardware to Debian
1452 packages.  It can either be done using the tools in isenkram-cli or
1453 using the user space daemon in the isenkram package.  The latter will
1454 notify you, when inserting new hardware, about what packages to
1455 install to get the dongle working.  It will even provide a button to
1456 click on to ask packagekit to install the packages.</p>
1457
1458 <p>Here is an command line example from my Thinkpad laptop:</p>
1459
1460 <p><pre>
1461 % isenkram-lookup
1462 bluez
1463 cheese
1464 ethtool
1465 fprintd
1466 fprintd-demo
1467 gkrellm-thinkbat
1468 hdapsd
1469 libpam-fprintd
1470 pidgin-blinklight
1471 thinkfan
1472 tlp
1473 tp-smapi-dkms
1474 tp-smapi-source
1475 tpb
1476 %
1477 </pre></p>
1478
1479 <p>It can also list the firware package providing firmware requested
1480 by the load kernel modules, which in my case is an empty list because
1481 I have all the firmware my machine need:
1482
1483 <p><pre>
1484 % /usr/sbin/isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
1485 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
1486 %
1487 </pre></p>
1488
1489 <p>The last few days I had a look at several of the around 250
1490 packages in Debian with udev rules.  These seem like good candidates
1491 to install when a given hardware dongle is inserted, and I found
1492 several that should be proposed by isenkram.  I have not had time to
1493 check all of them, but am happy to report that now there are 97
1494 packages packages mapped to hardware by Isenkram.  11 of these
1495 packages provide hardware mapping using AppStream, while the rest are
1496 listed in the modaliases file provided in isenkram.</p>
1497
1498 <p>These are the packages with hardware mappings at the moment.  The
1499 <strong>marked packages</strong> are also announcing their hardware
1500 support using AppStream, for everyone to use:</p>
1501
1502 <p>air-quality-sensor, alsa-firmware-loaders, argyll,
1503 <strong>array-info</strong>, avarice, avrdude, b43-fwcutter,
1504 bit-babbler, bluez, bluez-firmware, <strong>brltty</strong>,
1505 <strong>broadcom-sta-dkms</strong>, calibre, cgminer, cheese, colord,
1506 <strong>colorhug-client</strong>, dahdi-firmware-nonfree, dahdi-linux,
1507 dfu-util, dolphin-emu, ekeyd, ethtool, firmware-ipw2x00, fprintd,
1508 fprintd-demo, <strong>galileo</strong>, gkrellm-thinkbat, gphoto2,
1509 gpsbabel, gpsbabel-gui, gpsman, gpstrans, gqrx-sdr, gr-fcdproplus,
1510 gr-osmosdr, gtkpod, hackrf, hdapsd, hdmi2usb-udev, hpijs-ppds, hplip,
1511 ipw3945-source, ipw3945d, kde-config-tablet, kinect-audio-setup,
1512 <strong>libnxt</strong>, libpam-fprintd, <strong>lomoco</strong>,
1513 madwimax, minidisc-utils, mkgmap, msi-keyboard, mtkbabel,
1514 <strong>nbc</strong>, <strong>nqc</strong>, nut-hal-drivers, ola,
1515 open-vm-toolbox, open-vm-tools, openambit, pcgminer, pcmciautils,
1516 pcscd, pidgin-blinklight, printer-driver-splix,
1517 <strong>pymissile</strong>, python-nxt, qlandkartegt,
1518 qlandkartegt-garmin, rosegarden, rt2x00-source, sispmctl,
1519 soapysdr-module-hackrf, solaar, squeak-plugins-scratch, sunxi-tools,
1520 <strong>t2n</strong>, thinkfan, thinkfinger-tools, tlp, tp-smapi-dkms,
1521 tp-smapi-source, tpb, tucnak, uhd-host, usbmuxd, viking,
1522 virtualbox-ose-guest-x11, w1retap, xawtv, xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse,
1523 xserver-xorg-input-wacom, xserver-xorg-video-qxl,
1524 xserver-xorg-video-vmware, yubikey-personalization and
1525 zd1211-firmware</p>
1526
1527 <p>If you know of other packages, please let me know with a wishlist
1528 bug report against the isenkram-cli package, and ask the package
1529 maintainer to
1530 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">add AppStream
1531 metadata according to the guidelines</a> to provide the information
1532 for everyone.  In time, I hope to get rid of the isenkram specific
1533 hardware mapping and depend exclusively on AppStream.</p>
1534
1535 <p>Note, the AppStream metadata for broadcom-sta-dkms is matching too
1536 much hardware, and suggest that the package with with any ethernet
1537 card.  See <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/838735">bug #838735</a> for
1538 the details.  I hope the maintainer find time to address it soon.  In
1539 the mean time I provide an override in isenkram.</p>
1540
1541       </div>
1542       <div class="tags">
1543
1544
1545         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>.
1546
1547
1548       </div>
1549     </div>
1550     <div class="padding"></div>
1551
1552     <div class="entry">
1553       <div class="title">
1554         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oolite__a_life_in_space_as_vagabond_and_mercenary___nice_free_software.html">Oolite, a life in space as vagabond and mercenary - nice free software</a>
1555       </div>
1556       <div class="date">
1557         11th December 2016
1558       </div>
1559       <div class="body">
1560         <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-12-11-nice-oolite.png"/></p>
1561
1562 <p>In my early years, I played
1563 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Classic_Elite">the epic game
1564 Elite</a> on my PC.  I spent many months trading and fighting in
1565 space, and reached the 'elite' fighting status before I moved on.  The
1566 original Elite game was available on Commodore 64 and the IBM PC
1567 edition I played had a 64 KB executable.  I am still impressed today
1568 that the authors managed to squeeze both a 3D engine and details about
1569 more than 2000 planet systems across 7 galaxies into a binary so
1570 small.</p>
1571
1572 <p>I have known about <a href="http://www.oolite.org/">the free
1573 software game Oolite inspired by Elite</a> for a while, but did not
1574 really have time to test it properly until a few days ago.  It was
1575 great to discover that my old knowledge about trading routes were
1576 still valid.  But my fighting and flying abilities were gone, so I had
1577 to retrain to be able to dock on a space station.  And I am still not
1578 able to make much resistance when I am attacked by pirates, so I
1579 bougth and mounted the most powerful laser in the rear to be able to
1580 put up at least some resistance while fleeing for my life. :)</p>
1581
1582 <p>When playing Elite in the late eighties, I had to discover
1583 everything on my own, and I had long lists of prices seen on different
1584 planets to be able to decide where to trade what.  This time I had the
1585 advantages of the
1586 <a href="http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Main_Page">Elite wiki</a>,
1587 where information about each planet is easily available with common
1588 price ranges and suggested trading routes.  This improved my ability
1589 to earn money and I have been able to earn enough to buy a lot of
1590 useful equipent in a few days.  I believe I originally played for
1591 months before I could get a docking computer, while now I could get it
1592 after less then a week.</p>
1593
1594 <p>If you like science fiction and dreamed of a life as a vagabond in
1595 space, you should try out Oolite.  It is available for Linux, MacOSX
1596 and Windows, and is included in Debian and derivatives since 2011.</p>
1597
1598 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1599 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1600 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1601
1602       </div>
1603       <div class="tags">
1604
1605
1606         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
1607
1608
1609       </div>
1610     </div>
1611     <div class="padding"></div>
1612
1613     <div class="entry">
1614       <div class="title">
1615         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_installations_using_eatmydata.html">Quicker Debian installations using eatmydata</a>
1616       </div>
1617       <div class="date">
1618         25th November 2016
1619       </div>
1620       <div class="body">
1621         <p>Two years ago, I did some experiments with eatmydata and the Debian
1622 installation system, observing how using
1623 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Speeding_up_the_Debian_installer_using_eatmydata_and_dpkg_divert.html">eatmydata
1624 could speed up the installation</a> quite a bit.  My testing measured
1625 speedup around 20-40 percent for Debian Edu, where we install around
1626 1000 packages from within the installer.  The eatmydata package
1627 provide a way to disable/delay file system flushing.  This is a bit
1628 risky in the general case, as files that should be stored on disk will
1629 stay only in memory a bit longer than expected, causing problems if a
1630 machine crashes at an inconvenient time.  But for an installation, if
1631 the machine crashes during installation the process is normally
1632 restarted, and avoiding disk operations as much as possible to speed
1633 up the process make perfect sense.
1634
1635 <p>I added code in the Debian Edu specific installation code to enable
1636 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libeatmydata">eatmydata</a>,
1637 but did not have time to push it any further.  But a few months ago I
1638 picked it up again and worked with the libeatmydata package maintainer
1639 Mattia Rizzolo to make it easier for everyone to get this installation
1640 speedup in Debian.  Thanks to our cooperation There is now an
1641 eatmydata-udeb package in Debian testing and unstable, and simply
1642 enabling/installing it in debian-installer (d-i) is enough to get the
1643 quicker installations.  It can be enabled using preseeding.  The
1644 following untested kernel argument should do the trick:</p>
1645
1646 <blockquote><pre>
1647 preseed/early_command="anna-install eatmydata-udeb"
1648 </pre></blockquote>
1649
1650 <p>This should ask d-i to install the package inside the d-i
1651 environment early in the installation sequence.  Having it installed
1652 in d-i in turn will make sure the relevant scripts are called just
1653 after debootstrap filled /target/ with the freshly installed Debian
1654 system to configure apt to run dpkg with eatmydata.  This is enough to
1655 speed up the installation process.  There is a proposal to
1656 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/841153">extend the idea a bit further
1657 by using /etc/ld.so.preload instead of apt.conf</a>, but I have not
1658 tested its impact.</p>
1659
1660
1661       </div>
1662       <div class="tags">
1663
1664
1665         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>.
1666
1667
1668       </div>
1669     </div>
1670     <div class="padding"></div>
1671
1672     <div class="entry">
1673       <div class="title">
1674         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Oversette_bokm_l_til_nynorsk__enklere_enn_du_tror_takket_v_re_Apertium.html">Oversette bokmål til nynorsk, enklere enn du tror takket være Apertium</a>
1675       </div>
1676       <div class="date">
1677         24th November 2016
1678       </div>
1679       <div class="body">
1680         <p>I Norge er det mange som trenger å skrive både bokmål og nynorsk.
1681 Eksamensoppgaver, offentlige brev og nyheter er eksempler på tekster
1682 der det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skoleoppgavene som
1683 elever over det ganske land skal levere inn hvert år.  Det mange ikke
1684 vet er at selv om de kommersielle alternativene
1685 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google Translate</a> og
1686 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing Translator</a> ikke kan
1687 bidra med å oversette mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finnes det et
1688 utmerket fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Oversetterverktøyet
1689 Apertium har støtte for en rekke språkkombinasjoner, og takket være
1690 den utrettelige innsatsen til blant annet Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
1691 en bruke webtjenesten til å fylle inn en tekst på bokmål eller
1692 nynorsk, og få den automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
1693 Resultatet er ikke perfekt, men et svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og til
1694 er resultatet så bra at det kan benyttes uten endringer.  Jeg vet
1695 f.eks. at store deler av Joomla ble oversatt til nynorsk ved hjelp
1696 Apertium.  Høres det ut som noe du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så fall
1697 <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
1698 teksten din i webskjemaet der.
1699
1700 <p>Hvis du trenger maskinell tilgang til den bakenforliggende
1701 teknologien kan du enten installere pakken
1702 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">apertium-nno-nob</a>
1703 på en Debian-maskin eller bruke web-API-et tilgjengelig fra
1704 api.apertium.org.  Se
1705 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">API-dokumentasjonen</a>
1706 for detaljer om web-API-et.  Her kan du se hvordan resultatet blir for
1707 denne teksten som ble skrevet på bokmål over maskinoversatt til
1708 nynorsk.</p>
1709
1710 <hr/>
1711
1712 <p>I Noreg er det mange som treng å skriva både bokmål og nynorsk.
1713 Eksamensoppgåver, offentlege brev og nyhende er døme på tekster der
1714 det er krav om skriftspråk.  I tillegg til alle skuleoppgåvene som
1715 elevar over det ganske land skal levera inn kvart år.  Det mange ikkje
1716 veit er at sjølv om dei kommersielle alternativa
1717 <a href="https://translate.google.com/">Google *Translate</a> og
1718 <a href="https://www.bing.com/translator/">Bing *Translator</a> ikkje
1719 kan bidra med å omsetja mellom bokmål og nynorsk, så finst det eit
1720 utmerka fri programvarealternativ som kan.  Omsetjarverktøyet
1721 *Apertium har støtte for ei rekkje språkkombinasjonar, og takka vera
1722 den utrøyttelege innsatsen til blant anna Kevin Brubeck Unhammer, kan
1723 ein bruka *webtjenesten til å fylla inn ei tekst på bokmål eller
1724 nynorsk, og få den *automatoversatt til det andre skriftspråket.
1725 Resultatet er ikkje perfekt, men eit svært godt utgangspunkt.  Av og
1726 til er resultatet så bra at det kan nyttast utan endringar.  Eg veit
1727 t.d. at store delar av *Joomla vart omsett til nynorsk ved hjelp
1728 *Apertium.  Høyrast det ut som noko du kan ha bruk for?  Besøk i så
1729 fall <a href="https://www.apertium.org/">*Apertium.org</a> og fyll inn
1730 teksta di i *webskjemaet der.
1731
1732 <p>Viss du treng *maskinell tilgjenge til den *bakenforliggende
1733 teknologien kan du anten installera pakken
1734 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/apertium-nno-nob">*apertium-*nno-*nob</a>
1735 på ein *Debian-maskin eller bruka *web-*API-eit tilgjengeleg frå
1736 *api.*apertium.org.  Sjå
1737 <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium-apy">*API-dokumentasjonen</a>
1738 for detaljar om *web-*API-eit.  Her kan du sjå korleis resultatet vert
1739 for denne teksta som vart skreva på bokmål over *maskinoversatt til
1740 nynorsk.</p>
1741
1742       </div>
1743       <div class="tags">
1744
1745
1746         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll</a>.
1747
1748
1749       </div>
1750     </div>
1751     <div class="padding"></div>
1752
1753     <div class="entry">
1754       <div class="title">
1755         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_profiler_for_multi_threaded_software_is_now_in_Debian.html">Coz profiler for multi-threaded software is now in Debian</a>
1756       </div>
1757       <div class="date">
1758         13th November 2016
1759       </div>
1760       <div class="body">
1761         <p><a href="http://coz-profiler.org/">The Coz profiler</a>, a nice
1762 profiler able to run benchmarking experiments on the instrumented
1763 multi-threaded program, finally
1764 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/coz-profiler">made it into
1765 Debian unstable yesterday</A>.  Lluís Vilanova and I have spent many
1766 months since
1767 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">I
1768 blogged about the coz tool</a> in August working with upstream to make
1769 it suitable for Debian.  There are still issues with clang
1770 compatibility, inline assembly only working x86 and minimized
1771 JavaScript libraries.</p>
1772
1773 <p>To test it, install 'coz-profiler' using apt and run it like this:</p>
1774
1775 <p><blockquote>
1776 <tt>coz run --- /path/to/binary-with-debug-info</tt>
1777 </blockquote></p>
1778
1779 <p>This will produce a profile.coz file in the current working
1780 directory with the profiling information.  This is then given to a
1781 JavaScript application provided in the package and available from
1782 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">a project web page</a>.
1783 To start the local copy, invoke it in a browser like this:</p>
1784
1785 <p><blockquote>
1786 <tt>sensible-browser /usr/share/coz-profiler/viewer/index.htm</tt>
1787 </blockquote></p>
1788
1789 <p>See the project home page and the
1790 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">USENIX
1791 ;login: article on Coz</a> for more information on how it is
1792 working.</p>
1793
1794       </div>
1795       <div class="tags">
1796
1797
1798         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>.
1799
1800
1801       </div>
1802     </div>
1803     <div class="padding"></div>
1804
1805     <div class="entry">
1806       <div class="title">
1807         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_own_self_balancing_Lego_Segway.html">My own self balancing Lego Segway</a>
1808       </div>
1809       <div class="date">
1810          4th November 2016
1811       </div>
1812       <div class="body">
1813         <p>A while back I received a Gyro sensor for the NXT
1814 <a href="mindstorms.lego.com">Mindstorms</a> controller as a birthday
1815 present.  It had been on my wishlist for a while, because I wanted to
1816 build a Segway like balancing lego robot.  I had already built
1817 <a href="http://www.nxtprograms.com/NXT2/segway/">a simple balancing
1818 robot</a> with the kids, using the light/color sensor included in the
1819 NXT kit as the balance sensor, but it was not working very well.  It
1820 could balance for a while, but was very sensitive to the light
1821 condition in the room and the reflective properties of the surface and
1822 would fall over after a short while.  I wanted something more robust,
1823 and had
1824 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=NGY1044">the
1825 gyro sensor from HiTechnic</a> I believed would solve it on my
1826 wishlist for some years before it suddenly showed up as a gift from my
1827 loved ones. :)</p>
1828
1829 <p>Unfortunately I have not had time to sit down and play with it
1830 since then.  But that changed some days ago, when I was searching for
1831 lego segway information and came across a recipe from HiTechnic for
1832 building
1833 <a href="http://www.hitechnic.com/blog/gyro-sensor/htway/">the
1834 HTWay</a>, a segway like balancing robot.  Build instructions and
1835 <a href="https://www.hitechnic.com/upload/786-HTWayC.nxc">source
1836 code</a> was included, so it was just a question of putting it all
1837 together.  And thanks to the great work of many Debian developers, the
1838 compiler needed to build the source for the NXT is already included in
1839 Debian, so I was read to go in less than an hour.  The resulting robot
1840 do not look very impressive in its simplicity:</p>
1841
1842 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-robot.jpeg"></p>
1843
1844 <p>Because I lack the infrared sensor used to control the robot in the
1845 design from HiTechnic, I had to comment out the last task
1846 (taskControl).  I simply placed /* and */ around it get the program
1847 working without that sensor present.  Now it balances just fine until
1848 the battery status run low:</p>
1849
1850 <p align="center"><video width="70%" controls="true">
1851    <source src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-11-04-lego-htway-balancing.ogv" type="video/ogg">
1852 </video></p>
1853
1854 <p>Now we would like to teach it how to follow a line and take remote
1855 control instructions using the included Bluetooth receiver in the NXT.</p>
1856
1857 <p>If you, like me, love LEGO and want to make sure we find the tools
1858 they need to work with LEGO in Debian and all our derivative
1859 distributions like Ubuntu, check out
1860 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">the LEGO designers
1861 project page</a> and join the Debian LEGO team.  Personally I own a
1862 RCX and NXT controller (no EV3), and would like to make sure the
1863 Debian tools needed to program the systems I own work as they
1864 should.</p>
1865
1866       </div>
1867       <div class="tags">
1868
1869
1870         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/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1871
1872
1873       </div>
1874     </div>
1875     <div class="padding"></div>
1876
1877     <div class="entry">
1878       <div class="title">
1879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile phone</a>
1880       </div>
1881       <div class="date">
1882         10th October 2016
1883       </div>
1884       <div class="body">
1885         <p>In July
1886 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">I
1887 wrote how to get the Signal Chrome/Chromium app working</a> without
1888 the ability to receive SMS messages (aka without a cell phone).  It is
1889 time to share some experiences and provide an updated setup.</p>
1890
1891 <p>The Signal app have worked fine for several months now, and I use
1892 it regularly to chat with my loved ones.  I had a major snag at the
1893 end of my summer vacation, when the the app completely forgot my
1894 setup, identity and keys.  The reason behind this major mess was
1895 running out of disk space.  To avoid that ever happening again I have
1896 started storing everything in <tt>userdata/</tt> in git, to be able to
1897 roll back to an earlier version if the files are wiped by mistake.  I
1898 had to use it once after introducing the git backup.  When rolling
1899 back to an earlier version, one need to use the 'reset session' option
1900 in Signal to get going, and notify the people you talk with about the
1901 problem.  I assume there is some sequence number tracking in the
1902 protocol to detect rollback attacks.  The git repository is rather big
1903 (674 MiB so far), but I have not tried to figure out if some of the
1904 content can be added to a .gitignore file due to lack of spare
1905 time.</p>
1906
1907 <p>I've also hit the 90 days timeout blocking, and noticed that this
1908 make it impossible to send messages using Signal.  I could still
1909 receive them, but had to patch the code with a new timestamp to send.
1910 I believe the timeout is added by the developers to force people to
1911 upgrade to the latest version of the app, even when there is no
1912 protocol changes, to reduce the version skew among the user base and
1913 thus try to keep the number of support requests down.</p>
1914
1915 <p>Since my original recipe, the Signal source code changed slightly,
1916 making the old patch fail to apply cleanly.  Below is an updated
1917 patch, including the shell wrapper I use to start Signal.  The
1918 original version required a new user to locate the JavaScript console
1919 and call a function from there.  I got help from a friend with more
1920 JavaScript knowledge than me to modify the code to provide a GUI
1921 button instead.  This mean that to get started you just need to run
1922 the wrapper and click the 'Register without mobile phone' to get going
1923 now.  I've also modified the timeout code to always set it to 90 days
1924 in the future, to avoid having to patch the code regularly.</p>
1925
1926 <p>So, the updated recipe for Debian Jessie:</p>
1927
1928 <ol>
1929
1930 <li>First, install required packages to get the source code and the
1931 browser you need.  Signal only work with Chrome/Chromium, as far as I
1932 know, so you need to install it.
1933
1934 <pre>
1935 apt install git tor chromium
1936 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
1937 </pre></li>
1938
1939 <li>Modify the source code using command listed in the the patch
1940 block below.</li>
1941
1942 <li>Start Signal using the run-signal-app wrapper (for example using
1943 <tt>`pwd`/run-signal-app</tt>).
1944
1945 <li>Click on the 'Register without mobile phone', will in a phone
1946 number you can receive calls to the next minute, receive the
1947 verification code and enter it into the form field and press
1948 'Register'.  Note, the phone number you use will be user Signal
1949 username, ie the way others can find you on Signal.</li>
1950
1951 <li>You can now use Signal to contact others.  Note, new contacts do
1952 not show up in the contact list until you restart Signal, and there is
1953 no way to assign names to Contacts.  There is also no way to create or
1954 update chat groups.  I suspect this is because the web app do not have
1955 a associated contact database.</li>
1956
1957 </ol>
1958
1959 <p>I am still a bit uneasy about using Signal, because of the way its
1960 main author moxie0 reject federation and accept dependencies to major
1961 corporations like Google (part of the code is fetched from Google) and
1962 Amazon (the central coordination point is owned by Amazon).  See for
1963 example
1964 <a href="https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37">the
1965 LibreSignal issue tracker</a> for a thread documenting the authors
1966 view on these issues.  But the network effect is strong in this case,
1967 and several of the people I want to communicate with already use
1968 Signal.  Perhaps we can all move to <a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>
1969 once it <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/830265">work on my
1970 laptop</a>?  It already work on Windows and Android, and is included
1971 in <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ring">Debian</a> and
1972 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ring">Ubuntu</a>, but not
1973 working on Debian Stable.</p>
1974
1975 <p>Anyway, this is the patch I apply to the Signal code to get it
1976 working.  It switch to the production servers, disable to timeout,
1977 make registration easier and add the shell wrapper:</p>
1978
1979 <pre>
1980 cd Signal-Desktop; cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p1
1981 diff --git a/js/background.js b/js/background.js
1982 index 24b4c1d..579345f 100644
1983 --- a/js/background.js
1984 +++ b/js/background.js
1985 @@ -33,9 +33,9 @@
1986          });
1987      });
1988
1989 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
1990 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org';
1991      var SERVER_PORTS = [80, 4433, 8443];
1992 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
1993 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
1994      var messageReceiver;
1995      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
1996          if (messageReceiver) {
1997 diff --git a/js/expire.js b/js/expire.js
1998 index 639aeae..beb91c3 100644
1999 --- a/js/expire.js
2000 +++ b/js/expire.js
2001 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
2002  ;(function() {
2003      'use strict';
2004 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
2005 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = Date.now() + (90 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
2006
2007      window.extension = window.extension || {};
2008
2009 diff --git a/js/views/install_view.js b/js/views/install_view.js
2010 index 7816f4f..1d6233b 100644
2011 --- a/js/views/install_view.js
2012 +++ b/js/views/install_view.js
2013 @@ -38,7 +38,8 @@
2014              return {
2015                  'click .step1': this.selectStep.bind(this, 1),
2016                  'click .step2': this.selectStep.bind(this, 2),
2017 -                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3)
2018 +                'click .step3': this.selectStep.bind(this, 3),
2019 +                'click .callreg': function() { extension.install('standalone') },
2020              };
2021          },
2022          clearQR: function() {
2023 diff --git a/options.html b/options.html
2024 index dc0f28e..8d709f6 100644
2025 --- a/options.html
2026 +++ b/options.html
2027 @@ -14,7 +14,10 @@
2028          &lt;div class='nav'>
2029            &lt;h1>{{ installWelcome }}&lt;/h1>
2030            &lt;p>{{ installTagline }}&lt;/p>
2031 -          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a> &lt;/div>
2032 +          &lt;div> &lt;a class='button step2'>{{ installGetStartedButton }}&lt;/a>
2033 +           &lt;br> &lt;a class="button callreg">Register without mobile phone&lt;/a>
2034 +
2035 +         &lt;/div>
2036            &lt;span class='dot step1 selected'>&lt;/span>
2037            &lt;span class='dot step2'>&lt;/span>
2038            &lt;span class='dot step3'>&lt;/span>
2039 --- /dev/null   2016-10-07 09:55:13.730181472 +0200
2040 +++ b/run-signal-app   2016-10-10 08:54:09.434172391 +0200
2041 @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
2042 +#!/bin/sh
2043 +set -e
2044 +cd $(dirname $0)
2045 +mkdir -p userdata
2046 +userdata="`pwd`/userdata"
2047 +if [ -d "$userdata" ] && [ ! -d "$userdata/.git" ] ; then
2048 +    (cd $userdata && git init)
2049 +fi
2050 +(cd $userdata && git add . && git commit -m "Current status." || true)
2051 +exec chromium \
2052 +  --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
2053 +  --user-data-dir=$userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
2054 EOF
2055 chmod a+rx run-signal-app
2056 </pre>
2057
2058 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2059 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2060 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2061
2062       </div>
2063       <div class="tags">
2064
2065
2066         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2067
2068
2069       </div>
2070     </div>
2071     <div class="padding"></div>
2072
2073     <div class="entry">
2074       <div class="title">
2075         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram__Appstream_and_udev_make_life_as_a_LEGO_builder_easier.html">Isenkram, Appstream and udev make life as a LEGO builder easier</a>
2076       </div>
2077       <div class="date">
2078          7th October 2016
2079       </div>
2080       <div class="body">
2081         <p><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">The Isenkram
2082 system</a> provide a practical and easy way to figure out which
2083 packages support the hardware in a given machine.  The command line
2084 tool <tt>isenkram-lookup</tt> and the tasksel options provide a
2085 convenient way to list and install packages relevant for the current
2086 hardware during system installation, both user space packages and
2087 firmware packages. The GUI background daemon on the other hand provide
2088 a pop-up proposing to install packages when a new dongle is inserted
2089 while using the computer.  For example, if you plug in a smart card
2090 reader, the system will ask if you want to install <tt>pcscd</tt> if
2091 that package isn't already installed, and if you plug in a USB video
2092 camera the system will ask if you want to install <tt>cheese</tt> if
2093 cheese is currently missing.  This already work just fine.</p>
2094
2095 <p>But Isenkram depend on a database mapping from hardware IDs to
2096 package names.  When I started no such database existed in Debian, so
2097 I made my own data set and included it with the isenkram package and
2098 made isenkram fetch the latest version of this database from git using
2099 http.  This way the isenkram users would get updated package proposals
2100 as soon as I learned more about hardware related packages.</p>
2101
2102 <p>The hardware is identified using modalias strings.  The modalias
2103 design is from the Linux kernel where most hardware descriptors are
2104 made available as a strings that can be matched using filename style
2105 globbing.  It handle USB, PCI, DMI and a lot of other hardware related
2106 identifiers.</p>
2107
2108 <p>The downside to the Isenkram specific database is that there is no
2109 information about relevant distribution / Debian version, making
2110 isenkram propose obsolete packages too.  But along came AppStream, a
2111 cross distribution mechanism to store and collect metadata about
2112 software packages.  When I heard about the proposal, I contacted the
2113 people involved and suggested to add a hardware matching rule using
2114 modalias strings in the specification, to be able to use AppStream for
2115 mapping hardware to packages.  This idea was accepted and AppStream is
2116 now a great way for a package to announce the hardware it support in a
2117 distribution neutral way.  I wrote
2118 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">a
2119 recipe on how to add such meta-information</a> in a blog post last
2120 December.  If you have a hardware related package in Debian, please
2121 announce the relevant hardware IDs using AppStream.</p>
2122
2123 <p>In Debian, almost all packages that can talk to a LEGO Mindestorms
2124 RCX or NXT unit, announce this support using AppStream.  The effect is
2125 that when you insert such LEGO robot controller into your Debian
2126 machine, Isenkram will propose to install the packages needed to get
2127 it working.  The intention is that this should allow the local user to
2128 start programming his robot controller right away without having to
2129 guess what packages to use or which permissions to fix.</p>
2130
2131 <p>But when I sat down with my son the other day to program our NXT
2132 unit using his Debian Stretch computer, I discovered something
2133 annoying.  The local console user (ie my son) did not get access to
2134 the USB device for programming the unit.  This used to work, but no
2135 longer in Jessie and Stretch.  After some investigation and asking
2136 around on #debian-devel, I discovered that this was because udev had
2137 changed the mechanism used to grant access to local devices.  The
2138 ConsoleKit mechanism from <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>
2139 no longer applied, because LDAP users no longer was added to the
2140 plugdev group during login.  Michael Biebl told me that this method
2141 was obsolete and the new method used ACLs instead.  This was good
2142 news, as the plugdev mechanism is a mess when using a remote user
2143 directory like LDAP.  Using ACLs would make sure a user lost device
2144 access when she logged out, even if the user left behind a background
2145 process which would retain the plugdev membership with the ConsoleKit
2146 setup.  Armed with this knowledge I moved on to fix the access problem
2147 for the LEGO Mindstorms related packages.</p>
2148
2149 <p>The new system uses a udev tag, 'uaccess'.  It can either be
2150 applied directly for a device, or is applied in
2151 /lib/udev/rules.d/70-uaccess.rules for classes of devices.  As the
2152 LEGO Mindstorms udev rules did not have a class, I decided to add the
2153 tag directly in the udev rules files included in the packages.  Here
2154 is one example.  For the nqc C compiler for the RCX, the
2155 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/60-nqc.rules</tt> file now look like this:
2156
2157 <p><pre>
2158 SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ACTION=="add", ATTR{idVendor}=="0694", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", \
2159     SYMLINK+="rcx-%k", TAG+="uaccess"
2160 </pre></p>
2161
2162 <p>The key part is the 'TAG+="uaccess"' at the end.  I suspect all
2163 packages using plugdev in their /lib/udev/rules.d/ files should be
2164 changed to use this tag (either directly or indirectly via
2165 <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>).  Perhaps a lintian check should be created
2166 to detect this?</p>
2167
2168 <p>I've been unable to find good documentation on the uaccess feature.
2169 It is unclear to me if the uaccess tag is an internal implementation
2170 detail like the udev-acl tag used by
2171 <tt>/lib/udev/rules.d/70-udev-acl.rules</tt>.  If it is, I guess the
2172 indirect method is the preferred way.  Michael
2173 <a href="https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/4288">asked for more
2174 documentation from the systemd project</a> and I hope it will make
2175 this clearer.  For now I use the generic classes when they exist and
2176 is already handled by <tt>70-uaccess.rules</tt>, and add the tag
2177 directly if no such class exist.</p>
2178
2179 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
2180 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
2181 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
2182
2183 <p>To help out making life for LEGO constructors in Debian easier,
2184 please join us on our IRC channel
2185 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> and join
2186 the <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/debian-lego/">Debian
2187 LEGO team</a> in the Alioth project we created yesterday.  A mailing
2188 list is not yet created, but we are working on it. :)</p>
2189
2190 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2191 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2192 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2193
2194       </div>
2195       <div class="tags">
2196
2197
2198         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/lego">lego</a>.
2199
2200
2201       </div>
2202     </div>
2203     <div class="padding"></div>
2204
2205     <div class="entry">
2206       <div class="title">
2207         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html">First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</a>
2208       </div>
2209       <div class="date">
2210         30th August 2016
2211       </div>
2212       <div class="body">
2213         <p>In April we
2214 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
2215 to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
2216 how to set up and administrate a Debian system.  Today I am happy to
2217 report that the first draft is now publicly available.  You can find
2218 it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
2219 Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages).  The first
2220 eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
2221 proofreading the content.  If you want to help out, please start
2222 contributing using
2223 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
2224 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
2225 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
2226 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
2227 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
2228 contributors</a>.  A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
2229 and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
2230
2231 <p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
2232 electronic form.</p>
2233
2234       </div>
2235       <div class="tags">
2236
2237
2238         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2239
2240
2241       </div>
2242     </div>
2243     <div class="padding"></div>
2244
2245     <div class="entry">
2246       <div class="title">
2247         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html">Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</a>
2248       </div>
2249       <div class="date">
2250         11th August 2016
2251       </div>
2252       <div class="body">
2253         <p>This summer, I read a great article
2254 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
2255 This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
2256 how to profile multi-threaded programs.  It presented a system for
2257 profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
2258 testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
2259 the code to various degrees compared to a normal run.  It does this by
2260 slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
2261 and measure how this affect processing time.  The processing time is
2262 measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
2263 counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END).  It
2264 can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
2265 runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
2266
2267 <p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
2268 get the system into Debian.  I
2269 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
2270 a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
2271 system ready for Debian by sending patches.  The build process need to
2272 be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
2273 to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
2274 profiling information included in the source package.
2275 But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
2276
2277 <p>The way the system work is fairly simple.  To run an coz experiment
2278 on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
2279
2280 <p><blockquote><pre>
2281 coz run --- program-to-run
2282 </pre></blockquote></p>
2283
2284 <p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
2285 information.  To show what part of the code affect the performance
2286 most, use a web browser and either point it to
2287 <a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
2288 or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch).  Check out this web
2289 site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like.  To make the
2290 profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
2291 COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
2292 code, rebuild and run the profiler.  This allow coz to do more
2293 targeted experiments.</p>
2294
2295 <p>A video published by ACM
2296 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
2297 Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube.  There is also a paper
2298 from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
2299 titled
2300 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
2301 finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
2302
2303 <p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
2304 for Coz is available from github.  It will only build with clang
2305 because it uses a
2306 <a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
2307 feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
2308 <a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
2309 it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
2310
2311 <p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
2312 of software in Debian.  I would very much like some help with the
2313 packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
2314 C++ libraries.</p>
2315
2316       </div>
2317       <div class="tags">
2318
2319
2320         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
2321
2322
2323       </div>
2324     </div>
2325     <div class="padding"></div>
2326
2327     <div class="entry">
2328       <div class="title">
2329         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html">Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</a>
2330       </div>
2331       <div class="date">
2332          7th July 2016
2333       </div>
2334       <div class="body">
2335         <p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
2336 to be a slight challenge.  Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
2337 again.  It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
2338 <a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
2339 hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
2340 device I had access to.  It is a old mobile phone with a broken
2341 microphone The initial idea had been to just
2342 <a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
2343 CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
2344 until a few days ago.</p>
2345
2346 <p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
2347 loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
2348 'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
2349 machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
2350 oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
2351 the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
2352 site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
2353
2354 <p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
2355 or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027.  This
2356 apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
2357 running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
2358 require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not.  So I had to
2359 come up with a different approach.  I got a lot of help from AndyCap
2360 on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
2361 him.</p>
2362
2363 <p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
2364 <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
2365 windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
2366 For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
2367 project named unruu</a> using libunshield.  The unshield tool did not
2368 recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
2369 containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
2370 devices it would work for.</p>
2371
2372 <p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device.  For this I
2373 followed some instructions
2374 <a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
2375 from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
2376 machine with Debian testing:</p>
2377
2378 <p><pre>
2379 adb reboot-bootloader
2380 fastboot oem rebootRUU
2381 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
2382 fastboot flash zip rom.zip
2383 fastboot reboot
2384 </pre></p>
2385
2386 <p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
2387 as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
2388 The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
2389 device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
2390 too.</p>
2391
2392 <p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
2393 instructions on the HTC developer web site.  I got the device token
2394 like this:</p>
2395
2396 <p><pre>
2397 fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
2398 </pre>
2399
2400 <p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
2401 this:</p>
2402
2403 <p><pre>
2404 fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
2405 </pre></p>
2406
2407 <p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
2408 could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
2409 So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
2410 before I start.  We will see what happen next.  Perhaps I should
2411 install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
2412
2413       </div>
2414       <div class="tags">
2415
2416
2417         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
2418
2419
2420       </div>
2421     </div>
2422     <div class="padding"></div>
2423
2424     <div class="entry">
2425       <div class="title">
2426         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html">How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</a>
2427       </div>
2428       <div class="date">
2429          3rd July 2016
2430       </div>
2431       <div class="body">
2432         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
2433 <a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
2434 said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
2435 friends and family are already using it.  As I by choice do not own a
2436 mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected.  And I wanted to
2437 have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
2438 machine.  But yesterday I managed to get it working.  I used the
2439 Github source, compared it to the source in
2440 <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
2441 Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
2442 patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
2443 asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form.  Here is
2444 the recipe how I did it.</p>
2445
2446 <p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
2447
2448 <pre>
2449 git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
2450 </pre>
2451
2452 <p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
2453 able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
2454
2455 <pre>
2456 cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
2457 diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
2458 --- ./js/background.js  2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
2459 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js    2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
2460 @@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
2461          });
2462      });
2463
2464 -    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
2465 -    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
2466 +    var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
2467 +    var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
2468      var messageReceiver;
2469      window.getSocketStatus = function() {
2470          if (messageReceiver) {
2471 diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
2472 --- ./js/expire.js      2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
2473 +++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
2474 @@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
2475  ;(function() {
2476      'use strict';
2477 -    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
2478 +    var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
2479
2480      window.extension = window.extension || {};
2481
2482 EOF
2483 </pre>
2484
2485 <p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
2486 an expiration timestamp.  This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
2487 It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
2488 The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
2489
2490 <p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
2491 script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
2492
2493 <pre>
2494 #!/bin/sh
2495 cd $(dirname $0)
2496 mkdir -p userdata
2497 exec chromium \
2498   --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
2499   --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
2500 </pre>
2501
2502 <p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
2503 SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
2504 Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
2505 will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
2506 connections if they use source IP address.</p>
2507
2508 <p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
2509 "Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
2510 repository.  I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
2511 Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
2512 'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
2513 registration form.  Then I entered by land line phone number and
2514 pressed 'Call'.  5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
2515 repeated the verification code three times.  After entering the number
2516 into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
2517 Signal from my laptop.
2518
2519 <p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
2520 whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
2521 but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
2522 setup.  It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
2523 content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
2524 exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
2525 So better than many options, but not great.  And sadly the usage is
2526 connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
2527 to associate it to my home and person.  I would prefer it if only
2528 those I knew could tell who I was on Signal.  There are options
2529 avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
2530 using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
2531
2532 <p><strong>Update 2017-01-10</strong>: There is an updated blog post
2533 on this topic in
2534 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experience_and_updated_recipe_for_using_the_Signal_app_without_a_mobile_phone.html">Experience
2535 and updated recipe for using the Signal app without a mobile
2536 phone</a>.</p>
2537
2538       </div>
2539       <div class="tags">
2540
2541
2542         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
2543
2544
2545       </div>
2546     </div>
2547     <div class="padding"></div>
2548
2549     <div class="entry">
2550       <div class="title">
2551         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</a>
2552       </div>
2553       <div class="date">
2554          6th June 2016
2555       </div>
2556       <div class="body">
2557         <p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
2558 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
2559 multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
2560 MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
2561 the various players claimed support for.  The range was from 55 to 130
2562 MIME types.  I suspect most media formats are supported by all
2563 players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
2564 their desktop files.  There are probably also some bogus MIME types
2565 listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
2566
2567 <p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
2568 the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
2569 and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
2570 favorite media player VLC.  The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
2571 yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
2572 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
2573 player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
2574
2575 <p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?  It is VLC, followed by
2576 totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
2577 kmplayer.  I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
2578 several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
2579 toten and parole.</p>
2580
2581 <p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
2582 supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
2583 desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
2584 audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
2585 video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
2586 video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo.  Personally I find
2587 it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
2588 players in Debian.  As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
2589 formats.</p>
2590
2591       </div>
2592       <div class="tags">
2593
2594
2595         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>.
2596
2597
2598       </div>
2599     </div>
2600     <div class="padding"></div>
2601
2602     <div class="entry">
2603       <div class="title">
2604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html">A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</a>
2605       </div>
2606       <div class="date">
2607          5th June 2016
2608       </div>
2609       <div class="body">
2610         <p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
2611 decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
2612 talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine.  I
2613 wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
2614 the day before I would give the talk.  The next day I took a plane to
2615 the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
2616 started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
2617 that kpresenter refused to load its own data file.  I cursed a bit and
2618 started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
2619 present when I arrived.  I tested that the saved files could be
2620 loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued.  I continued to polish the
2621 slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
2622 be loaded into kpresenter.  In the end I had to rewrite the slides
2623 three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
2624 shorter.  After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
2625 kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
2626 Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
2627 program to make slides.  The point I'm trying to make is that we
2628 expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
2629 embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
2630
2631 <p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
2632 files from the desktop file browser?  It is not a uncommon problem.  A
2633 while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
2634 gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
2635 browser would refuse to open.  No video player claimed to understand
2636 such file.  I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
2637 returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
2638 installed listed as a MIME type they would understand.  I asked for
2639 <a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
2640 behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead.  I also asked
2641 several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
2642 the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files.  After a
2643 while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
2644 output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
2645
2646 <p>But history repeats itself.  A few days ago I tested the music
2647 system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
2648 browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
2649 (*.rg).  I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
2650 rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
2651 included in the next upload.  To increase the chance of me remembering
2652 how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
2653 from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
2654
2655 <p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
2656 There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file.  The output from
2657 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
2658 shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/).  The file MIME
2659 type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
2660 information is collected from
2661 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
2662 desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/.  If there is
2663 one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
2664 activated when asking to open a given file.  If there are more, one
2665 can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
2666 selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar.  In general
2667 this work well.  But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
2668 type (preferably
2669 <a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
2670 MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
2671 registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
2672 type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
2673
2674 <p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
2675 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
2676 Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
2677
2678 <p><blockquote><pre>
2679 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
2680 &lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
2681   &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
2682     &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
2683     &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
2684     &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
2685   &lt;/mime-type&gt;
2686 &lt;/mime-info&gt;
2687 </pre></blockquote></p>
2688
2689 <p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
2690 (it is a gzipped XML file).  Note, it is much better to use an
2691 official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
2692 unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
2693
2694 <p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
2695 audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
2696 file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
2697
2698 <p><blockquote><pre>
2699 % grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
2700 MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
2701 X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
2702 %
2703 </pre></blockquote></p>
2704
2705 <p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
2706 MimeType= line.</p>
2707
2708 <p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
2709 selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
2710 <tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
2711 MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
2712 that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
2713 support for this MIME type.  If not, please report a bug to have it
2714 fixed. :)</p>
2715
2716       </div>
2717       <div class="tags">
2718
2719
2720         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>.
2721
2722
2723       </div>
2724     </div>
2725     <div class="padding"></div>
2726
2727     <div class="entry">
2728       <div class="title">
2729         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Isenkram_with_PackageKit_support___new_version_0_23_available_in_Debian_unstable.html">Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable</a>
2730       </div>
2731       <div class="date">
2732         25th May 2016
2733       </div>
2734       <div class="body">
2735         <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
2736 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
2737 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
2738 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
2739 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
2740 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
2741 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
2742 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
2743 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
2744 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
2745 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
2746 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
2747
2748 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
2749 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
2750 is going away and is generally being replaced by
2751 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
2752 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
2753 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
2754 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
2755 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
2756 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
2757 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
2758 and see if it is recognised.</p>
2759
2760 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
2761 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
2762 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
2763
2764 <p><blockquote><pre>
2765 % isenkram-lookup
2766 bluez
2767 cheese
2768 fprintd
2769 fprintd-demo
2770 gkrellm-thinkbat
2771 hdapsd
2772 libpam-fprintd
2773 pidgin-blinklight
2774 thinkfan
2775 tleds
2776 tp-smapi-dkms
2777 tp-smapi-source
2778 tpb
2779 %p
2780 </pre></blockquote></p>
2781
2782 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
2783 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
2784 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
2785 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
2786 See
2787 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
2788 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</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/isenkram">isenkram</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/Discharge_rate_estimate_in_new_battery_statistics_collector_for_Debian.html">Discharge rate estimate in new battery statistics collector for Debian</a>
2804       </div>
2805       <div class="date">
2806         23rd May 2016
2807       </div>
2808       <div class="body">
2809         <p>Yesterday I updated the
2810 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats
2811 package in Debian</a> with a few patches sent to me by skilled and
2812 enterprising users.  There were some nice user and visible changes.
2813 First of all, both desktop menu entries now work.  A design flaw in
2814 one of the script made the history graph fail to show up (its PNG was
2815 dumped in ~/.xsession-errors) if no controlling TTY was available.
2816 The script worked when called from the command line, but not when
2817 called from the desktop menu.  I changed this to look for a DISPLAY
2818 variable or a TTY before deciding where to draw the graph, and now the
2819 graph window pop up as expected.</p>
2820
2821 <p>The next new feature is a discharge rate estimator in one of the
2822 graphs (the one showing the last few hours).  New is also the user of
2823 colours showing charging in blue and discharge in red.  The percentages
2824 of this graph is relative to last full charge, not battery design
2825 capacity.</p>
2826
2827 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-rate.png"/></p>
2828
2829 <p>The other graph show the entire history of the collected battery
2830 statistics, comparing it to the design capacity of the battery to
2831 visualise how the battery life time get shorter over time.  The red
2832 line in this graph is what the previous graph considers 100 percent:
2833
2834 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-05-23-battery-stats-history.png"/></p>
2835
2836 <p>In this graph you can see that I only charge the battery to 80
2837 percent of last full capacity, and how the capacity of the battery is
2838 shrinking. :(</p>
2839
2840 <p>The last new feature is in the collector, which now will handle
2841 more hardware models.  On some hardware, Linux power supply
2842 information is stored in /sys/class/power_supply/ACAD/, while the
2843 collector previously only looked in /sys/class/power_supply/AC/.  Now
2844 both are checked to figure if there is power connected to the
2845 machine.</p>
2846
2847 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
2848 check out the
2849 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
2850 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
2851 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from <a
2852 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
2853 Patches are very welcome.</p>
2854
2855 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
2856 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
2857 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
2858
2859       </div>
2860       <div class="tags">
2861
2862
2863         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>.
2864
2865
2866       </div>
2867     </div>
2868     <div class="padding"></div>
2869
2870     <div class="entry">
2871       <div class="title">
2872         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_now_with_ZFS_on_Linux_included.html">Debian now with ZFS on Linux included</a>
2873       </div>
2874       <div class="date">
2875         12th May 2016
2876       </div>
2877       <div class="body">
2878         <p>Today, after many years of hard work from many people,
2879 <a href="http://zfsonlinux.org/">ZFS for Linux</a> finally entered
2880 Debian.  The package status can be seen on
2881 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zfs-linux">the package tracker
2882 for zfs-linux</a>.  and
2883 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
2884 team status page</a>. If you want to help out, please join us.
2885 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">The
2886 source code</a> is available via git on Alioth.  It would also be
2887 great if you could help out with
2888 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dkms">the dkms package</a>, as
2889 it is an important piece of the puzzle to get ZFS working.</p>
2890
2891       </div>
2892       <div class="tags">
2893
2894
2895         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>.
2896
2897
2898       </div>
2899     </div>
2900     <div class="padding"></div>
2901
2902     <div class="entry">
2903       <div class="title">
2904         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">What is the best multimedia player in Debian?</a>
2905       </div>
2906       <div class="date">
2907          8th May 2016
2908       </div>
2909       <div class="body">
2910         <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
2911 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
2912
2913 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
2914 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
2915 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
2916 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
2917 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
2918 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
2919 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
2920 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
2921 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
2922 players.</p>
2923
2924 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
2925 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
2926 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
2927 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
2928 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
2929 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
2930 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
2931 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
2932 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
2933 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
2934 support most file formats.</p>
2935
2936 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
2937 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
2938 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
2939 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
2940 listed first in the table.</p>
2941
2942 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
2943 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
2944 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
2945 support?</p>
2946
2947       </div>
2948       <div class="tags">
2949
2950
2951         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>.
2952
2953
2954       </div>
2955     </div>
2956     <div class="padding"></div>
2957
2958     <div class="entry">
2959       <div class="title">
2960         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Pyra___handheld_computer_with_Debian_preinstalled.html">The Pyra - handheld computer with Debian preinstalled</a>
2961       </div>
2962       <div class="date">
2963          4th May 2016
2964       </div>
2965       <div class="body">
2966         A friend of mine made me aware of
2967 <a href="https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/">The Pyra</a>, a
2968 handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled.  I
2969 would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)</p>
2970
2971 <p>The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
2972 plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
2973 LCD touch screen.  The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
2974 day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
2975 confirming this.  The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
2976 last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
2977 production started.</p>
2978
2979 <p>As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
2980 Debian.  Please let me know if you know of any others.  Is it the
2981 first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?</p>
2982
2983       </div>
2984       <div class="tags">
2985
2986
2987         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>.
2988
2989
2990       </div>
2991     </div>
2992     <div class="padding"></div>
2993
2994     <div class="entry">
2995       <div class="title">
2996         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">Lets make a Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook</a>
2997       </div>
2998       <div class="date">
2999         10th April 2016
3000       </div>
3001       <div class="body">
3002         <p>During this weekends
3003 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/Oslo__Takk_for_feilfiksingsfesten.shtml">bug
3004 squashing party and developer gathering</a>, we decided to do our part
3005 to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
3006 Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
3007 <a href="http://debian-handbook.info/">Debian Administrator's Handbook
3008 project</a> to get started.  If you want to help out, please start
3009 contributing using
3010 <a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
3011 hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
3012 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
3013 translators mailing list</a>.  Please also check out
3014 <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
3015 contributors</a>.</p>
3016
3017 <p>The book is already available on paper in English, French and
3018 Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
3019 Bokmål too.  In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
3020 Mobi versions available.  And there are incomplete translations
3021 available for many more languages.</p>
3022
3023       </div>
3024       <div class="tags">
3025
3026
3027         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3028
3029
3030       </div>
3031     </div>
3032     <div class="padding"></div>
3033
3034     <div class="entry">
3035       <div class="title">
3036         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_in_two_hundred_Debian_users_using_ZFS_on_Linux_.html">One in two hundred Debian users using ZFS on Linux?</a>
3037       </div>
3038       <div class="date">
3039          7th April 2016
3040       </div>
3041       <div class="body">
3042         <p>Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
3043 packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found.  I use
3044 ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
3045 But I might be wrong.</p>
3046
3047 <p>According to
3048 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=spl-linux">the popcon
3049 results for spl-linux</a>, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
3050 0.53% of the population, with the package installed.  As far as I know
3051 the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
3052 on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
3053 installation on Linux in Debian.  In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
3054 the ZFS feature is already available, and there
3055 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=zfsutils">the popcon
3056 results for zfsutils</a> show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
3057 the population.  So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.</p>
3058
3059 <p>But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
3060 <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/04/msg00006.html">announced
3061 in April 2015</a> that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
3062 cleared, the package is still not in Debian.  The package is again in
3063 the NEW queue.  Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
3064 debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
3065 to give up.  The current status can be seen on
3066 <a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-zfsonlinux-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
3067 team status page</a>, and
3068 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-zfsonlinux/zfs.git">the
3069 source code</a> is available on Alioth.</p>
3070
3071 <p>As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
3072 my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
3073 packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
3074 accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
3075 to help out the team.  This was the background for my blog post about
3076 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">creating,
3077 updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>, and I
3078 used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
3079 copyright file.  It is not very easy to check every one of the around
3080 2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
3081 right.  If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
3082 find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.</p>
3083
3084       </div>
3085       <div class="tags">
3086
3087
3088         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>.
3089
3090
3091       </div>
3092     </div>
3093     <div class="padding"></div>
3094
3095     <div class="entry">
3096       <div class="title">
3097         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
3098       </div>
3099       <div class="date">
3100         23rd March 2016
3101       </div>
3102       <div class="body">
3103         <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
3104 extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
3105 later processing and graphing.  The original collector store the
3106 battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
3107 collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
3108 full level, last full level and current battery level.  This make it
3109 possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
3110 the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
3111
3112 <p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
3113 in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable.  Get the new battery level graph
3114 and lifetime prediction by running:
3115
3116 <p><pre>
3117 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
3118 </pre></p>
3119
3120 <p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
3121
3122 <p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
3123 entry yet):</p>
3124
3125 <p><pre>
3126 /usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
3127 </pre></p>
3128
3129 <p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
3130 when there are few data points.  The graphs look a bit better with a
3131 few years of data.</p>
3132
3133 <p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
3134 collector broke in Debian.  The scripts in
3135 <tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed.  I
3136 suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
3137 know.  The issue is reported as
3138 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
3139 pm-utils.  I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
3140 the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
3141 disconnected.  With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
3142 new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
3143
3144 <p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
3145 check out the
3146 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
3147 in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
3148 Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
3149 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3150 As always, patches are very welcome.</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/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/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html">Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</a>
3166       </div>
3167       <div class="date">
3168         15th March 2016
3169       </div>
3170       <div class="body">
3171         <p>Back in September, I blogged about
3172 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
3173 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
3174 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
3175 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
3176 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
3177 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
3178 package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
3179 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
3180 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
3181 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.</p>
3182
3183 <p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
3184 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
3185 battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
3186 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
3187 able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
3188 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
3189 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
3190 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
3191 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
3192 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
3193 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
3194
3195 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
3196
3197 <p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
3198 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
3199 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
3200 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
3201 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
3202 bit more before I make a new release.</p>
3203
3204 <p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
3205 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
3206 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
3207 and graphing.</p>
3208
3209 <p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
3210 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
3211 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
3212 on
3213 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
3214 I would love some help to improve the system further.</p>
3215
3216       </div>
3217       <div class="tags">
3218
3219
3220         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>.
3221
3222
3223       </div>
3224     </div>
3225     <div class="padding"></div>
3226
3227     <div class="entry">
3228       <div class="title">
3229         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html">Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</a>
3230       </div>
3231       <div class="date">
3232         19th February 2016
3233       </div>
3234       <div class="body">
3235         <p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
3236 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
3237 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
3238 the code in the package in question, preferably in
3239 <a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
3240 readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
3241
3242 <p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
3243 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
3244 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
3245 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
3246 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
3247 out what was wrong with
3248 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
3249 zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
3250 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
3251 semi-automatically.</p>
3252
3253 <p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
3254 file based on the code in the source package,
3255 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
3256 and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>.  I'm
3257 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
3258 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
3259 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
3260 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
3261 option in
3262 <a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
3263 blog posts from 2014</a>.
3264
3265 <p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
3266
3267 <p><pre>
3268 debmake -cc > debian/copyright
3269 </pre></p>
3270
3271 <p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
3272 this might not be the best option.</p>
3273
3274 <p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
3275 this approach in
3276 <a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
3277 blog post from 2015</a>.  To generate using cme, use the 'update
3278 dpkg-copyright' option:
3279
3280 <p><pre>
3281 cme update dpkg-copyright
3282 </pre></p>
3283
3284 <p>This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
3285 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
3286
3287 <p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
3288 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
3289 <tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>.  The former seem
3290 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
3291 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
3292 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
3293 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
3294 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
3295 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
3296 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
3297
3298 <p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning.  It
3299 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
3300 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
3301 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
3302
3303 <p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
3304 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
3305 planet.debian.org.</p>
3306
3307 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
3308 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
3309 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
3310
3311 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
3312 on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
3313
3314 <p><pre>
3315 licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
3316   /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
3317 </pre></p>
3318
3319 <p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
3320 version control system to make it easier to discover license and
3321 copyright changes in the upstream source.  I will try to do the same
3322 with my packages in the future.</p>
3323
3324 <p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
3325 against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
3326 command line.</p>
3327
3328       </div>
3329       <div class="tags">
3330
3331
3332         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>.
3333
3334
3335       </div>
3336     </div>
3337     <div class="padding"></div>
3338
3339     <div class="entry">
3340       <div class="title">
3341         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html">Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</a>
3342       </div>
3343       <div class="date">
3344          4th February 2016
3345       </div>
3346       <div class="body">
3347         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
3348 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
3349 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
3350 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
3351 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
3352 about. :)</p>
3353
3354 <p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
3355 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
3356 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
3357 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
3358 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
3359 providing the example file, do like this:</p>
3360
3361 <blockquote><pre>
3362 % apt install appstream
3363 [...]
3364 % apt update
3365 [...]
3366 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
3367   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
3368 firmware-qlogic
3369 %
3370 </pre></blockquote>
3371
3372 <p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
3373 appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
3374 a way appstream can use.</p>
3375
3376 <p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
3377 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
3378 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using <tt>file
3379 --mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
3380 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
3381 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
3382
3383 <blockquote><pre>
3384 % apt install appstream
3385 [...]
3386 % apt update
3387 [...]
3388 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
3389   awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
3390 bkchem
3391 phototonic
3392 inkscape
3393 shutter
3394 tetzle
3395 geeqie
3396 xia
3397 pinta
3398 gthumb
3399 karbon
3400 comix
3401 mirage
3402 viewnior
3403 postr
3404 ristretto
3405 kolourpaint4
3406 eog
3407 eom
3408 gimagereader
3409 midori
3410 %
3411 </pre></blockquote>
3412
3413 <p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
3414 packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
3415
3416       </div>
3417       <div class="tags">
3418
3419
3420         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>.
3421
3422
3423       </div>
3424     </div>
3425     <div class="padding"></div>
3426
3427     <div class="entry">
3428       <div class="title">
3429         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html">Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</a>
3430       </div>
3431       <div class="date">
3432         24th January 2016
3433       </div>
3434       <div class="body">
3435         <p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
3436 with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
3437 position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
3438 time (like every time a SMS is received or sent).  And if their
3439 computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
3440 mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
3441 also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
3442 during installation).  And when these programs send out information to
3443 central collection points, the location is often included, unless
3444 extra care is taken to not send the location.  The provided
3445 information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
3446 good and bad, depend on your point of view).  What is certain, is that
3447 the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
3448 perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
3449 when they share their whereabouts with private and public
3450 entities.</p>
3451
3452 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
3453
3454 <p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
3455 when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing.  It is
3456 unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
3457 officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
3458 unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information.  But the
3459 public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
3460 tool to do so is called
3461 <a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>.  I
3462 discovered it when I read
3463 <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
3464 article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
3465 November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
3466 The python program was in Debian, but
3467 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
3468 Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained.  I
3469 uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
3470 have time to fix it then.  This Christmas I decided to finally try to
3471 get Creepy operational in Debian.  Now a fixed version is available in
3472 Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
3473 are now included
3474 <a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
3475
3476 <p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
3477 Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
3478 complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
3479 given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
3480 these services.  Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
3481 least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
3482 days it is impossible.  This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
3483 configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
3484 information to them about your search interests.  This should be taken
3485 into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
3486 about yourself with the services.</p>
3487
3488 <p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
3489 geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
3490 of Norway.  One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
3491 information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
3492 information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
3493 I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
3494 twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
3495 Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
3496 making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
3497 things.  A similar technique have been
3498 <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
3499 to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
3500 tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
3501 understand the value of the private information they provide to the
3502 public.</p>
3503
3504 <p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
3505 it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
3506 least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
3507 python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
3508
3509 <p>(I have uploaded
3510 <a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
3511 screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
3512 Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
3513
3514       </div>
3515       <div class="tags">
3516
3517
3518         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3519
3520
3521       </div>
3522     </div>
3523     <div class="padding"></div>
3524
3525     <div class="entry">
3526       <div class="title">
3527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html">Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</a>
3528       </div>
3529       <div class="date">
3530         15th January 2016
3531       </div>
3532       <div class="body">
3533         <p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
3534 <a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
3535 that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
3536 believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
3537 security fix from a Debian mirror.  This is a good reason to always
3538 use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
3539 listening do not know which IP address to attack.  In August, Richard
3540 Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
3541 to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
3542 download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
3543 <a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
3544 to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>.  He
3545 was not the first to propose this, as the
3546 <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
3547 package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
3548 to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
3549 aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
3550
3551 <p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
3552 sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
3553 Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
3554 it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
3555 making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
3556
3557 <p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
3558 installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
3559 urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
3560 of the official Debian mirror site.  I recommend installing
3561 <tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
3562 done in /etc/.</p>
3563
3564 <blockquote><pre>
3565 apt install apt-transport-tor
3566 sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
3567 sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
3568 </pre></blockquote>
3569
3570 <p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
3571 the sed commands for these too.  The sed command is assuming your are
3572 using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror.  Adjust the command (or just
3573 edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
3574
3575 <p>This work in Debian Jessie and later.  Note that tools like
3576 <tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
3577 system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs.  For
3578 <tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
3579 which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable.  So if you
3580 need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
3581
3582 <p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
3583 using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
3584 update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
3585 masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine.  Using Tor will
3586 become normal for the machine in question.</p>
3587
3588 <p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
3589 is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
3590 enabled.  It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
3591 system.</p>
3592
3593       </div>
3594       <div class="tags">
3595
3596
3597         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>.
3598
3599
3600       </div>
3601     </div>
3602     <div class="padding"></div>
3603
3604     <div class="entry">
3605       <div class="title">
3606         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html">OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</a>
3607       </div>
3608       <div class="date">
3609         23rd December 2015
3610       </div>
3611       <div class="body">
3612         <p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
3613 call the car license plate numbers in those days.  I would write the
3614 numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
3615 to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
3616 exotic or special region codes and numbers.  It was a fun game to pass
3617 time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
3618
3619 <p>A few days I came across
3620 <a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
3621 project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
3622 report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
3623 "car numbers" in a machine readable format.  I've been looking for
3624 such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
3625 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
3626 number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
3627 the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
3628 even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance.  I
3629 discovered the developer
3630 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
3631 Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
3632 help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
3633 archive.</p>
3634
3635 <p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
3636 it into Debian, where it currently
3637 <a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
3638 in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
3639
3640 <p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
3641 for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
3642 surveillance system?  Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
3643 and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
3644 when number plates on my watch list are discovered.  Another use case
3645 was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
3646 to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
3647 car.  When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
3648 capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
3649 open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway.  I
3650 guess for such use case it make sense.  I am sure there are other use
3651 cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
3652
3653 <p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
3654 out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
3655 before running "debuild" to build the source.  Or wait a bit until the
3656 package show up in unstable.</p>
3657
3658       </div>
3659       <div class="tags">
3660
3661
3662         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
3663
3664
3665       </div>
3666     </div>
3667     <div class="padding"></div>
3668
3669     <div class="entry">
3670       <div class="title">
3671         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html">Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</a>
3672       </div>
3673       <div class="date">
3674         20th December 2015
3675       </div>
3676       <div class="body">
3677         <p>Around three years ago, I created
3678 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
3679 system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
3680 hardware related packages.  A GUI system in the isenkram package will
3681 present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
3682 relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine.  The same
3683 lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
3684 tools in the isenkram-cli package.  In addition to mapping hardware,
3685 it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
3686 install needed firmware packages automatically.  The key for this
3687 system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
3688 words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
3689 with.</p>
3690
3691 <p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
3692 adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
3693 time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
3694 I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
3695 the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
3696 was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
3697 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
3698 appstream system</a> was announced.  I got in touch and suggested to
3699 add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
3700 appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
3701 Debian version of appstream.</p>
3702
3703 <p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
3704 and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
3705 appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages.  The only
3706 package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
3707 pymissile package.  I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
3708 how do add the required
3709 <a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
3710 in pymissile</a>.  I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
3711 this content:</p>
3712
3713 <blockquote><pre>
3714 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
3715 &lt;component&gt;
3716   &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
3717   &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
3718   &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
3719   &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
3720   &lt;description&gt;
3721     &lt;p&gt;
3722       Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
3723       Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
3724       motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
3725       launcher.
3726     &lt;/p&gt;
3727   &lt;/description&gt;
3728   &lt;provides&gt;
3729     &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
3730   &lt;/provides&gt;
3731 &lt;/component&gt;
3732 </pre></blockquote>
3733
3734 <p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
3735 which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
3736 (modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel.  In this case, it
3737 will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
3738 0202.</p>
3739
3740 <p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
3741 are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
3742 appstream files.  Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
3743 these files.  A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
3744 it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
3745 (in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use).  But
3746 it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
3747 upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
3748
3749 <p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
3750 mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
3751 appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
3752 package under /usr/share/appdata/.  I did this by adding the following
3753 line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
3754
3755 <blockquote><pre>
3756 debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
3757 </pre></blockquote>
3758
3759 <p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
3760 all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
3761 pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
3762 installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
3763 question.</p>
3764
3765 <p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
3766 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
3767
3768 <p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
3769 try running this command on the command line:</p>
3770
3771 <blockquote><pre>
3772 cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
3773 </pre></blockquote>
3774
3775 <p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
3776 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
3777 blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
3778
3779       </div>
3780       <div class="tags">
3781
3782
3783         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>.
3784
3785
3786       </div>
3787     </div>
3788     <div class="padding"></div>
3789
3790     <div class="entry">
3791       <div class="title">
3792         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html">The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</a>
3793       </div>
3794       <div class="date">
3795         30th November 2015
3796       </div>
3797       <div class="body">
3798         <p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
3799 "<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
3800 GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
3801 the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
3802 I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
3803
3804 <blockquote>
3805
3806 <p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
3807
3808 <blockquote>
3809 The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
3810
3811 The first step is to choose a
3812 <a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
3813 code.<br/>
3814
3815 The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
3816 <b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
3817
3818 and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
3819 work<br/>
3820
3821 is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
3822 </blockquote>
3823
3824 <p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
3825 <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
3826 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
3827 0x57</a></small></p>
3828
3829 <p>As the Debian Website
3830 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
3831 <a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
3832 imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
3833 the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
3834 software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
3835 software products.  Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
3836 to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
3837 such licenses are not enough.  With the ongoing adoption of Free
3838 Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
3839 expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
3840 ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always.  As Karen
3841 and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
3842 Freedom">FaiF</a>
3843 <a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
3844 copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
3845 to protect it.  The reality of today's world is that legal
3846 representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming.  With
3847 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
3848 <a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
3849 some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
3850 Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
3851 of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
3852 In March the SFC supported a
3853 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
3854 by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
3855 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
3856 with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
3857 kernel.  Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
3858 conferences
3859 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
3860 or cancelled their talks</a>.  As a result they have decided to rely
3861 less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
3862 individuals who support Free Software and copyleft.  So the SFC has
3863 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
3864 a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
3865 a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
3866 supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
3867 Software.</p>
3868
3869 <p>If you support Free Software,
3870 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
3871 what the SFC do, agree with their
3872 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
3873 principles</a>, are happy about their
3874 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
3875 work on a project that is an SFC
3876 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
3877 just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
3878 <a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
3879 Allan Webber</a>,
3880 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
3881 Smith</a>,
3882 <a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
3883 Bacon</a>, myself and
3884 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
3885 becoming a
3886 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>.  For the
3887 next week your donation will be
3888 <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
3889 by an anonymous donor.  Please also consider asking your employer to
3890 match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC.  Don't forget to
3891 spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
3892 social media accounts.</p>
3893
3894 </blockquote>
3895
3896 <p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
3897 of Software Freedom Conservancy myself.  Perhaps you should be a
3898 supporter too?</p>
3899
3900       </div>
3901       <div class="tags">
3902
3903
3904         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
3905
3906
3907       </div>
3908     </div>
3909     <div class="padding"></div>
3910
3911     <div class="entry">
3912       <div class="title">
3913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/PGP_key_transition_statement_for_key_EE4E02F9.html">PGP key transition statement for key EE4E02F9</a>
3914       </div>
3915       <div class="date">
3916         17th November 2015
3917       </div>
3918       <div class="body">
3919         <p>I've needed a new OpenPGP key for a while, but have not had time to
3920 set it up properly.  I wanted to generate it offline and have it
3921 available on <a href="http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/#openpgp">a OpenPGP
3922 smart card</a> for daily use, and learning how to do it and finding
3923 time to sit down with an offline machine almost took forever.  But
3924 finally I've been able to complete the process, and have now moved
3925 from my old GPG key to a new GPG key.  See
3926 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-11-17-new-gpg-key-transition.txt">the
3927 full transition statement, signed with both my old and new key</a> for
3928 the details.  This is my new key:</p>
3929
3930 <pre>
3931 pub   3936R/<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/111D6B29EE4E02F9.html">111D6B29EE4E02F9</a> 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-14]
3932       Key fingerprint = 3AC7 B2E3 ACA5 DF87 78F1  D827 111D 6B29 EE4E 02F9
3933 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
3934 uid                  Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere@debian.org&gt;
3935 sub   4096R/87BAFB0E 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3936 sub   4096R/F91E6DE9 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3937 sub   4096R/A0439BAB 2015-11-03 [expires: 2019-11-02]
3938 </pre>
3939
3940 <p>The key can be downloaded from the OpenPGP key servers, signed by
3941 my old key.</p>
3942
3943 <p>If you signed my old key
3944 (<a href="http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/stats/DB4CCC4B2A30D729.html">DB4CCC4B2A30D729</a>),
3945 I'd very much appreciate a signature on my new key, details and
3946 instructions in the transition statement. I m happy to reciprocate if
3947 you have a similarly signed transition statement to present.</p>
3948
3949       </div>
3950       <div class="tags">
3951
3952
3953         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>.
3954
3955
3956       </div>
3957     </div>
3958     <div class="padding"></div>
3959
3960     <div class="entry">
3961       <div class="title">
3962         <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>
3963       </div>
3964       <div class="date">
3965         24th September 2015
3966       </div>
3967       <div class="body">
3968         <p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
3969 But this do not last.  The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
3970 within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
3971 and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
3972 all the time.  Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
3973 about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
3974 more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
3975
3976 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
3977
3978 <p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
3979 battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
3980 by someone else.  I found
3981 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
3982 which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
3983 broken.  I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
3984 write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
3985 from him.  Via
3986 <a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
3987 blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
3988 discovered
3989 <a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
3990 available in Debian.</p>
3991
3992 <p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
3993 battery stats ever since. Now my
3994 /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
3995 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
3996 when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity.  My
3997 collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
3998
3999 <pre>
4000 #!/bin/sh
4001 # Inspired by
4002 # http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
4003 # See also
4004 # http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
4005 logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
4006
4007 files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
4008     energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
4009
4010 if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
4011     (
4012         printf "timestamp,"
4013         for f in $files; do
4014             printf "%s," $f
4015         done
4016         echo
4017     ) > "$logfile"
4018 fi
4019
4020 log_battery() {
4021     # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
4022     # when several log processes run in parallel.
4023     msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
4024         for f in $files; do \
4025             printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
4026         done)
4027     echo "$msg"
4028 }
4029
4030 cd /sys/class/power_supply
4031
4032 for bat in BAT*; do
4033     (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
4034 done
4035 </pre>
4036
4037 <p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
4038 change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
4039 and out of hibernation and suspend.  In addition, it collect a value
4040 every 10 minutes.  This make it possible for me know when the battery
4041 is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
4042 The code for the Debian package
4043 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
4044 available on github</a>.</p>
4045
4046 <p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
4047
4048 <pre>
4049 timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
4050 1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
4051 [...]
4052 1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
4053 1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
4054 </pre>
4055
4056 <p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
4057 over time.  This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
4058 battery.</p>
4059
4060 <p>But why is this happening?  Why are my laptop batteries always
4061 dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
4062 satellites keep working year after year.  If we are to believe
4063 <a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
4064 University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
4065 chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
4066 all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
4067 I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
4068 <a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
4069 the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
4070 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
4071 like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
4072 story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
4073 Linux too.</p>
4074
4075 <p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
4076 stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
4077 preparation for a longer trip?  I found
4078 <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
4079 recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
4080 80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
4081 load).</p>
4082
4083 <p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
4084 at the start.  I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
4085 times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
4086 back to design capacity.  And I wonder if the discharge and charge
4087 speed change over time, or if this stay the same.  I did not yet try
4088 to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
4089 level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
4090 those.</p>
4091
4092 <p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
4093 acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
4094 packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
4095 initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
4096 and stop.  I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
4097 and need to be replaced.  The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
4098 specific.</p>
4099
4100       </div>
4101       <div class="tags">
4102
4103
4104         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>.
4105
4106
4107       </div>
4108     </div>
4109     <div class="padding"></div>
4110
4111     <div class="entry">
4112       <div class="title">
4113         <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>
4114       </div>
4115       <div class="date">
4116          5th July 2015
4117       </div>
4118       <div class="body">
4119         <p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
4120 need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback.  I wish to
4121 thank every one of these.  Several pointed me to the possibility of
4122 fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
4123 do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
4124 machine.  But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
4125 with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
4126 for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement.  If I did
4127 not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
4128 using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
4129 might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
4130
4131 <p>One tip I got was to use the
4132 <a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
4133 compare laptop models.  It seem to have more models available than
4134 prisjakt.no.  Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
4135 keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
4136 very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
4137 keyboards I tested.  Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
4138
4139 <p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
4140 newest Thinkpad X model.  The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
4141 (which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
4142 Debian Sid/Unstable according to
4143 <a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>.  The reports I
4144 got on the keyboard quality are not consistent.  Some say the keyboard
4145 is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
4146 Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
4147 keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
4148 keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
4149 replace it.  I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
4150 activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230.  I'm
4151 also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
4152 noisy.  In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
4153 Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
4154
4155 <p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
4156 <a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
4157 <a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
4158 The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
4159
4160 <p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback.  It help a lot
4161 as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
4162
4163 <p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
4164 <a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops.  They got several
4165 different
4166 <a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
4167 thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
4168
4169       </div>
4170       <div class="tags">
4171
4172
4173         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>.
4174
4175
4176       </div>
4177     </div>
4178     <div class="padding"></div>
4179
4180     <div class="entry">
4181       <div class="title">
4182         <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>
4183       </div>
4184       <div class="date">
4185          3rd July 2015
4186       </div>
4187       <div class="body">
4188         <p>My primary work horse laptop is failing, and will need a
4189 replacement soon.  The left 5 cm of the screen on my Thinkpad X230
4190 started flickering yesterday, and I suspect the cause is a broken
4191 cable, as changing the angle of the screen some times get rid of the
4192 flickering.</p>
4193
4194 <p>My requirements have not really changed since I bought it, and is
4195 still as
4196 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">I
4197 described them in 2013</a>.  The last time I bought a laptop, I had
4198 good help from
4199 <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/category.php?k=353">prisjakt.no</a>
4200 where I could select at least a few of the requirements (mouse pin,
4201 wifi, weight) and go through the rest manually.  Three button mouse
4202 and a good keyboard is not available as an option, and all the three
4203 laptop models proposed today (Thinkpad X240, HP EliteBook 820 G1 and
4204 G2) lack three mouse buttons).  It is also unclear to me how good the
4205 keyboard on the HP EliteBooks are.  I hope Lenovo have not messed up
4206 the keyboard, even if the quality and robustness in the X series have
4207 deteriorated since X41.</p>
4208
4209 <p>I wonder how I can find a sensible laptop when none of the options
4210 seem sensible to me?  Are there better services around to search the
4211 set of available laptops for features?  Please send me an email if you
4212 have suggestions.</p>
4213
4214 <p>Update 2015-07-23: I got a suggestion to check out the FSF
4215 <a href="http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom">list
4216 of endorsed hardware</a>, which is useful background information.</p>
4217
4218       </div>
4219       <div class="tags">
4220
4221
4222         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>.
4223
4224
4225       </div>
4226     </div>
4227     <div class="padding"></div>
4228
4229     <div class="entry">
4230       <div class="title">
4231         <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>
4232       </div>
4233       <div class="date">
4234         22nd November 2014
4235       </div>
4236       <div class="body">
4237         <p>By now, it is well known that Debian Jessie will not be using
4238 sysvinit as its boot system by default.  But how can one keep using
4239 sysvinit in Jessie?  It is fairly easy, and here are a few recipes,
4240 courtesy of
4241 <a href="http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html">Erich
4242 Schubert</a> and
4243 <a href="http://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2014/still_universal/">Simon
4244 McVittie</a>.
4245
4246 <p>If you already are using Wheezy and want to upgrade to Jessie and
4247 keep sysvinit as your boot system, create a file
4248 <tt>/etc/apt/preferences.d/use-sysvinit</tt> with this content before
4249 you upgrade:</p>
4250
4251 <p><blockquote><pre>
4252 Package: systemd-sysv
4253 Pin: release o=Debian
4254 Pin-Priority: -1
4255 </pre></blockquote><p>
4256
4257 <p>This file content will tell apt and aptitude to not consider
4258 installing systemd-sysv as part of any installation and upgrade
4259 solution when resolving dependencies, and thus tell it to avoid
4260 systemd as a default boot system.  The end result should be that the
4261 upgraded system keep using sysvinit.</p>
4262
4263 <p>If you are installing Jessie for the first time, there is no way to
4264 get sysvinit installed by default (debootstrap used by
4265 debian-installer have no option for this), but one can tell the
4266 installer to switch to sysvinit before the first boot.  Either by
4267 using a kernel argument to the installer, or by adding a line to the
4268 preseed file used.  First, the kernel command line argument:
4269
4270 <p><blockquote><pre>
4271 preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install --purge -y sysvinit-core"
4272 </pre></blockquote><p>
4273
4274 <p>Next, the line to use in a preseed file:</p>
4275
4276 <p><blockquote><pre>
4277 d-i preseed/late_command string in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core
4278 </pre></blockquote><p>
4279
4280 <p>One can of course also do this after the first boot by installing
4281 the sysvinit-core package.</p>
4282
4283 <p>I recommend only using sysvinit if you really need it, as the
4284 sysvinit boot sequence in Debian have several hardware specific bugs
4285 on Linux caused by the fact that it is unpredictable when hardware
4286 devices show up during boot.  But on the other hand, the new default
4287 boot system still have a few rough edges I hope will be fixed before
4288 Jessie is released.</p>
4289
4290 <p>Update 2014-11-26: Inspired by
4291 <ahref="https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10-tg_e20141125-tg.htm#e20141125-tg_wlog-10-tg">a
4292 blog post by Torsten Glaser</a>, added --purge to the preseed
4293 line.</p>
4294
4295       </div>
4296       <div class="tags">
4297
4298
4299         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>.
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/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html">A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</a>
4309       </div>
4310       <div class="date">
4311         10th November 2014
4312       </div>
4313       <div class="body">
4314         <p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
4315 without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
4316 democracy.  But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
4317
4318 <p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
4319 surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
4320 the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
4321 is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor.  Such SMTP option would be
4322 a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
4323 between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
4324 to the people peeking on the wire.  I
4325 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
4326 this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
4327 lot of useful feedback and suggestions.  It also became obvious to me
4328 that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
4329 documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
4330 <a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
4331 Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
4332 propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
4333
4334 <p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
4335 providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
4336 looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion.  With such addresses
4337 the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
4338 go to the correct SMTP server.  To do this, one need to configure the
4339 Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
4340 emails for this .onion domain.  To learn more about Exim configuration
4341 in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
4342 set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
4343 set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian.  Getting it to work
4344 were fairly easy, and
4345 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
4346 source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github.  I
4347 plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
4348 useful approach.</p>
4349
4350 <p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
4351 mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
4352 get rid of exim4).  Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
4353 above, build the deb and install it on the machine.  Next, run
4354 <tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
4355 the instructions to get the service up and running.  Restart tor and
4356 exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
4357 this:</p>
4358
4359 <p><blockquote><pre>
4360 torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
4361   --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
4362 </pre></blockquote></p>
4363
4364 <p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor.  Replace the email
4365 address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
4366
4367 <p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
4368 easier and more automatic.  Especially the tor setup need more work.
4369 Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
4370 should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
4371 architecture independent.  It would probably also make the code easier
4372 to review.  The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
4373 exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd.  It would be better if
4374 no daemon and no socket is needed.  I suspect it is possible to get
4375 exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
4376 socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
4377 system.</p>
4378
4379 <p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
4380 <tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
4381 SMTorP. :)</p>
4382
4383       </div>
4384       <div class="tags">
4385
4386
4387         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>.
4388
4389
4390       </div>
4391     </div>
4392     <div class="padding"></div>
4393
4394     <div class="entry">
4395       <div class="title">
4396         <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>
4397       </div>
4398       <div class="date">
4399         22nd October 2014
4400       </div>
4401       <div class="body">
4402         <p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
4403 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
4404 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
4405 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
4406 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
4407 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
4408 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
4409 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
4410 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
4411 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
4412 lists I recently took over:</p>
4413
4414 <p><blockquote><pre>
4415 % time listadmin xiph
4416 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
4417 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
4418
4419 real    0m1.709s
4420 user    0m0.232s
4421 sys     0m0.012s
4422 %
4423 </pre></blockquote></p>
4424
4425 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
4426 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
4427 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
4428 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
4429 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
4430 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
4431 program.</p>
4432
4433 <p>If you install
4434 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
4435 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
4436 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
4437
4438 <p><blockquote><pre>
4439 username username@example.org
4440 spamlevel 23
4441 default discard
4442 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
4443
4444 password secret
4445 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
4446 mailman-list@lists.example.com
4447
4448 password hidden
4449 other-list@otherserver.example.org
4450 </pre></blockquote></p>
4451
4452 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
4453 learn the details.</p>
4454
4455 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
4456 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
4457 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
4458 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
4459
4460 <p><blockquote><pre>
4461 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
4462 </pre></blockquote></p>
4463
4464 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
4465 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
4466 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
4467 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
4468 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
4469 email.</p>
4470
4471 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
4472 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
4473 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
4474 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
4475 software.</p>
4476
4477 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
4478 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
4479 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
4480
4481 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
4482 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
4483 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
4484 sure why.</p>
4485
4486       </div>
4487       <div class="tags">
4488
4489
4490         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.
4491
4492
4493       </div>
4494     </div>
4495     <div class="padding"></div>
4496
4497     <div class="entry">
4498       <div class="title">
4499         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html">Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</a>
4500       </div>
4501       <div class="date">
4502         17th October 2014
4503       </div>
4504       <div class="body">
4505         <p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
4506 problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
4507 And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
4508 Normally something more is needed.  But thanks to
4509 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
4510 package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
4511 to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
4512
4513 <p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
4514 firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
4515 the kernel modules for the hardware).  (It can also install user space
4516 programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
4517 of this story.)</p>
4518
4519 <p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
4520 values are needed.  First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
4521 into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
4522 in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system.  This is done by
4523 preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
4524 isenkram-cli package.  The package name is next passed to debootstrap
4525 for installation.  With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
4526 will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
4527 packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
4528 isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
4529
4530 <p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
4531 most firmware unfortunately is non-free.  This is done by preseeding
4532 the apt-mirror-setup step.  This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
4533 hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
4534
4535 <p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
4536 firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
4537
4538 <p><blockquote><pre>
4539 base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
4540 apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
4541 </pre></blockquote></p>
4542
4543 <p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
4544 both firmware and user space packages when using this method.  It also
4545 do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later.  Installing both
4546 firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
4547 want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
4548 and one for user space programs.  The firmware task is enabled by
4549 default, while the one for user space programs is not.  This split is
4550 implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
4551
4552 <p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
4553 this recipe work for you. :)</p>
4554
4555 <p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work.  First and
4556 foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
4557 files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/.  So the
4558 isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find.  First there
4559 is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
4560
4561 <p><blockquote><pre>
4562 Task: isenkram-packages
4563 Section: hardware
4564 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4565  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
4566  proposed.
4567 Test-new-install: show show
4568 Relevance: 8
4569 Packages: for-current-hardware
4570
4571 Task: isenkram-firmware
4572 Section: hardware
4573 Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
4574  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
4575  packages are proposed.
4576 Test-new-install: mark show
4577 Relevance: 8
4578 Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
4579 </pre></blockquote></p>
4580
4581 <p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
4582 should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
4583 /usr/lib/tasksel/packages/.  The scripts use other scripts to get a
4584 list of packages to install.  The for-current-hardware-firmware script
4585 look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
4586
4587 <p><blockquote><pre>
4588 #!/bin/sh
4589 #
4590 PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
4591 export PATH
4592 isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
4593 </pre></blockquote></p>
4594
4595 <p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
4596 tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
4597
4598 <p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
4599 installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
4600 --new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
4601 install.</p>
4602
4603 <p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
4604 pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
4605 install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
4606
4607       </div>
4608       <div class="tags">
4609
4610
4611         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>.
4612
4613
4614       </div>
4615     </div>
4616     <div class="padding"></div>
4617
4618     <div class="entry">
4619       <div class="title">
4620         <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>
4621       </div>
4622       <div class="date">
4623          4th October 2014
4624       </div>
4625       <div class="body">
4626         <p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen.  Above the
4627 bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
4628 with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
4629 on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
4630
4631 <p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
4632
4633 <p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
4634 about this hidden Linux installation.  It is interesting what
4635 <a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
4636
4637       </div>
4638       <div class="tags">
4639
4640
4641         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>.
4642
4643
4644       </div>
4645     </div>
4646     <div class="padding"></div>
4647
4648     <div class="entry">
4649       <div class="title">
4650         <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>
4651       </div>
4652       <div class="date">
4653          4th October 2014
4654       </div>
4655       <div class="body">
4656         <p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
4657 got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
4658 developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
4659 This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
4660 Dibb.</p>
4661
4662 <p>I just wrapped up
4663 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
4664 new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
4665 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
4666 download page</a>.  This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
4667 0.17.</p>
4668
4669 <ul>
4670
4671  <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
4672  <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
4673    non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
4674  <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
4675  <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
4676  <li>Fix include orders</li>
4677  <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
4678  <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
4679  <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
4680    the palette size is the same.</li>
4681  <li>Fix array printing.</li>
4682  <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
4683  <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
4684  <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
4685    with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
4686
4687 </ul>
4688
4689 <p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
4690 Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
4691 project the last nine years.  Please check it out. :)</p>
4692
4693       </div>
4694       <div class="tags">
4695
4696
4697         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>.
4698
4699
4700       </div>
4701     </div>
4702     <div class="padding"></div>
4703
4704     <div class="entry">
4705       <div class="title">
4706         <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>
4707       </div>
4708       <div class="date">
4709         26th September 2014
4710       </div>
4711       <div class="body">
4712         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4713 project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
4714 powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
4715 web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
4716 boot of both  clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
4717 Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
4718 to mention here).  We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
4719 the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
4720 freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
4721 future.  The
4722 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
4723 status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
4724 work left.  Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
4725 but it is possible to work around these to get anyway.  Here is a
4726 recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
4727
4728 <p>First, download the test ISO via
4729 <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
4730 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
4731 or rsync (use
4732 ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
4733 The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
4734 12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
4735 install with some tweaking.</p>
4736
4737 <p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
4738 (use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
4739
4740 <p><blockquote><pre>
4741 nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
4742 </pre></blockquote></p>
4743
4744 <p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
4745 optimization.  Return to the installation, select the profile you want
4746 and continue.  Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
4747 due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
4748
4749 <p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
4750 this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be.  All my
4751 test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
4752 your need.</p>
4753
4754 <p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
4755 root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
4756 education-desktop-XXX metapackage.  XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
4757 or mate.  If you want several desktop options, install more than one
4758 metapackage.  Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
4759 graphical login screen.  This workaround should no longer be needed
4760 once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
4761 days.</p>
4762
4763 <p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
4764 tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
4765 update the debian-cd git repository.  The eatmydata, grub and desktop
4766 issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
4767 on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again.  Well the
4768 eatmydata optimization is really just disabled.  The proper fix
4769 require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
4770 provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
4771 The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
4772
4773 <p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
4774 quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
4775 installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
4776
4777       </div>
4778       <div class="tags">
4779
4780
4781         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>.
4782
4783
4784       </div>
4785     </div>
4786     <div class="padding"></div>
4787
4788     <div class="entry">
4789       <div class="title">
4790         <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>
4791       </div>
4792       <div class="date">
4793         25th September 2014
4794       </div>
4795       <div class="body">
4796         <p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
4797 to handle my fairly large DVD collection.  It is a nice command line
4798 tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
4799 etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format.  But lsdvd have not seen
4800 any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
4801 its use with some DVDs.  Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
4802 sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
4803 project, without any reply.  But I use it regularly and would like to
4804 get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
4805 into Debian</a>.  So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
4806 the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
4807 he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
4808 over.  And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
4809
4810 <p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
4811 maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
4812 project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
4813 collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
4814 I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
4815 repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too.  If you got
4816 a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
4817 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
4818 <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
4819 list</a>. :)</p>
4820
4821       </div>
4822       <div class="tags">
4823
4824
4825         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>.
4826
4827
4828       </div>
4829     </div>
4830     <div class="padding"></div>
4831
4832     <div class="entry">
4833       <div class="title">
4834         <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>
4835       </div>
4836       <div class="date">
4837         16th September 2014
4838       </div>
4839       <div class="body">
4840         <p>The <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> installer could be
4841 a lot quicker.  When we install more than 2000 packages in
4842 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> using
4843 tasksel in the installer, unpacking the binary packages take forever.
4844 A part of the slow I/O issue was discussed in
4845 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/613428">bug #613428</a> about too
4846 much file system sync-ing done by dpkg, which is the package
4847 responsible for unpacking the binary packages.  Other parts (like code
4848 executed by postinst scripts) might also sync to disk during
4849 installation.  All this sync-ing to disk do not really make sense to
4850 me.  If the machine crash half-way through, I start over, I do not try
4851 to salvage the half installed system.  So the failure sync-ing is
4852 supposed to protect against, hardware or system crash, is not really
4853 relevant while the installer is running.</p>
4854
4855 <p>A few days ago, I thought of a way to get rid of all the file
4856 system sync()-ing in a fairly non-intrusive way, without the need to
4857 change the code in several packages.  The idea is not new, but I have
4858 not heard anyone propose the approach using dpkg-divert before.  It
4859 depend on the small and clever package
4860 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/eatmydata">eatmydata</a>, which
4861 uses LD_PRELOAD to replace the system functions for syncing data to
4862 disk with functions doing nothing, thus allowing programs to live
4863 dangerous while speeding up disk I/O significantly.  Instead of
4864 modifying the implementation of dpkg, apt and tasksel (which are the
4865 packages responsible for selecting, fetching and installing packages),
4866 it occurred to me that we could just divert the programs away, replace
4867 them with a simple shell wrapper calling
4868 "eatmydata&nbsp;$program&nbsp;$@", to get the same effect.
4869 Two days ago I decided to test the idea, and wrapped up a simple
4870 implementation for the Debian Edu udeb.</p>
4871
4872 <p>The effect was stunning.  In my first test it reduced the running
4873 time of the pkgsel step (installing tasks) from 64 to less than 44
4874 minutes (20 minutes shaved off the installation) on an old Dell
4875 Latitude D505 machine.  I am not quite sure what the optimised time
4876 would have been, as I messed up the testing a bit, causing the debconf
4877 priority to get low enough for two questions to pop up during
4878 installation.  As soon as I saw the questions I moved the installation
4879 along, but do not know how long the question were holding up the
4880 installation.  I did some more measurements using Debian Edu Jessie,
4881 and got these results.  The time measured is the time stamp in
4882 /var/log/syslog between the "pkgsel: starting tasksel" and the
4883 "pkgsel: finishing up" lines, if you want to do the same measurement
4884 yourself.  In Debian Edu, the tasksel dialog do not show up, and the
4885 timing thus do not depend on how quickly the user handle the tasksel
4886 dialog.</p>
4887
4888 <p><table>
4889
4890 <tr>
4891 <th>Machine/setup</th>
4892 <th>Original tasksel</th>
4893 <th>Optimised tasksel</th>
4894 <th>Reduction</th>
4895 </tr>
4896
4897 <tr>
4898 <td>Latitude D505 Main+LTSP LXDE</td>
4899 <td>64 min (07:46-08:50)</td>
4900 <td><44 min (11:27-12:11)</td>
4901 <td>>20 min 18%</td>
4902 </tr>
4903
4904 <tr>
4905 <td>Latitude D505 Roaming LXDE</td>
4906 <td>57 min (08:48-09:45)</td>
4907 <td>34 min (07:43-08:17)</td>
4908 <td>23 min 40%</td>
4909 </tr>
4910
4911 <tr>
4912 <td>Latitude D505 Minimal</td>
4913 <td>22 min (10:37-10:59)</td>
4914 <td>11 min (11:16-11:27)</td>
4915 <td>11 min 50%</td>
4916 </tr>
4917
4918 <tr>
4919 <td>Thinkpad X200 Minimal</td>
4920 <td>6 min (08:19-08:25)</td>
4921 <td>4 min (08:04-08:08)</td>
4922 <td>2 min 33%</td>
4923 </tr>
4924
4925 <tr>
4926 <td>Thinkpad X200 Roaming KDE</td>
4927 <td>19 min (09:21-09:40)</td>
4928 <td>15 min (10:25-10:40)</td>
4929 <td>4 min 21%</td>
4930 </tr>
4931
4932 </table></p>
4933
4934 <p>The test is done using a netinst ISO on a USB stick, so some of the
4935 time is spent downloading packages.  The connection to the Internet
4936 was 100Mbit/s during testing, so downloading should not be a
4937 significant factor in the measurement.  Download typically took a few
4938 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the amount of packages being
4939 installed.</p>
4940
4941 <p>The speedup is implemented by using two hooks in
4942 <a href="https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/">Debian
4943 Installer</a>, the pre-pkgsel.d hook to set up the diverts, and the
4944 finish-install.d hook to remove the divert at the end of the
4945 installation.  I picked the pre-pkgsel.d hook instead of the
4946 post-base-installer.d hook because I test using an ISO without the
4947 eatmydata package included, and the post-base-installer.d hook in
4948 Debian Edu can only operate on packages included in the ISO.  The
4949 negative effect of this is that I am unable to activate this
4950 optimization for the kernel installation step in d-i.  If the code is
4951 moved to the post-base-installer.d hook, the speedup would be larger
4952 for the entire installation.</p>
4953
4954 <p>I've implemented this in the
4955 <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-install">debian-edu-install</a>
4956 git repository, and plan to provide the optimization as part of the
4957 Debian Edu installation.  If you want to test this yourself, you can
4958 create two files in the installer (or in an udeb).  One shell script
4959 need do go into /usr/lib/pre-pkgsel.d/, with content like this:</p>
4960
4961 <p><blockquote><pre>
4962 #!/bin/sh
4963 set -e
4964 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
4965 info() {
4966     logger -t my-pkgsel "info: $*"
4967 }
4968 error() {
4969     logger -t my-pkgsel "error: $*"
4970 }
4971 override_install() {
4972     apt-install eatmydata || true
4973     if [ -x /target/usr/bin/eatmydata ] ; then
4974         for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
4975             file=/usr/bin/$bin
4976             # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already.
4977             if [ -f /target$file ] ; then
4978                 info "diverting $file using eatmydata"
4979                 printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \
4980                     > /target$file.edu
4981                 chmod 755 /target$file.edu
4982                 in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
4983                     --rename --quiet --add $file
4984                 ln -sf ./$bin.edu /target$file
4985             else
4986                 error "unable to divert $file, as it is missing."
4987             fi
4988         done
4989     else
4990         error "unable to find /usr/bin/eatmydata after installing the eatmydata pacage"
4991     fi
4992 }
4993
4994 override_install
4995 </pre></blockquote></p>
4996
4997 <p>To clean up, another shell script should go into
4998 /usr/lib/finish-install.d/ with code like this:
4999
5000 <p><blockquote><pre>
5001 #! /bin/sh -e
5002 . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
5003 error() {
5004     logger -t my-finish-install "error: $@"
5005 }
5006 remove_install_override() {
5007     for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do
5008         file=/usr/bin/$bin
5009         if [ -x /target$file.edu ] ; then
5010             rm /target$file
5011             in-target dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \
5012                 --rename --quiet --remove $file
5013             rm /target$file.edu
5014         else
5015             error "Missing divert for $file."
5016         fi
5017     done
5018     sync # Flush file buffers before continuing
5019 }
5020
5021 remove_install_override
5022 </pre></blockquote></p>
5023
5024 <p>In Debian Edu, I placed both code fragments in a separate script
5025 edu-eatmydata-install and call it from the pre-pkgsel.d and
5026 finish-install.d scripts.</p>
5027
5028 <p>By now you might ask if this change should get into the normal
5029 Debian installer too?  I suspect it should, but am not sure the
5030 current debian-installer coordinators find it useful enough.  It also
5031 depend on the side effects of the change.  I'm not aware of any, but I
5032 guess we will see if the change is safe after some more testing.
5033 Perhaps there is some package in Debian depending on sync() and
5034 fsync() having effect?  Perhaps it should go into its own udeb, to
5035 allow those of us wanting to enable it to do so without affecting
5036 everyone.</p>
5037
5038 <p>Update 2014-09-24: Since a few days ago, enabling this optimization
5039 will break installation of all programs using gnutls because of
5040 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">bug #702711</a>.  An updated
5041 eatmydata package in Debian will solve it.</p>
5042
5043 <p>Update 2014-10-17: The bug mentioned above is fixed in testing and
5044 the optimization work again.  And I have discovered that the
5045 dpkg-divert trick is not really needed and implemented a slightly
5046 simpler approach as part of the debian-edu-install package.  See
5047 tools/edu-eatmydata-install in the source package.</p>
5048
5049 <p>Update 2014-11-11: Unfortunately, a new
5050 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/765738">bug #765738</a> in eatmydata only
5051 triggering on i386 made it into testing, and broke this installation
5052 optimization again.  If <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/768893">unblock
5053 request 768893</a> is accepted, it should be working again.</p>
5054
5055       </div>
5056       <div class="tags">
5057
5058
5059         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>.
5060
5061
5062       </div>
5063     </div>
5064     <div class="padding"></div>
5065
5066     <div class="entry">
5067       <div class="title">
5068         <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>
5069       </div>
5070       <div class="date">
5071         10th September 2014
5072       </div>
5073       <div class="body">
5074         <p>Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with the
5075 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> about
5076 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20140909-sks-keyservers/">the
5077 OpenPGP keyserver pool sks-keyservers.net</a>, and was very happy to
5078 learn that there is a large set of publicly available key servers to
5079 use when looking for peoples public key.  So far I have used
5080 subkeys.pgp.net, and some times wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net when the former
5081 were misbehaving, but those days are ended.  The servers I have used
5082 up until yesterday have been slow and some times unavailable.  I hope
5083 those problems are gone now.</p>
5084
5085 <p>Behind the round robin DNS entry of the
5086 <a href="https://sks-keyservers.net/">sks-keyservers.net</a> service
5087 there is a pool of more than 100 keyservers which are checked every
5088 day to ensure they are well connected and up to date.  It must be
5089 better than what I have used so far. :)</p>
5090
5091 <p>Yesterdays speaker told me that the service is the default
5092 keyserver provided by the default configuration in GnuPG, but this do
5093 not seem to be used in Debian.  Perhaps it should?</p>
5094
5095 <p>Anyway, I've updated my ~/.gnupg/options file to now include this
5096 line:</p>
5097
5098 <p><blockquote><pre>
5099 keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
5100 </pre></blockquote></p>
5101
5102 <p>With GnuPG version 2 one can also locate the keyserver using SRV
5103 entries in DNS.  Just for fun, I did just that at work, so now every
5104 user of GnuPG at the University of Oslo should find a OpenGPG
5105 keyserver automatically should their need it:</p>
5106
5107 <p><blockquote><pre>
5108 % host -t srv _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no
5109 _pgpkey-http._tcp.uio.no has SRV record 0 100 11371 pool.sks-keyservers.net.
5110 %
5111 </pre></blockquote></p>
5112
5113 <p>Now if only
5114 <a href="http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-shaw-openpgp-hkp/">the
5115 HKP lookup protocol</a> supported finding signature paths, I would be
5116 very happy.  It can look up a given key or search for a user ID, but I
5117 normally do not want that, but to find a trust path from my key to
5118 another key.  Given a user ID or key ID, I would like to find (and
5119 download) the keys representing a signature path from my key to the
5120 key in question, to be able to get a trust path between the two keys.
5121 This is as far as I can tell not possible today.  Perhaps something
5122 for a future version of the protocol?</p>
5123
5124       </div>
5125       <div class="tags">
5126
5127
5128         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>.
5129
5130
5131       </div>
5132     </div>
5133     <div class="padding"></div>
5134
5135     <div class="entry">
5136       <div class="title">
5137         <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>
5138       </div>
5139       <div class="date">
5140         17th June 2014
5141       </div>
5142       <div class="body">
5143         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
5144 project</a> provide an instruction manual for teachers, system
5145 administrators and other users that contain useful tips for setting up
5146 and maintaining a Debian Edu installation.  This text is about how the
5147 text processing of this manual is handled in the project.</p>
5148
5149 <p>One goal of the project is to provide information in the native
5150 language of its users, and for this we need to handle translations.
5151 But we also want to make sure each language contain the same
5152 information, so for this we need a good way to keep the translations
5153 in sync.  And we want it to be easy for our users to improve the
5154 documentation, avoiding the need to learn special formats or tools to
5155 contribute, and the obvious way to do this is to make it possible to
5156 edit the documentation using a web browser.  We also want it to be
5157 easy for translators to keep the translation up to date, and give them
5158 help in figuring out what need to be translated. Here is the list of
5159 tools and the process we have found trying to reach all these
5160 goals.</p>
5161
5162 <p>We maintain the authoritative source of our manual in the
5163 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">Debian
5164 wiki</a>, as several wiki pages written in English.  It consist of one
5165 front page with references to the different chapters, several pages
5166 for each chapter, and finally one "collection page" gluing all the
5167 chapters together into one large web page (aka
5168 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/AllInOne">the
5169 AllInOne page</a>).  The AllInOne page is the one used for further
5170 processing and translations.  Thanks to the fact that the
5171 <a href="http://moinmo.in/">MoinMoin</a> installation on
5172 wiki.debian.org support exporting pages in
5173 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">the Docbook format</a>, we can fetch
5174 the list of pages to export using the raw version of the AllInOne
5175 page, loop over each of them to generate a Docbook XML version of the
5176 manual.  This process also download images and transform image
5177 references to use the locally downloaded images.  The generated
5178 Docbook XML files are slightly broken, so some post-processing is done
5179 using the <tt>documentation/scripts/get_manual</tt> program, and the
5180 result is a nice Docbook XML file (debian-edu-wheezy-manual.xml) and
5181 a handfull of images.  The XML file can now be used to generate PDF, HTML
5182 and epub versions of the English manual.  This is the basic step of
5183 our process, making PDF (using dblatex), HTML (using xsltproc) and
5184 epub (using dbtoepub) version from Docbook XML, and the resulting files
5185 are placed in the debian-edu-doc-en binary package.</p>
5186
5187 <p>But English documentation is not enough for us.  We want translated
5188 documentation too, and we want to make it easy for translators to
5189 track the English original.  For this we use the
5190 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/poxml.html">poxml</a> package,
5191 which allow us to transform the English Docbook XML file into a
5192 translation file (a .pot file), usable with the normal gettext based
5193 translation tools used by those translating free software.  The pot
5194 file is used to create and maintain translation files (several .po
5195 files), which the translations update with the native language
5196 translations of all titles, paragraphs and blocks of text in the
5197 original.  The next step is combining the original English Docbook XML
5198 and the translation file (say debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.po), to
5199 create a translated Docbook XML file (in this case
5200 debian-edu-wheezy-manual.nb.xml).  This translated (or partly
5201 translated, if the translation is not complete) Docbook XML file can
5202 then be used like the original to create a PDF, HTML and epub version
5203 of the documentation.</p>
5204
5205 <p>The translators use different tools to edit the .po files.  We
5206 recommend using
5207 <a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/development/lokalize/">lokalize</a>,
5208 while some use emacs and vi, others can use web based editors like
5209 <a href="http://pootle.translatehouse.org/">Poodle</a> or
5210 <a href="https://www.transifex.com/">Transifex</a>.  All we care about
5211 is where the .po file end up, in our git repository.  Updated
5212 translations can either be committed directly to git, or submitted as
5213 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/src:debian-edu-doc">bug reports
5214 against the debian-edu-doc package</a>.</p>
5215
5216 <p>One challenge is images, which both might need to be translated (if
5217 they show translated user applications), and are needed in different
5218 formats when creating PDF and HTML versions (epub is a HTML version in
5219 this regard).  For this we transform the original PNG images to the
5220 needed density and format during build, and have a way to provide
5221 translated images by storing translated versions in
5222 images/$LANGUAGECODE/.  I am a bit unsure about the details here.  The
5223 package maintainers know more.</p>
5224
5225 <p>If you wonder what the result look like, we provide
5226 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">the content
5227 of the documentation packages on the web</a>.  See for example the
5228 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/it/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.pdf">Italian
5229 PDF version</a> or the
5230 <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/de/debian-edu-wheezy-manual.html">German
5231 HTML version</a>.  We do not yet build the epub version by default,
5232 but perhaps it will be done in the future.</p>
5233
5234 <p>To learn more, check out
5235 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/debian-edu-doc.html">the
5236 debian-edu-doc package</a>,
5237 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/">the
5238 manual on the wiki</a> and
5239 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Wheezy/Translations">the
5240 translation instructions</a> in the manual.</p>
5241
5242       </div>
5243       <div class="tags">
5244
5245
5246         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>.
5247
5248
5249       </div>
5250     </div>
5251     <div class="padding"></div>
5252
5253     <div class="entry">
5254       <div class="title">
5255         <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>
5256       </div>
5257       <div class="date">
5258         23rd April 2014
5259       </div>
5260       <div class="body">
5261         <p>It would be nice if it was easier in Debian to get all the hardware
5262 related packages relevant for the computer installed automatically.
5263 So I implemented one, using
5264 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">my Isenkram
5265 package</a>.  To use it, install the tasksel and isenkram packages and
5266 run tasksel as user root.  You should be presented with a new option,
5267 "Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)".  When you
5268 select it, tasksel will install the packages isenkram claim is fit for
5269 the current hardware, hot pluggable or not.<p>
5270
5271 <p>The implementation is in two files, one is the tasksel menu entry
5272 description, and the other is the script used to extract the list of
5273 packages to install.  The first part is in
5274 <tt>/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc</tt> and look like
5275 this:</p>
5276
5277 <p><blockquote><pre>
5278 Task: isenkram
5279 Section: hardware
5280 Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
5281  Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
5282  proposed.
5283 Test-new-install: mark show
5284 Relevance: 8
5285 Packages: for-current-hardware
5286 </pre></blockquote></p>
5287
5288 <p>The second part is in
5289 <tt>/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/for-current-hardware</tt> and look like
5290 this:</p>
5291
5292 <p><blockquote><pre>
5293 #!/bin/sh
5294 #
5295 (
5296     isenkram-lookup
5297     isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
5298 ) | sort -u
5299 </pre></blockquote></p>
5300
5301 <p>All in all, a very short and simple implementation making it
5302 trivial to install the hardware dependent package we all may want to
5303 have installed on our machines.  I've not been able to find a way to
5304 get tasksel to tell you exactly which packages it plan to install
5305 before doing the installation.  So if you are curious or careful,
5306 check the output from the isenkram-* command line tools first.</p>
5307
5308 <p>The information about which packages are handling which hardware is
5309 fetched either from the isenkram package itself in
5310 /usr/share/isenkram/, from git.debian.org or from the APT package
5311 database (using the Modaliases header).  The APT package database
5312 parsing have caused a nasty resource leak in the isenkram daemon (bugs
5313 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/719837">#719837</a> and
5314 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/730704">#730704</a>).  The cause is in
5315 the python-apt code (bug
5316 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/745487">#745487</a>), but using a
5317 workaround I was able to get rid of the file descriptor leak and
5318 reduce the memory leak from ~30 MiB per hardware detection down to
5319 around 2 MiB per hardware detection.  It should make the desktop
5320 daemon a lot more useful.  The fix is in version 0.7 uploaded to
5321 unstable today.</p>
5322
5323 <p>I believe the current way of mapping hardware to packages in
5324 Isenkram is is a good draft, but in the future I expect isenkram to
5325 use the AppStream data source for this.  A proposal for getting proper
5326 AppStream support into Debian is floating around as
5327 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a>, and
5328 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FAppStreamDEP11Implementation.AppStream.2FDEP-11_for_the_Debian_Archive">GSoC
5329 project</a> will take place this summer to improve the situation.  I
5330 look forward to seeing the result, and welcome patches for isenkram to
5331 start using the information when it is ready.</p>
5332
5333 <p>If you want your package to map to some specific hardware, either
5334 add a "Xb-Modaliases" header to your control file like I did in
5335 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">the pymissile
5336 package</a> or submit a bug report with the details to the isenkram
5337 package.  See also
5338 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">all my
5339 blog posts tagged isenkram</a> for details on the notation.  I expect
5340 the information will be migrated to AppStream eventually, but for the
5341 moment I got no better place to store it.</p>
5342
5343       </div>
5344       <div class="tags">
5345
5346
5347         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>.
5348
5349
5350       </div>
5351     </div>
5352     <div class="padding"></div>
5353
5354     <div class="entry">
5355       <div class="title">
5356         <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>
5357       </div>
5358       <div class="date">
5359         15th April 2014
5360       </div>
5361       <div class="body">
5362         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5363 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware to make
5364 it easy for non-technical people to host their data and communication
5365 at home, and being able to communicate with their friends and family
5366 encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It is still going strong, and
5367 today a major mile stone was reached.</p>
5368
5369 <p>Today, the last of the packages currently used by the project to
5370 created the system images were accepted into Debian Unstable.  It was
5371 the freedombox-setup package, which is used to configure the images
5372 during build and on the first boot.  Now all one need to get going is
5373 the build code from the freedom-maker git repository and packages from
5374 Debian.  And once the freedombox-setup package enter testing, we can
5375 build everything directly from Debian. :)</p>
5376
5377 <p>Some key packages used by Freedombox are
5378 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>,
5379 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/plinth">plinth</a>,
5380 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pagekite">pagekite</a>,
5381 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/tor">tor</a>,
5382 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>,
5383 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/owncloud">owncloud</a> and
5384 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/dnsmasq">dnsmasq</a>.  There
5385 are plans to integrate more packages into the setup.  User
5386 documentation is maintained on the Debian wiki.  Please
5387 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Manual/Jessie">check out
5388 the manual</a> and help us improve it.</p>
5389
5390 <p>To test for yourself and create boot images with the FreedomBox
5391 setup, run this on a Debian machine using a user with sudo rights to
5392 become root:</p>
5393
5394 <p><pre>
5395 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
5396   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
5397   u-boot-tools
5398 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
5399   freedom-maker
5400 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
5401 </pre></p>
5402
5403 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
5404 devices.  See the README in the freedom-maker git repo for more
5405 details on the build.  If you do not want all three images, trim the
5406 make line.  Note that the virtualbox-image target is not really
5407 virtualbox specific.  It create a x86 image usable in kvm, qemu,
5408 vmware and any other x86 virtual machine environment.  You might need
5409 the version of vmdebootstrap in Jessie to get the build working, as it
5410 include fixes for a race condition with kpartx.</p>
5411
5412 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
5413 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
5414 the preseed values:</p>
5415
5416 <p><pre>
5417 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
5418 </pre></p>
5419
5420 <p>I have not tested it myself the last few weeks, so I do not know if
5421 it still work.</p>
5422
5423 <p>If you wonder how to help, one task you could look at is using
5424 systemd as the boot system.  It will become the default for Linux in
5425 Jessie, so we need to make sure it is usable on the Freedombox.  I did
5426 a simple test a few weeks ago, and noticed dnsmasq failed to start
5427 during boot when using systemd.  I suspect there are other problems
5428 too. :) To detect problems, there is a test suite included, which can
5429 be run from the plinth web interface.</p>
5430
5431 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
5432 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
5433 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
5434 irc.debian.org)</a> and
5435 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5436 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5437
5438       </div>
5439       <div class="tags">
5440
5441
5442         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>.
5443
5444
5445       </div>
5446     </div>
5447     <div class="padding"></div>
5448
5449     <div class="entry">
5450       <div class="title">
5451         <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>
5452       </div>
5453       <div class="date">
5454          9th April 2014
5455       </div>
5456       <div class="body">
5457         <p>For a while now, I have been looking for a sensible offsite backup
5458 solution for use at home.  My requirements are simple, it must be
5459 cheap and locally encrypted (in other words, I keep the encryption
5460 keys, the storage provider do not have access to my private files).
5461 One idea me and my friends had many years ago, before the cloud
5462 storage providers showed up, was to use Google mail as storage,
5463 writing a Linux block device storing blocks as emails in the mail
5464 service provided by Google, and thus get heaps of free space.  On top
5465 of this one can add encryption, RAID and volume management to have
5466 lots of (fairly slow, I admit that) cheap and encrypted storage.  But
5467 I never found time to implement such system.  But the last few weeks I
5468 have looked at a system called
5469 <a href="https://bitbucket.org/nikratio/s3ql/">S3QL</a>, a locally
5470 mounted network backed file system with the features I need.</p>
5471
5472 <p>S3QL is a fuse file system with a local cache and cloud storage,
5473 handling several different storage providers, any with Amazon S3,
5474 Google Drive or OpenStack API.  There are heaps of such storage
5475 providers.  S3QL can also use a local directory as storage, which
5476 combined with sshfs allow for file storage on any ssh server.  S3QL
5477 include support for encryption, compression, de-duplication, snapshots
5478 and immutable file systems, allowing me to mount the remote storage as
5479 a local mount point, look at and use the files as if they were local,
5480 while the content is stored in the cloud as well.  This allow me to
5481 have a backup that should survive fire.  The file system can not be
5482 shared between several machines at the same time, as only one can
5483 mount it at the time, but any machine with the encryption key and
5484 access to the storage service can mount it if it is unmounted.</p>
5485
5486 <p>It is simple to use.  I'm using it on Debian Wheezy, where the
5487 package is included already.  So to get started, run <tt>apt-get
5488 install s3ql</tt>.  Next, pick a storage provider.  I ended up picking
5489 Greenqloud, after reading their nice recipe on
5490 <a href="https://greenqloud.zendesk.com/entries/44611757-How-To-Use-S3QL-to-mount-a-StorageQloud-bucket-on-Debian-Wheezy">how
5491 to use S3QL with their Amazon S3 service</a>, because I trust the laws
5492 in Iceland more than those in USA when it come to keeping my personal
5493 data safe and private, and thus would rather spend money on a company
5494 in Iceland.  Another nice recipe is available from the article
5495 <a href="http://www.admin-magazine.com/HPC/Articles/HPC-Cloud-Storage">S3QL
5496 Filesystem for HPC Storage</a> by Jeff Layton in the HPC section of
5497 Admin magazine.  When the provider is picked, figure out how to get
5498 the API key needed to connect to the storage API.  With Greencloud,
5499 the key did not show up until I had added payment details to my
5500 account.</p>
5501
5502 <p>Armed with the API access details, it is time to create the file
5503 system.  First, create a new bucket in the cloud.  This bucket is the
5504 file system storage area.  I picked a bucket name reflecting the
5505 machine that was going to store data there, but any name will do.
5506 I'll refer to it as <tt>bucket-name</tt> below.  In addition, one need
5507 the API login and password, and a locally created password.  Store it
5508 all in ~root/.s3ql/authinfo2 like this:
5509
5510 <p><blockquote><pre>
5511 [s3c]
5512 storage-url: s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5513 backend-login: API-login
5514 backend-password: API-password
5515 fs-passphrase: local-password
5516 </pre></blockquote></p>
5517
5518 <p>I create my local passphrase using <tt>pwget 50</tt> or similar,
5519 but any sensible way to create a fairly random password should do it.
5520 Armed with these details, it is now time to run mkfs, entering the API
5521 details and password to create it:</p>
5522
5523 <p><blockquote><pre>
5524 # mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/s3ql-cache
5525 # mkfs.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5526   --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5527 Enter backend login:
5528 Enter backend password:
5529 Before using S3QL, make sure to read the user's guide, especially
5530 the 'Important Rules to Avoid Loosing Data' section.
5531 Enter encryption password:
5532 Confirm encryption password:
5533 Generating random encryption key...
5534 Creating metadata tables...
5535 Dumping metadata...
5536 ..objects..
5537 ..blocks..
5538 ..inodes..
5539 ..inode_blocks..
5540 ..symlink_targets..
5541 ..names..
5542 ..contents..
5543 ..ext_attributes..
5544 Compressing and uploading metadata...
5545 Wrote 0.00 MB of compressed metadata.
5546 # </pre></blockquote></p>
5547
5548 <p>The next step is mounting the file system to make the storage available.
5549
5550 <p><blockquote><pre>
5551 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5552   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
5553 Using 4 upload threads.
5554 Downloading and decompressing metadata...
5555 Reading metadata...
5556 ..objects..
5557 ..blocks..
5558 ..inodes..
5559 ..inode_blocks..
5560 ..symlink_targets..
5561 ..names..
5562 ..contents..
5563 ..ext_attributes..
5564 Mounting filesystem...
5565 # df -h /s3ql
5566 Filesystem                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
5567 s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name  1.0T     0  1.0T   0% /s3ql
5568 #
5569 </pre></blockquote></p>
5570
5571 <p>The file system is now ready for use.  I use rsync to store my
5572 backups in it, and as the metadata used by rsync is downloaded at
5573 mount time, no network traffic (and storage cost) is triggered by
5574 running rsync.  To unmount, one should not use the normal umount
5575 command, as this will not flush the cache to the cloud storage, but
5576 instead running the umount.s3ql command like this:
5577
5578 <p><blockquote><pre>
5579 # umount.s3ql /s3ql
5580 #
5581 </pre></blockquote></p>
5582
5583 <p>There is a fsck command available to check the file system and
5584 correct any problems detected.  This can be used if the local server
5585 crashes while the file system is mounted, to reset the "already
5586 mounted" flag.  This is what it look like when processing a working
5587 file system:</p>
5588
5589 <p><blockquote><pre>
5590 # fsck.s3ql --force --ssl s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name
5591 Using cached metadata.
5592 File system seems clean, checking anyway.
5593 Checking DB integrity...
5594 Creating temporary extra indices...
5595 Checking lost+found...
5596 Checking cached objects...
5597 Checking names (refcounts)...
5598 Checking contents (names)...
5599 Checking contents (inodes)...
5600 Checking contents (parent inodes)...
5601 Checking objects (reference counts)...
5602 Checking objects (backend)...
5603 ..processed 5000 objects so far..
5604 ..processed 10000 objects so far..
5605 ..processed 15000 objects so far..
5606 Checking objects (sizes)...
5607 Checking blocks (referenced objects)...
5608 Checking blocks (refcounts)...
5609 Checking inode-block mapping (blocks)...
5610 Checking inode-block mapping (inodes)...
5611 Checking inodes (refcounts)...
5612 Checking inodes (sizes)...
5613 Checking extended attributes (names)...
5614 Checking extended attributes (inodes)...
5615 Checking symlinks (inodes)...
5616 Checking directory reachability...
5617 Checking unix conventions...
5618 Checking referential integrity...
5619 Dropping temporary indices...
5620 Backing up old metadata...
5621 Dumping metadata...
5622 ..objects..
5623 ..blocks..
5624 ..inodes..
5625 ..inode_blocks..
5626 ..symlink_targets..
5627 ..names..
5628 ..contents..
5629 ..ext_attributes..
5630 Compressing and uploading metadata...
5631 Wrote 0.89 MB of compressed metadata.
5632 #
5633 </pre></blockquote></p>
5634
5635 <p>Thanks to the cache, working on files that fit in the cache is very
5636 quick, about the same speed as local file access.  Uploading large
5637 amount of data is to me limited by the bandwidth out of and into my
5638 house.  Uploading 685 MiB with a 100 MiB cache gave me 305 kiB/s,
5639 which is very close to my upload speed, and downloading the same
5640 Debian installation ISO gave me 610 kiB/s, close to my download speed.
5641 Both were measured using <tt>dd</tt>.  So for me, the bottleneck is my
5642 network, not the file system code.  I do not know what a good cache
5643 size would be, but suspect that the cache should e larger than your
5644 working set.</p>
5645
5646 <p>I mentioned that only one machine can mount the file system at the
5647 time.  If another machine try, it is told that the file system is
5648 busy:</p>
5649
5650 <p><blockquote><pre>
5651 # mount.s3ql --cachedir /var/lib/s3ql-cache --authfile /root/.s3ql/authinfo2 \
5652   --ssl --allow-root s3c://s.greenqloud.com:443/bucket-name /s3ql
5653 Using 8 upload threads.
5654 Backend reports that fs is still mounted elsewhere, aborting.
5655 #
5656 </pre></blockquote></p>
5657
5658 <p>The file content is uploaded when the cache is full, while the
5659 metadata is uploaded once every 24 hour by default.  To ensure the
5660 file system content is flushed to the cloud, one can either umount the
5661 file system, or ask S3QL to flush the cache and metadata using
5662 s3qlctrl:
5663
5664 <p><blockquote><pre>
5665 # s3qlctrl upload-meta /s3ql
5666 # s3qlctrl flushcache /s3ql
5667 #
5668 </pre></blockquote></p>
5669
5670 <p>If you are curious about how much space your data uses in the
5671 cloud, and how much compression and deduplication cut down on the
5672 storage usage, you can use s3qlstat on the mounted file system to get
5673 a report:</p>
5674
5675 <p><blockquote><pre>
5676 # s3qlstat /s3ql
5677 Directory entries:    9141
5678 Inodes:               9143
5679 Data blocks:          8851
5680 Total data size:      22049.38 MB
5681 After de-duplication: 21955.46 MB (99.57% of total)
5682 After compression:    21877.28 MB (99.22% of total, 99.64% of de-duplicated)
5683 Database size:        2.39 MB (uncompressed)
5684 (some values do not take into account not-yet-uploaded dirty blocks in cache)
5685 #
5686 </pre></blockquote></p>
5687
5688 <p>I mentioned earlier that there are several possible suppliers of
5689 storage.  I did not try to locate them all, but am aware of at least
5690 <a href="https://www.greenqloud.com/">Greenqloud</a>,
5691 <a href="http://drive.google.com/">Google Drive</a>,
5692 <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/">Amazon S3 web serivces</a>,
5693 <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/">Rackspace</a> and
5694 <a href="http://crowncloud.net/">Crowncloud</A>.  The latter even
5695 accept payment in Bitcoin.  Pick one that suit your need.  Some of
5696 them provide several GiB of free storage, but the prize models are
5697 quite different and you will have to figure out what suits you
5698 best.</p>
5699
5700 <p>While researching this blog post, I had a look at research papers
5701 and posters discussing the S3QL file system.  There are several, which
5702 told me that the file system is getting a critical check by the
5703 science community and increased my confidence in using it.  One nice
5704 poster is titled
5705 "<a href="http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/adtsc/publications/science_highlights_2013/docs/pg68_69.pdf">An
5706 Innovative Parallel Cloud Storage System using OpenStack’s SwiftObject
5707 Store and Transformative Parallel I/O Approach</a>" by Hsing-Bung
5708 Chen, Benjamin McClelland, David Sherrill, Alfred Torrez, Parks Fields
5709 and Pamela Smith.  Please  have a look.</p>
5710
5711 <p>Given my problems with different file systems earlier, I decided to
5712 check out the mounted S3QL file system to see if it would be usable as
5713 a home directory (in other word, that it provided POSIX semantics when
5714 it come to locking and umask handling etc).  Running
5715 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">my
5716 test code to check file system semantics</a>, I was happy to discover that
5717 no error was found.  So the file system can be used for home
5718 directories, if one chooses to do so.</p>
5719
5720 <p>If you do not want a locally file system, and want something that
5721 work without the Linux fuse file system, I would like to mention the
5722 <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/">Tarsnap service</a>, which also
5723 provide locally encrypted backup using a command line client.  It have
5724 a nicer access control system, where one can split out read and write
5725 access, allowing some systems to write to the backup and others to
5726 only read from it.</p>
5727
5728 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
5729 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
5730 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
5731
5732       </div>
5733       <div class="tags">
5734
5735
5736         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
5737
5738
5739       </div>
5740     </div>
5741     <div class="padding"></div>
5742
5743     <div class="entry">
5744       <div class="title">
5745         <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>
5746       </div>
5747       <div class="date">
5748         14th March 2014
5749       </div>
5750       <div class="body">
5751         <p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox
5752 project</a> is working on providing the software and hardware for
5753 making it easy for non-technical people to host their data and
5754 communication at home, and being able to communicate with their
5755 friends and family encrypted and away from prying eyes.  It has been
5756 going on for a while, and is slowly progressing towards a new test
5757 release (0.2).</p>
5758
5759 <p>And what day could be better than the Pi day to announce that the
5760 new version will provide "hard drive" / SD card / USB stick images for
5761 Dreamplug, Raspberry Pi and VirtualBox (or any other virtualization
5762 system), and can also be installed using a Debian installer preseed
5763 file.  The Debian based Freedombox is now based on Debian Jessie,
5764 where most of the needed packages used are already present.  Only one,
5765 the freedombox-setup package, is missing.  To try to build your own
5766 boot image to test the current status, fetch the freedom-maker scripts
5767 and build using
5768 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/vmdebootstrap">vmdebootstrap</a>
5769 with a user with sudo access to become root:
5770
5771 <pre>
5772 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/freedombox/freedom-maker.git \
5773   freedom-maker
5774 sudo apt-get install git vmdebootstrap mercurial python-docutils \
5775   mktorrent extlinux virtualbox qemu-user-static binfmt-support \
5776   u-boot-tools
5777 make -C freedom-maker dreamplug-image raspberry-image virtualbox-image
5778 </pre>
5779
5780 <p>Root access is needed to run debootstrap and mount loopback
5781 devices.  See the README for more details on the build. If you do not
5782 want all three images, trim the make line.  But note that thanks to <a
5783 href="https://bugs.debian.org/741407">a race condition in
5784 vmdebootstrap</a>, the build might fail without the patch to the
5785 kpartx call.</p>
5786
5787 <p>If you instead want to install using a Debian CD and the preseed
5788 method, boot a Debian Wheezy ISO and use this boot argument to load
5789 the preseed values:</p>
5790
5791 <pre>
5792 url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-jessie.dat</a>
5793 </pre>
5794
5795 <p>But note that due to <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/740673">a
5796 recently introduced bug in apt in Jessie</a>, the installer will
5797 currently hang while setting up APT sources.  Killing the
5798 '<tt>apt-cdrom ident</tt>' process when it hang a few times during the
5799 installation will get the installation going.  This affect all
5800 installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
5801
5802 <p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
5803 us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
5804 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
5805 irc.debian.org)</a> and
5806 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
5807 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
5808
5809       </div>
5810       <div class="tags">
5811
5812
5813         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>.
5814
5815
5816       </div>
5817     </div>
5818     <div class="padding"></div>
5819
5820     <div class="entry">
5821       <div class="title">
5822         <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>
5823       </div>
5824       <div class="date">
5825         22nd February 2014
5826       </div>
5827       <div class="body">
5828         <p>Many years ago, I wrote a GPL licensed version of the netgroup and
5829 innetgr tools, because I needed them in
5830 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>.  I called the project
5831 ng-utils, and it has served me well.  I placed the project under the
5832 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmer</a> umbrella, and it was maintained in our CVS
5833 repository.  But many years ago, the CVS repository was dropped (lost,
5834 not migrated to new hardware, not sure), and the project have lacked a
5835 proper home since then.</p>
5836
5837 <p>Last summer, I had a look at the package and made a new release
5838 fixing a irritating crash bug, but was unable to store the changes in
5839 a proper source control system.  I applied for a project on
5840 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/">Alioth</a>, but did not have time
5841 to follow up on it.  Until today. :)</p>
5842
5843 <p>After many hours of cleaning and migration, the ng-utils project
5844 now have a new home, and a git repository with the highlight of the
5845 history of the project.  I published all release tarballs and imported
5846 them into the git repository.  As the project is really stable and not
5847 expected to gain new features any time soon, I decided to make a new
5848 release and call it 1.0.  Visit the new project home on
5849 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/">https://alioth.debian.org/projects/ng-utils/</a>
5850 if you want to check it out.  The new version is also uploaded into
5851 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/ng-utils.html">Debian Unstable</a>.</p>
5852
5853       </div>
5854       <div class="tags">
5855
5856
5857         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>.
5858
5859
5860       </div>
5861     </div>
5862     <div class="padding"></div>
5863
5864     <div class="entry">
5865       <div class="title">
5866         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_sysvinit_from_experimental_in_Debian_Hurd.html">Testing sysvinit from experimental in Debian Hurd</a>
5867       </div>
5868       <div class="date">
5869          3rd February 2014
5870       </div>
5871       <div class="body">
5872         <p>A few days ago I decided to try to help the Hurd people to get
5873 their changes into sysvinit, to allow them to use the normal sysvinit
5874 boot system instead of their old one.  This follow up on the
5875 <a href="https://teythoon.cryptobitch.de//categories/gsoc.html">great
5876 Google Summer of Code work</a> done last summer by Justus Winter to
5877 get Debian on Hurd working more like Debian on Linux.  To get started,
5878 I downloaded a prebuilt hard disk image from
5879 <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>,
5880 and started it using virt-manager.</p>
5881
5882 <p>The first think I had to do after logging in (root without any
5883 password) was to get the network operational.  I followed
5884 <a href="https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install">the
5885 instructions on the Debian GNU/Hurd ports page</a> and ran these
5886 commands as root to get the machine to accept a IP address from the
5887 kvm internal DHCP server:</p>
5888
5889 <p><blockquote><pre>
5890 settrans -fgap /dev/netdde /hurd/netdde
5891 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[p]finet/ { print $2}')
5892 kill $(ps -ef|awk '/[d]evnode/ { print $2}')
5893 dhclient /dev/eth0
5894 </pre></blockquote></p>
5895
5896 <p>After this, the machine had internet connectivity, and I could
5897 upgrade it and install the sysvinit packages from experimental and
5898 enable it as the default boot system in Hurd.</p>
5899
5900 <p>But before I did that, I set a password on the root user, as ssh is
5901 running on the machine it for ssh login to work a password need to be
5902 set.  Also, note that a bug somewhere in openssh on Hurd block
5903 compression from working.  Remember to turn that off on the client
5904 side.</p>
5905
5906 <p>Run these commands as root to upgrade and test the new sysvinit
5907 stuff:</p>
5908
5909 <p><blockquote><pre>
5910 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/experimental.list &lt;&lt;EOF
5911 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ experimental main
5912 EOF
5913 apt-get update
5914 apt-get dist-upgrade
5915 apt-get install -t experimental initscripts sysv-rc sysvinit \
5916     sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils
5917 update-alternatives --config runsystem
5918 </pre></blockquote></p>
5919
5920 <p>To reboot after switching boot system, you have to use
5921 <tt>reboot-hurd</tt> instead of just <tt>reboot</tt>, as there is not
5922 yet a sysvinit process able to receive the signals from the normal
5923 'reboot' command.  After switching to sysvinit as the boot system,
5924 upgrading every package and rebooting, the network come up with DHCP
5925 after boot as it should, and the settrans/pkill hack mentioned at the
5926 start is no longer needed.  But for some strange reason, there are no
5927 longer any login prompt in the virtual console, so I logged in using
5928 ssh instead.
5929
5930 <p>Note that there are some race conditions in Hurd making the boot
5931 fail some times.  No idea what the cause is, but hope the Hurd porters
5932 figure it out.  At least Justus said on IRC (#debian-hurd on
5933 irc.debian.org) that they are aware of the problem.  A way to reduce
5934 the impact is to upgrade to the Hurd packages built by Justus by
5935 adding this repository to the machine:</p>
5936
5937 <p><blockquote><pre>
5938 cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hurd-ci.list &lt;&lt;EOF
5939 deb http://darnassus.sceen.net/~teythoon/hurd-ci/ sid main
5940 EOF
5941 </pre></blockquote></p>
5942
5943 <p>At the moment the prebuilt virtual machine get some packages from
5944 http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian, because some of the packages in
5945 unstable do not yet include the required patches that are lingering in
5946 BTS.  This is the completely list of "unofficial" packages installed:</p>
5947
5948 <p><blockquote><pre>
5949 # aptitude search '?narrow(?version(CURRENT),?origin(Debian Ports))'
5950 i   emacs                   - GNU Emacs editor (metapackage)
5951 i   gdb                     - GNU Debugger
5952 i   hurd-recommended        - Miscellaneous translators
5953 i   isc-dhcp-client         - ISC DHCP client
5954 i   isc-dhcp-common         - common files used by all the isc-dhcp* packages
5955 i   libc-bin                - Embedded GNU C Library: Binaries
5956 i   libc-dev-bin            - Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
5957 i   libc0.3                 - Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
5958 i A libc0.3-dbg             - Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
5959 i   libc0.3-dev             - Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Hea
5960 i   multiarch-support       - Transitional package to ensure multiarch compatibilit
5961 i A x11-common              - X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
5962 i   xorg                    - X.Org X Window System
5963 i A xserver-xorg            - X.Org X server
5964 i A xserver-xorg-input-all  - X.Org X server -- input driver metapackage
5965 #
5966 </pre></blockquote></p>
5967
5968 <p>All in all, testing hurd has been an interesting experience. :)
5969 X.org did not work out of the box and I never took the time to follow
5970 the porters instructions to fix it.  This time I was interested in the
5971 command line stuff.<p>
5972
5973       </div>
5974       <div class="tags">
5975
5976
5977         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>.
5978
5979
5980       </div>
5981     </div>
5982     <div class="padding"></div>
5983
5984     <div class="entry">
5985       <div class="title">
5986         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_16.html">New chrpath release 0.16</a>
5987       </div>
5988       <div class="date">
5989         14th January 2014
5990       </div>
5991       <div class="body">
5992         <p><a href="http://www.coverity.com/">Coverity</a> is a nice tool to
5993 find problems in C, C++ and Java code using static source code
5994 analysis.  It can detect a lot of different problems, and is very
5995 useful to find memory and locking bugs in the error handling part of
5996 the source.  The company behind it provide
5997 <a href="https://scan.coverity.com/">check of free software projects as
5998 a community service</a>, and many hundred free software projects are
5999 already checked.  A few days ago I decided to have a closer look at
6000 the Coverity system, and discovered that the
6001 <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/">gnash</a> and
6002 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipmitool/">ipmitool</a>
6003 projects I am involved with was already registered.  But these are
6004 fairly big, and I would also like to have a small and easy project to
6005 check, and decided to <a href="http://scan.coverity.com/projects/1179">request
6006 checking of the chrpath project</a>.  It was
6007 added to the checker and discovered seven potential defects.  Six of
6008 these were real, mostly resource "leak" when the program detected an
6009 error.  Nothing serious, as the resources would be released a fraction
6010 of a second later when the program exited because of the error, but it
6011 is nice to do it right in case the source of the program some time in
6012 the future end up in a library.  Having fixed all defects and added
6013 <a href="https://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/chrpath-devel">a
6014 mailing list for the chrpath developers</a>, I decided it was time to
6015 publish a new release.  These are the release notes:</p>
6016
6017 <p>New in 0.16 released 2014-01-14:</p>
6018
6019 <ul>
6020
6021   <li>Fixed all minor bugs discovered by Coverity.</li>
6022   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project.</li>
6023   <li>Mention new project mailing list in the documentation.</li>
6024
6025 </ul>
6026
6027 <p>You can
6028 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6029 new version 0.16 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6030 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6031 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6032 include a test suite check.</p>
6033
6034       </div>
6035       <div class="tags">
6036
6037
6038         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>.
6039
6040
6041       </div>
6042     </div>
6043     <div class="padding"></div>
6044
6045     <div class="entry">
6046       <div class="title">
6047         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_chrpath_release_0_15.html">New chrpath release 0.15</a>
6048       </div>
6049       <div class="date">
6050         24th November 2013
6051       </div>
6052       <div class="body">
6053         <p>After many years break from the package and a vain hope that
6054 development would be continued by someone else, I finally pulled my
6055 acts together this morning and wrapped up a new release of chrpath,
6056 the command line tool to modify the rpath and runpath of already
6057 compiled ELF programs.  The update was triggered by the persistence of
6058 Isha Vishnoi at IBM, which needed a new config.guess file to get
6059 support for the ppc64le architecture (powerpc 64-bit Little Endian) he
6060 is working on.  I checked the
6061 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/chrpath">Debian</a>,
6062 <a href="https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chrpath">Ubuntu</a> and
6063 <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/chrpath">Fedora</a>
6064 packages for interesting patches (failed to find the source from
6065 OpenSUSE and Mandriva packages), and found quite a few nice fixes.
6066 These are the release notes:</p>
6067
6068 <p>New in 0.15 released 2013-11-24:</p>
6069
6070 <ul>
6071
6072   <li>Updated config.sub and config.guess from the GNU project to work
6073    with newer architectures.  Thanks to isha vishnoi for the heads
6074    up.</li>
6075
6076   <li>Updated README with current URLs.</li>
6077
6078   <li>Added byteswap fix found in Ubuntu, credited Jeremy Kerr and
6079    Matthias Klose.</li>
6080
6081   <li>Added missing help for -k|--keepgoing option, using patch by
6082    Petr Machata found in Fedora.</li>
6083
6084   <li>Rewrite removal of RPATH/RUNPATH to make sure the entry in
6085    .dynamic is a NULL terminated string.  Based on patch found in
6086    Fedora credited Axel Thimm and Christian Krause.</li>
6087
6088 </ul>
6089
6090 <p>You can
6091 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/frs/?group_id=31052">download the
6092 new version 0.15 from alioth</a>.  Please let us know via the Alioth
6093 project if something is wrong with the new release.  The test suite
6094 did not discover any old errors, so if you find a new one, please also
6095 include a testsuite check.</p>
6096
6097       </div>
6098       <div class="tags">
6099
6100
6101         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>.
6102
6103
6104       </div>
6105     </div>
6106     <div class="padding"></div>
6107
6108     <div class="entry">
6109       <div class="title">
6110         <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>
6111       </div>
6112       <div class="date">
6113          2nd November 2013
6114       </div>
6115       <div class="body">
6116         <p>If one of the points of switching to a new init system in Debian is
6117 <a href="http://thomas.goirand.fr/blog/?p=147">to get rid of huge
6118 init.d scripts</a>, I doubt we need to switch away from sysvinit and
6119 init.d scripts at all.  Here is an example init.d script, ie a rewrite
6120 of /etc/init.d/rsyslog:</p>
6121
6122 <p><pre>
6123 #!/lib/init/init-d-script
6124 ### BEGIN INIT INFO
6125 # Provides:          rsyslog
6126 # Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
6127 # Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
6128 # X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
6129 # Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
6130 # Default-Stop:      0 1 6
6131 # Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
6132 # Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
6133 #                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
6134 #                    used as a drop-in replacement.
6135 ### END INIT INFO
6136 DESC="enhanced syslogd"
6137 DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
6138 </pre></p>
6139
6140 <p>Pretty minimalistic to me... For the record, the original sysv-rc
6141 script was 137 lines, and the above is just 15 lines, most of it meta
6142 info/comments.</p>
6143
6144 <p>How to do this, you ask?  Well, one create a new script
6145 /lib/init/init-d-script looking something like this:
6146
6147 <p><pre>
6148 #!/bin/sh
6149
6150 # Define LSB log_* functions.
6151 # Depend on lsb-base (>= 3.2-14) to ensure that this file is present
6152 # and status_of_proc is working.
6153 . /lib/lsb/init-functions
6154
6155 #
6156 # Function that starts the daemon/service
6157
6158 #
6159 do_start()
6160 {
6161         # Return
6162         #   0 if daemon has been started
6163         #   1 if daemon was already running
6164         #   2 if daemon could not be started
6165         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON --test > /dev/null \
6166                 || return 1
6167         start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- \
6168                 $DAEMON_ARGS \
6169                 || return 2
6170         # Add code here, if necessary, that waits for the process to be ready
6171         # to handle requests from services started subsequently which depend
6172         # on this one.  As a last resort, sleep for some time.
6173 }
6174
6175 #
6176 # Function that stops the daemon/service
6177 #
6178 do_stop()
6179 {
6180         # Return
6181         #   0 if daemon has been stopped
6182         #   1 if daemon was already stopped
6183         #   2 if daemon could not be stopped
6184         #   other if a failure occurred
6185         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6186         RETVAL="$?"
6187         [ "$RETVAL" = 2 ] && return 2
6188         # Wait for children to finish too if this is a daemon that forks
6189         # and if the daemon is only ever run from this initscript.
6190         # If the above conditions are not satisfied then add some other code
6191         # that waits for the process to drop all resources that could be
6192         # needed by services started subsequently.  A last resort is to
6193         # sleep for some time.
6194         start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --oknodo --retry=0/30/KILL/5 --exec $DAEMON
6195         [ "$?" = 2 ] && return 2
6196         # Many daemons don't delete their pidfiles when they exit.
6197         rm -f $PIDFILE
6198         return "$RETVAL"
6199 }
6200
6201 #
6202 # Function that sends a SIGHUP to the daemon/service
6203 #
6204 do_reload() {
6205         #
6206         # If the daemon can reload its configuration without
6207         # restarting (for example, when it is sent a SIGHUP),
6208         # then implement that here.
6209         #
6210         start-stop-daemon --stop --signal 1 --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --name $NAME
6211         return 0
6212 }
6213
6214 SCRIPTNAME=$1
6215 scriptbasename="$(basename $1)"
6216 echo "SN: $scriptbasename"
6217 if [ "$scriptbasename" != "init-d-library" ] ; then
6218     script="$1"
6219     shift
6220     . $script
6221 else
6222     exit 0
6223 fi
6224
6225 NAME=$(basename $DAEMON)
6226 PIDFILE=/var/run/$NAME.pid
6227
6228 # Exit if the package is not installed
6229 #[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
6230
6231 # Read configuration variable file if it is present
6232 [ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME
6233
6234 # Load the VERBOSE setting and other rcS variables
6235 . /lib/init/vars.sh
6236
6237 case "$1" in
6238   start)
6239         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$NAME"
6240         do_start
6241         case "$?" in
6242                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6243                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6244         esac
6245         ;;
6246   stop)
6247         [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$NAME"
6248         do_stop
6249         case "$?" in
6250                 0|1) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 0 ;;
6251                 2) [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg 1 ;;
6252         esac
6253         ;;
6254   status)
6255         status_of_proc "$DAEMON" "$NAME" && exit 0 || exit $?
6256         ;;
6257   #reload|force-reload)
6258         #
6259         # If do_reload() is not implemented then leave this commented out
6260         # and leave 'force-reload' as an alias for 'restart'.
6261         #
6262         #log_daemon_msg "Reloading $DESC" "$NAME"
6263         #do_reload
6264         #log_end_msg $?
6265         #;;
6266   restart|force-reload)
6267         #
6268         # If the "reload" option is implemented then remove the
6269         # 'force-reload' alias
6270         #
6271         log_daemon_msg "Restarting $DESC" "$NAME"
6272         do_stop
6273         case "$?" in
6274           0|1)
6275                 do_start
6276                 case "$?" in
6277                         0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
6278                         1) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Old process is still running
6279                         *) log_end_msg 1 ;; # Failed to start
6280                 esac
6281                 ;;
6282           *)
6283                 # Failed to stop
6284                 log_end_msg 1
6285                 ;;
6286         esac
6287         ;;
6288   *)
6289         echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|status|restart|force-reload}" >&2
6290         exit 3
6291         ;;
6292 esac
6293
6294 :
6295 </pre></p>
6296
6297 <p>It is based on /etc/init.d/skeleton, and could be improved quite a
6298 lot.  I did not really polish the approach, so it might not always
6299 work out of the box, but you get the idea.  I did not try very hard to
6300 optimize it nor make it more robust either.</p>
6301
6302 <p>A better argument for switching init system in Debian than reducing
6303 the size of init scripts (which is a good thing to do anyway), is to
6304 get boot system that is able to handle the kernel events sensibly and
6305 robustly, and do not depend on the boot to run sequentially.  The boot
6306 and the kernel have not behaved sequentially in years.</p>
6307
6308       </div>
6309       <div class="tags">
6310
6311
6312         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>.
6313
6314
6315       </div>
6316     </div>
6317     <div class="padding"></div>
6318
6319     <div class="entry">
6320       <div class="title">
6321         <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>
6322       </div>
6323       <div class="date">
6324          1st November 2013
6325       </div>
6326       <div class="body">
6327         <p><a href="http://www.spice-space.org/">The SPICE protocol</a> for
6328 remote display access is the preferred solution with oVirt and RedHat
6329 Enterprise Virtualization, and I was sad to discover the other day
6330 that the browser plugin needed to use these systems seamlessly was
6331 missing in Debian.  The <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/668284">request
6332 for a package</a> was from 2012-04-10 with no progress since
6333 2013-04-01, so I decided to wrap up a package based on the great work
6334 from Cajus Pollmeier and put it in a collab-maint maintained git
6335 repository to get a package I could use.  I would very much like
6336 others to help me maintain the package (or just take over, I do not
6337 mind), but as no-one had volunteered so far, I just uploaded it to
6338 NEW.  I hope it will be available in Debian in a few days.</p>
6339
6340 <p>The source is now available from
6341 <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>
6342
6343       </div>
6344       <div class="tags">
6345
6346
6347         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>.
6348
6349
6350       </div>
6351     </div>
6352     <div class="padding"></div>
6353
6354     <div class="entry">
6355       <div class="title">
6356         <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>
6357       </div>
6358       <div class="date">
6359         27th October 2013
6360       </div>
6361       <div class="body">
6362         <p>The
6363 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/v/vmdebootstrap.html">vmdebootstrap</a>
6364 program is a a very nice system to create virtual machine images.  It
6365 create a image file, add a partition table, mount it and run
6366 debootstrap in the mounted directory to create a Debian system on a
6367 stick.  Yesterday, I decided to try to teach it how to make images for
6368 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi">Raspberry Pi</a>, as part
6369 of a plan to simplify the build system for
6370 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">the FreedomBox
6371 project</a>.  The FreedomBox project already uses vmdebootstrap for
6372 the virtualbox images, but its current build system made multistrap
6373 based system for Dreamplug images, and it is lacking support for
6374 Raspberry Pi.</p>
6375
6376 <p>Armed with the knowledge on how to build "foreign" (aka non-native
6377 architecture) chroots for Raspberry Pi, I dived into the vmdebootstrap
6378 code and adjusted it to be able to build armel images on my amd64
6379 Debian laptop.  I ended up giving vmdebootstrap five new options,
6380 allowing me to replicate the image creation process I use to make
6381 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Raspberry_Pi_based_batman_adv_Mesh_network_node.html">Debian
6382 Jessie based mesh node images for the Raspberry Pi</a>.  First, the
6383 <tt>--foreign /path/to/binfm_handler</tt> option tell vmdebootstrap to
6384 call debootstrap with --foreign and to copy the handler into the
6385 generated chroot before running the second stage.  This allow
6386 vmdebootstrap to create armel images on an amd64 host.  Next I added
6387 two new options <tt>--bootsize size</tt> and <tt>--boottype
6388 fstype</tt> to teach it to create a separate /boot/ partition with the
6389 given file system type, allowing me to create an image with a vfat
6390 partition for the /boot/ stuff.  I also added a <tt>--variant
6391 variant</tt> option to allow me to create smaller images without the
6392 Debian base system packages installed.  Finally, I added an option
6393 <tt>--no-extlinux</tt> to tell vmdebootstrap to not install extlinux
6394 as a boot loader.  It is not needed on the Raspberry Pi and probably
6395 most other non-x86 architectures.  The changes were accepted by the
6396 upstream author of vmdebootstrap yesterday and today, and is now
6397 available from
6398 <a href="http://git.liw.fi/cgi-bin/cgit/cgit.cgi/vmdebootstrap/">the
6399 upstream project page</a>.</p>
6400
6401 <p>To use it to build a Raspberry Pi image using Debian Jessie, first
6402 create a small script (the customize script) to add the non-free
6403 binary blob needed to boot the Raspberry Pi and the APT source
6404 list:</p>
6405
6406 <p><pre>
6407 #!/bin/sh
6408 set -e # Exit on first error
6409 rootdir="$1"
6410 cd "$rootdir"
6411 cat &lt;&lt;EOF > etc/apt/sources.list
6412 deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
6413 EOF
6414 # Install non-free binary blob needed to boot Raspberry Pi.  This
6415 # install a kernel somewhere too.
6416 wget https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update \
6417     -O $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6418 chmod a+x $rootdir/usr/bin/rpi-update
6419 mkdir -p $rootdir/lib/modules
6420 touch $rootdir/boot/start.elf
6421 chroot $rootdir rpi-update
6422 </pre></p>
6423
6424 <p>Next, fetch the latest vmdebootstrap script and call it like this
6425 to build the image:</p>
6426
6427 <pre>
6428 sudo ./vmdebootstrap \
6429     --variant minbase \
6430     --arch armel \
6431     --distribution jessie \
6432     --mirror http://http.debian.net/debian \
6433     --image test.img \
6434     --size 600M \
6435     --bootsize 64M \
6436     --boottype vfat \
6437     --log-level debug \
6438     --verbose \
6439     --no-kernel \
6440     --no-extlinux \
6441     --root-password raspberry \
6442     --hostname raspberrypi \
6443     --foreign /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static \
6444     --customize `pwd`/customize \
6445     --package netbase \
6446     --package git-core \
6447     --package binutils \
6448     --package ca-certificates \
6449     --package wget \
6450     --package kmod
6451 </pre></p>
6452
6453 <p>The list of packages being installed are the ones needed by
6454 rpi-update to make the image bootable on the Raspberry Pi, with the
6455 exception of netbase, which is needed by debootstrap to find
6456 /etc/hosts with the minbase variant.  I really wish there was a way to
6457 set up an Raspberry Pi using only packages in the Debian archive, but
6458 that is not possible as far as I know, because it boots from the GPU
6459 using a non-free binary blob.</p>
6460
6461 <p>The build host need debootstrap, kpartx and qemu-user-static and
6462 probably a few others installed.  I have not checked the complete
6463 build dependency list.</p>
6464
6465 <p>The resulting image will not use the hardware floating point unit
6466 on the Raspberry PI, because the armel architecture in Debian is not
6467 optimized for that use.  So the images created will be a bit slower
6468 than <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/">Raspbian</a> based images.</p>
6469
6470       </div>
6471       <div class="tags">
6472
6473
6474         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>.
6475
6476
6477       </div>
6478     </div>
6479     <div class="padding"></div>
6480
6481     <div class="entry">
6482       <div class="title">
6483         <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>
6484       </div>
6485       <div class="date">
6486         15th October 2013
6487       </div>
6488       <div class="body">
6489         <p>The last few days I came across a few good causes that should get
6490 wider attention.  I recommend signing and donating to each one of
6491 these. :)</p>
6492
6493 <p>Via <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2013/18/">Debian
6494 Project News for 2013-10-14</a> I came across the Outreach Program for
6495 Women program which is a Google Summer of Code like initiative to get
6496 more women involved in free software.  One debian sponsor has offered
6497 to match <a href="http://debian.ch/opw2013">any donation done to Debian
6498 earmarked</a> for this initiative.  I donated a few minutes ago, and
6499 hope you will to. :)</p>
6500
6501 <p>And the Electronic Frontier Foundation just announced plans to
6502 create <a href="https://supporters.eff.org/donate/nsa-videos">video
6503 documentaries about the excessive spying</a> on every Internet user that
6504 take place these days, and their need to fund the work.  I've already
6505 donated.  Are you next?</p>
6506
6507 <p>For my Norwegian audience, the organisation Studentenes og
6508 Akademikernes Internasjonale Hjelpefond is collecting signatures for a
6509 statement under the heading
6510 <a href="http://saih.no/Bloggers_United/">Bloggers United for Open
6511 Access</a> for those of us asking for more focus on open access in the
6512 Norwegian government.  So far 499 signatures.  I hope you will sign it
6513 too.</p>
6514
6515       </div>
6516       <div class="tags">
6517
6518
6519         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>.
6520
6521
6522       </div>
6523     </div>
6524     <div class="padding"></div>
6525
6526     <div class="entry">
6527       <div class="title">
6528         <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>
6529       </div>
6530       <div class="date">
6531         27th September 2013
6532       </div>
6533       <div class="body">
6534         <p>The <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox
6535 project</a> have been going on for a while, and have presented the
6536 vision, ideas and solution several places.  Here is a little
6537 collection of videos of talks and presentation of the project.</p>
6538
6539 <ul>
6540
6541 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvUz5taxvA">FreedomBox -
6542 2,5 minute marketing film</a> (Youtube)</li>
6543
6544 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzW25QTVWsE">Eben Moglen
6545 discusses the Freedombox on CBS news 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6546
6547 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae8SZbxfE0g">Eben Moglen -
6548 Freedom in the Cloud - Software Freedom, Privacy and and Security for
6549 Web 2.0 and Cloud computing at ISOC-NY Public Meeting 2010</a>
6550 (Youtube)</li>
6551
6552 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNaIji_3xBE">Fosdem 2011
6553 Keynote by Eben Moglen presenting the Freedombox</a> (Youtube)</li>
6554
6555 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bDDUyJSQ9s">Presentation of
6556 the Freedombox by James Vasile at Elevate in Gratz 2011</a> (Youtube)</li>
6557
6558 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQTmnk27g9s"> Freedombox -
6559 Discovery, Identity, and Trust by Nick Daly at Freedombox Hackfest New
6560 York City in 2012</a> (Youtube)</li>
6561
6562 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkbSB4Ba7Ck">Introduction
6563 to the Freedombox at Freedombox Hackfest New York City in 2012</a>
6564 (Youtube)</li>
6565
6566 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-P2Jaeg0aQ">Freedom, Out
6567 of the Box! by Bdale Garbee at linux.conf.au Ballarat, 2012</a> (Youtube) </li>
6568
6569 <li><a href="https://archive.fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/freedombox/">Freedombox
6570 1.0 by Eben Moglen and Bdale Garbee at Fosdem 2013</a> (FOSDEM) </li>
6571
6572 <li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LpYX2zVYg">What is the
6573 FreedomBox today by Bdale Garbee at Debconf13 in Vaumarcus
6574 2013</a> (Youtube)</li>
6575
6576 </ul>
6577
6578 <p>A larger list is available from
6579 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TalksAndPresentations">the
6580 Freedombox Wiki</a>.</p>
6581
6582 <p>On other news, I am happy to report that Freedombox based on Debian
6583 Jessie is coming along quite well, and soon both Owncloud and using
6584 Tor should be available for testers of the Freedombox solution. :) In
6585 a few weeks I hope everything needed to test it is included in Debian.
6586 The withsqlite package is already in Debian, and the plinth package is
6587 pending in NEW.  The third and vital part of that puzzle is the
6588 metapackage/setup framework, which is still pending an upload.  Join
6589 us on <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC
6590 (#freedombox on irc.debian.org)</a> and
6591 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">the
6592 mailing list</a> if you want to help make this vision come true.</p>
6593
6594       </div>
6595       <div class="tags">
6596
6597
6598         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>.
6599
6600
6601       </div>
6602     </div>
6603     <div class="padding"></div>
6604
6605     <div class="entry">
6606       <div class="title">
6607         <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>
6608       </div>
6609       <div class="date">
6610         10th September 2013
6611       </div>
6612       <div class="body">
6613         <p>I was introduced to the
6614 <a href="http://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/">Freedombox project</a>
6615 in 2010, when Eben Moglen presented his vision about serving the need
6616 of non-technical people to keep their personal information private and
6617 within the legal protection of their own homes.  The idea is to give
6618 people back the power over their network and machines, and return
6619 Internet back to its intended peer-to-peer architecture.  Instead of
6620 depending on a central service, the Freedombox will give everyone
6621 control over their own basic infrastructure.</p>
6622
6623 <p>I've intended to join the effort since then, but other tasks have
6624 taken priority.  But this summers nasty news about the misuse of trust
6625 and privilege exercised by the "western" intelligence gathering
6626 communities increased my eagerness to contribute to a point where I
6627 actually started working on the project a while back.</p>
6628
6629 <p>The <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/freedombox/">initial
6630 Debian initiative</a> based on the vision from Eben Moglen, is to
6631 create a simple and cheap Debian based appliance that anyone can hook
6632 up in their home and get access to secure and private services and
6633 communication.  The initial deployment platform have been the
6634 <a href="http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx">Dreamplug</a>,
6635 which is a piece of hardware I do not own.  So to be able to test what
6636 the current Freedombox setup look like, I had to come up with a way to install
6637 it on some hardware I do have access to.  I have rewritten the
6638 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedom-maker">freedom-maker</a>
6639 image build framework to use .deb packages instead of only copying
6640 setup into the boot images, and thanks to this rewrite I am able to
6641 set up any machine supported by Debian Wheezy as a Freedombox, using
6642 the previously mentioned deb (and a few support debs for packages
6643 missing in Debian).</p>
6644
6645 <p>The current Freedombox setup consist of a set of bootstrapping
6646 scripts
6647 (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/freedombox-setup">freedombox-setup</a>),
6648 and a administrative web interface
6649 (<a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth">plinth</a> + exmachina +
6650 withsqlite), as well as a privacy enhancing proxy based on
6651 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/privoxy">privoxy</a>
6652 (freedombox-privoxy).  There is also a web/javascript based XMPP
6653 client (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/jwchat">jwchat</a>)
6654 trying (unsuccessfully so far) to talk to the XMPP server
6655 (<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/ejabberd">ejabberd</a>).  The
6656 web interface is pluggable, and the goal is to use it to enable OpenID
6657 services, mesh network connectivity, use of TOR, etc, etc.  Not much of
6658 this is really working yet, see
6659 <a href="https://github.com/NickDaly/freedombox-todos/blob/master/TODO">the
6660 project TODO</a> for links to GIT repositories.  Most of the code is
6661 on github at the moment.  The HTTP proxy is operational out of the
6662 box, and the admin web interface can be used to add/remove plinth
6663 users.  I've not been able to do anything else with it so far, but
6664 know there are several branches spread around github and other places
6665 with lots of half baked features.</p>
6666
6667 <p>Anyway, if you want to have a look at the current state, the
6668 following recipes should work to give you a test machine to poke
6669 at.</p>
6670
6671 <p><strong>Debian Wheezy amd64</strong></p>
6672
6673 <ol>
6674
6675 <li>Fetch normal Debian Wheezy installation ISO.</li>
6676 <li>Boot from it, either as CD or USB stick.</li>
6677 <li><p>Press [tab] on the boot prompt and add this as a boot argument
6678 to the Debian installer:<p>
6679 <pre>url=<a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/preseed-wheezy.dat</a></pre></li>
6680
6681 <li>Answer the few language/region/password questions and pick disk to
6682 install on.</li>
6683
6684 <li>When the installation is finished and the machine have rebooted a
6685 few times, your Freedombox is ready for testing.</li>
6686
6687 </ol>
6688
6689 <p><strong>Raspberry Pi Raspbian</strong></p>
6690
6691 <ol>
6692
6693 <li>Fetch a Raspbian SD card image, create SD card.</li>
6694 <li>Boot from SD card, extend file system to fill the card completely.</li>
6695 <li><p>Log in and add this to /etc/sources.list:</p>
6696 <pre>
6697 deb <a href="http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/">http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox</a> wheezy main
6698 </pre></li>
6699 <li><p>Run this as root:</p>
6700 <pre>
6701 wget -O - http://www.reinholdtsen.name/freedombox/BE1A583D.asc | \
6702    apt-key add -
6703 apt-get update
6704 apt-get install freedombox-setup
6705 /usr/lib/freedombox/setup
6706 </pre></li>
6707 <li>Reboot into your freshly created Freedombox.</li>
6708
6709 </ol>
6710
6711 <p>You can test it on other architectures too, but because the
6712 freedombox-privoxy package is binary, it will only work as intended on
6713 the architectures where I have had time to build the binary and put it
6714 in my APT repository.  But do not let this stop you.  It is only a
6715 short "<tt>apt-get source -b freedombox-privoxy</tt>" away. :)</p>
6716
6717 <p>Note that by default Freedombox is a DHCP server on the
6718 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, so if this is your subnet be careful and turn
6719 off the DHCP server by running "<tt>update-rc.d isc-dhcp-server
6720 disable</tt>" as root.</p>
6721
6722 <p>Please let me know if this works for you, or if you have any
6723 problems.  We gather on the IRC channel
6724 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">#freedombox</a> on
6725 irc.debian.org and the
6726 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss">project
6727 mailing list</a>.</p>
6728
6729 <p>Once you get your freedombox operational, you can visit
6730 <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/</tt> to see the state of the plint
6731 welcome screen (dead end - do not be surprised if you are unable to
6732 get past it), and next visit <tt>http://your-host-name:8001/help/</tt>
6733 to look at the rest of plinth.  The default user is 'admin' and the
6734 default password is 'secret'.</p>
6735
6736       </div>
6737       <div class="tags">
6738
6739
6740         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>.
6741
6742
6743       </div>
6744     </div>
6745     <div class="padding"></div>
6746
6747     <div class="entry">
6748       <div class="title">
6749         <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>
6750       </div>
6751       <div class="date">
6752         18th August 2013
6753       </div>
6754       <div class="body">
6755         <p>Earlier, I reported about
6756 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_fix_a_Thinkpad_X230_with_a_broken_180_GB_SSD_disk.html">my
6757 problems using an Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB disk</a>.  Friday I was
6758 told by IBM that the original disk should be thrown away.  And as
6759 there no longer was a problem if I bricked the firmware, I decided
6760 today to try to install Intel firmware to replace the Lenovo firmware
6761 currently on the disk.</p>
6762
6763 <p>I searched the Intel site for firmware, and found
6764 <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>
6765 (aka Intel SATA Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool) which
6766 according to the site should contain the latest firmware for SSD
6767 disks.  I inserted the broken disk in one of my spare laptops and
6768 booted the ISO from a USB stick.  The disk was recognized, but the
6769 program claimed the newest firmware already were installed and refused
6770 to insert any Intel firmware.  So no change, and the disk is still
6771 unable to handle write load. :( I guess the only way to get them
6772 working would be if Lenovo releases new firmware.  No idea how likely
6773 that is.  Anyway, just blogging about this test for completeness.  I
6774 got a working Samsung disk, and see no point in spending more time on
6775 the broken disks.</p>
6776
6777       </div>
6778       <div class="tags">
6779
6780
6781         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>.
6782
6783
6784       </div>
6785     </div>
6786     <div class="padding"></div>
6787
6788     <div class="entry">
6789       <div class="title">
6790         <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>
6791       </div>
6792       <div class="date">
6793         17th July 2013
6794       </div>
6795       <div class="body">
6796         <p>Today I switched to
6797 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">my
6798 new laptop</a>.  I've previously written about the problems I had with
6799 my new Thinkpad X230, which was delivered with an
6800 <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
6801 GB Intel SSD disk with Lenovo firmware</a> that did not handle
6802 sustained writes.  My hardware supplier have been very forthcoming in
6803 trying to find a solution, and after first trying with another
6804 identical 180 GB disks they decided to send me a 256 GB Samsung SSD
6805 disk instead to fix it once and for all.  The Samsung disk survived
6806 the installation of Debian with encrypted disks (filling the disk with
6807 random data during installation killed the first two), and I thus
6808 decided to trust it with my data.  I have installed it as a Debian Edu
6809 Wheezy roaming workstation hooked up with my Debian Edu Squeeze main
6810 server at home using Kerberos and LDAP, and will use it as my work
6811 station from now on.</p>
6812
6813 <p>As this is a solid state disk with no moving parts, I believe the
6814 Debian Wheezy default installation need to be tuned a bit to increase
6815 performance and increase life time of the disk.  The Linux kernel and
6816 user space applications do not yet adjust automatically to such
6817 environment.  To make it easier for my self, I created a draft Debian
6818 package <tt>ssd-setup</tt> to handle this tuning.  The
6819 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/ssd-setup.git">source
6820 for the ssd-setup package</a> is available from collab-maint, and it
6821 is set up to adjust the setup of the machine by just installing the
6822 package.  If there is any non-SSD disk in the machine, the package
6823 will refuse to install, as I did not try to write any logic to sort
6824 file systems in SSD and non-SSD file systems.</p>
6825
6826 <p>I consider the package a draft, as I am a bit unsure how to best
6827 set up Debian Wheezy with an SSD.  It is adjusted to my use case,
6828 where I set up the machine with one large encrypted partition (in
6829 addition to /boot), put LVM on top of this and set up partitions on
6830 top of this again.  See the README file in the package source for the
6831 references I used to pick the settings.  At the moment these
6832 parameters are tuned:</p>
6833
6834 <ul>
6835
6836 <li>Set up cryptsetup to pass TRIM commands to the physical disk
6837     (adding discard to /etc/crypttab)</li>
6838
6839 <li>Set up LVM to pass on TRIM commands to the underlying device (in
6840     this case a cryptsetup partition) by changing issue_discards from
6841     0 to 1 in /etc/lvm/lvm.conf.</li>
6842
6843 <li>Set relatime as a file system option for ext3 and ext4 file
6844     systems.</li>
6845
6846 <li>Tell swap to use TRIM commands by adding 'discard' to
6847     /etc/fstab.</li>
6848
6849 <li>Change I/O scheduler from cfq to deadline using a udev rule.</li>
6850
6851 <li>Run fstrim on every ext3 and ext4 file system every night (from
6852     cron.daily).</li>
6853
6854 <li>Adjust sysctl values vm.swappiness to 1 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure
6855     to 50 to reduce the kernel eagerness to swap out processes.</li>
6856
6857 </ul>
6858
6859 <p>During installation, I cancelled the part where the installer fill
6860 the disk with random data, as this would kill the SSD performance for
6861 little gain.  My goal with the encrypted file system is to ensure
6862 those stealing my laptop end up with a brick and not a working
6863 computer.  I have no hope in keeping the really resourceful people
6864 from getting the data on the disk (see
6865 <a href="http://xkcd.com/538/">XKCD #538</a> for an explanation why).
6866 Thus I concluded that adding the discard option to crypttab is the
6867 right thing to do.</p>
6868
6869 <p>I considered using the noop I/O scheduler, as several recommended
6870 it for SSD, but others recommended deadline and a benchmark I found
6871 indicated that deadline might be better for interactive use.</p>
6872
6873 <p>I also considered using the 'discard' file system option for ext3
6874 and ext4, but read that it would give a performance hit ever time a
6875 file is removed, and thought it best to that that slowdown once a day
6876 instead of during my work.</p>
6877
6878 <p>My package do not set up tmpfs on /var/run, /var/lock and /tmp, as
6879 this is already done by Debian Edu.</p>
6880
6881 <p>I have not yet started on the user space tuning.  I expect
6882 iceweasel need some tuning, and perhaps other applications too, but
6883 have not yet had time to investigate those parts.</p>
6884
6885 <p>The package should work on Ubuntu too, but I have not yet tested it
6886 there.</p>
6887
6888 <p>As for the answer to the question in the title of this blog post,
6889 as far as I know, the only solution I know about is to replace the
6890 disk.  It might be possible to flash it with Intel firmware instead of
6891 the Lenovo firmware.  But I have not tried and did not want to do so
6892 without approval from Lenovo as I wanted to keep the warranty on the
6893 disk until a solution was found and they wanted the broken disks
6894 back.</p>
6895
6896       </div>
6897       <div class="tags">
6898
6899
6900         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>.
6901
6902
6903       </div>
6904     </div>
6905     <div class="padding"></div>
6906
6907     <div class="entry">
6908       <div class="title">
6909         <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>
6910       </div>
6911       <div class="date">
6912         10th July 2013
6913       </div>
6914       <div class="body">
6915         <p>A few days ago, I wrote about
6916 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Thinkpad_is_dead__long_live_the_Thinkpad_X230_.html">the
6917 problems I experienced with my new X230 and its SSD disk</a>, which
6918 was dying during installation because it is unable to cope with
6919 sustained write.  My supplier is in contact with
6920 <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/">Lenovo</a>, and they wanted to send a
6921 replacement disk to try to fix the problem.  They decided to send an
6922 identical model, so my hopes for a permanent fix was slim.</p>
6923
6924 <p>Anyway, today I got the replacement disk and tried to install
6925 Debian Edu Wheezy with encrypted disk on it.  The new disk have the
6926 same firmware version as the original.  This time my hope raised
6927 slightly as the installation progressed, as the original disk used to
6928 die after 4-7% of the disk was written to, while this time it kept
6929 going past 10%, 20%, 40% and even past 50%.  But around 60%, the disk
6930 died again and I was back on square one.  I still do not have a new
6931 laptop with a disk I can trust.  I can not live with a disk that might
6932 lock up when I download a new
6933 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ISO or
6934 other large files.  I look forward to hearing from my supplier with
6935 the next proposal from Lenovo.</p>
6936
6937 <p>The original disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6938 11S0C38722Z1ZNME35X1TR, ISN: CVCV321407HB180EGN, SA: G57560302, FW:
6939 LF1i, 29MAY2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6940 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40002756C4, Model:
6941 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6942 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6943
6944 <p>The replacement disk is marked Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB,
6945 11S0C38722Z1ZNDE34N0L0, ISN: CVCV315306RK180EGN, SA: G57560-302, FW:
6946 LF1i, 22APR2013, PBA: G39779-300, LBA 351,651,888, LI P/N: 0C38722,
6947 Pb-free 2LI, LC P/N: 16-200366, WWN: 55CD2E40000AB69E, Model:
6948 SSDSC2BW180A3L 2.5" 6Gb/s SATA SSD 180G 5V 1A, ASM P/N 0C38732, FRU
6949 P/N 45N8295, P0C38732.</p>
6950
6951 <p>The only difference is in the first number (serial number?), ISN,
6952 SA, date and WNPP values.  Mentioning all the details here in case
6953 someone is able to use the information to find a way to identify the
6954 failing disk among working ones (if any such working disk actually
6955 exist).</p>
6956
6957       </div>
6958       <div class="tags">
6959
6960
6961         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>.
6962
6963
6964       </div>
6965     </div>
6966     <div class="padding"></div>
6967
6968     <div class="entry">
6969       <div class="title">
6970         <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>
6971       </div>
6972       <div class="date">
6973          9th July 2013
6974       </div>
6975       <div class="body">
6976         <p>The upcoming Saturday, 2013-07-13, we are organising a combined
6977 Debian Edu developer gathering and Debian and Ubuntu bug squashing
6978 party in Oslo.  It is organised by <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
6979 member assosiation NUUG</a> and
6980 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
6981 project</a> together with <a href="http://bitraf.no/">the hack space
6982 Bitraf</a>.</p>
6983
6984 <p>It starts 10:00 and continue until late evening.  Everyone is
6985 welcome, and there is no fee to participate.  There is on the other
6986 hand limited space, and only room for 30 people.  Please put your name
6987 on <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2013/07/13/no/Oslo">the event
6988 wiki page</a> if you plan to join us.</p>
6989
6990       </div>
6991       <div class="tags">
6992
6993
6994         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>.
6995
6996
6997       </div>
6998     </div>
6999     <div class="padding"></div>
7000
7001     <div class="entry">
7002       <div class="title">
7003         <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>
7004       </div>
7005       <div class="date">
7006          5th July 2013
7007       </div>
7008       <div class="body">
7009         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a
7010 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thank_you_Thinkpad_X41__for_your_long_and_trustworthy_service.html">replacement
7011 for my trusty old Thinkpad X41</a>.  Unfortunately I did not have much
7012 time to spend on it, and it took a while to find a model I believe
7013 will do the job, but two days ago the replacement finally arrived.  I
7014 ended up picking a
7015 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad X230</a>
7016 with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu Wheezy as
7017 a roaming workstation, and it seemed to work flawlessly.  But my
7018 second installation with encrypted disk was not as successful.  More
7019 on that below.</p>
7020
7021 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7022 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7023 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7024 feature at <a href="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7025 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7026 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks according
7027 to that search interface, so I had to drop specifying the number of
7028 disks from my search parameters.  I also asked around among friends to
7029 get their impression on keyboards and robustness.</p>
7030
7031 <p>So the new laptop arrived, and it is quite a lot wider than the
7032 X41.  I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is
7033 significantly wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my
7034 hand a lot more to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly
7035 good and the individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope
7036 I will get used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really
7037 needed a new laptop now. :)</p>
7038
7039 <p>Turning off the touch pad was simple.  All it took was a quick
7040 visit to the BIOS during boot it disable it.</p>
7041
7042 <p>But there is a fatal problem with the laptop.  The 180 GB SSD disk
7043 lock up during load.  And this happen when installing Debian Wheezy
7044 with encrypted disk, while the disk is being filled with random data.
7045 I also tested to install Ubuntu Raring, and it happen there too if I
7046 reenable the code to fill the disk with random data (it is disabled by
7047 default in Ubuntu).  And the bug with is already known.  It was
7048 reported to Debian as <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/691427">BTS
7049 report #691427 2012-10-25</a> (journal commit I/O error on brand-new
7050 Thinkpad T430s ext4 on lvm on SSD).  It is also reported to the Linux
7051 kernel developers as
7052 <a href="https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51861">Kernel bugzilla
7053 report #51861 2012-12-20</a> (Intel SSD 520 stops working under load
7054 (SSDSC2BW180A3L in Lenovo ThinkPad T430s)). It is also reported on the
7055 Lenovo forums, both for
7056 <a href="http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T430s-Intel-SSD-520-180GB-issue/m-p/1070549">T430
7057 2012-11-10</a> and for
7058 <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
7059 03-20-2013</a>.  The problem do not only affect installation.  The
7060 reports state that the disk lock up during use if many writes are done
7061 on the disk, so it is much no use to work around the installation
7062 problem and end up with a computer that can lock up at any moment.
7063 There is even a
7064 <a href="https://git.efficios.com/?p=test-ssd.git">small C program
7065 available</a> that will lock up the hard drive after running a few
7066 minutes by writing to a file.</p>
7067
7068 <p>I've contacted my supplier and asked how to handle this, and after
7069 contacting PCHELP Norway (request 01D1FDP) which handle support
7070 requests for Lenovo, his first suggestion was to upgrade the disk
7071 firmware.  Unfortunately there is no newer firmware available from
7072 Lenovo, as my disk already have the most recent one (version LF1i).  I
7073 hope to hear more from him today and hope the problem can be
7074 fixed. :)</p>
7075
7076       </div>
7077       <div class="tags">
7078
7079
7080         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>.
7081
7082
7083       </div>
7084     </div>
7085     <div class="padding"></div>
7086
7087     <div class="entry">
7088       <div class="title">
7089         <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>
7090       </div>
7091       <div class="date">
7092          4th July 2013
7093       </div>
7094       <div class="body">
7095         <p>Half a year ago, I reported that I had to find a replacement for my
7096 trusty old Thinkpad X41.  Unfortunately I did not have much time to
7097 spend on it, but today the replacement finally arrived.  I ended up
7098 picking a <a href="http://www.linlap.com/lenovo_thinkpad_x230">Thinkpad
7099 X230</a> with SSD disk (NZDAJMN).  I first test installed Debian Edu
7100 Wheezy as a roaming workstation, and it worked flawlessly.  As I write
7101 this, it is installing what I hope will be a more final installation,
7102 with a encrypted hard drive to ensure any dope head stealing it end up
7103 with an expencive door stop.</p>
7104
7105 <p>I had a hard time trying to track down a good laptop, as my most
7106 important requirements (robust and with a good keyboard) are never
7107 listed in the feature list.  But I did get good help from the search
7108 feature at <ahref="http://www.prisjakt.no/">Prisjakt</a>, which
7109 allowed me to limit the list of interesting laptops based on my other
7110 requirements.  A bit surprising that SSD disk are not disks, so I had
7111 to drop number of disks from my search parameters.</p>
7112
7113 <p>I am not quite convinced about the keyboard, as it is significantly
7114 wider than my old keyboard, and I have to stretch my hand a lot more
7115 to reach the edges.  But the key response is fairly good and the
7116 individual key shape is fairly easy to handle, so I hope I will get
7117 used to it.  My old X40 was starting to fail, and I really needed a
7118 new laptop now. :)</p>
7119
7120 <p>I look forward to figuring out how to turn off the touch pad.</p>
7121
7122       </div>
7123       <div class="tags">
7124
7125
7126         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>.
7127
7128
7129       </div>
7130     </div>
7131     <div class="padding"></div>
7132
7133     <div class="entry">
7134       <div class="title">
7135         <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>
7136       </div>
7137       <div class="date">
7138         25th June 2013
7139       </div>
7140       <div class="body">
7141         <p>It annoys me when the computer fail to do automatically what it is
7142 perfectly capable of, and I have to do it manually to get things
7143 working.  One such task is to find out what firmware packages are
7144 needed to get the hardware on my computer working.  Most often this
7145 affect the wifi card, but some times it even affect the RAID
7146 controller or the ethernet card.  Today I pushed version 0.4 of the
7147 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram package</a>
7148 including a new script isenkram-autoinstall-firmware handling the
7149 process of asking all the loaded kernel modules what firmware files
7150 they want, find debian packages providing these files and install the
7151 debian packages.  Here is a test run on my laptop:</p>
7152
7153 <p><pre>
7154 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7155 info: kernel drivers requested extra firmware: ipw2200-bss.fw ipw2200-ibss.fw ipw2200-sniffer.fw
7156 info: fetching http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/squeeze/Contents-i386.gz
7157 info: locating packages with the requested firmware files
7158 info: Updating APT sources after adding non-free APT source
7159 info: trying to install firmware-ipw2x00
7160 firmware-ipw2x00
7161 firmware-ipw2x00
7162 Preconfiguring packages ...
7163 Selecting previously deselected package firmware-ipw2x00.
7164 (Reading database ... 259727 files and directories currently installed.)
7165 Unpacking firmware-ipw2x00 (from .../firmware-ipw2x00_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb) ...
7166 Setting up firmware-ipw2x00 (0.28+squeeze1) ...
7167 #
7168 </pre></p>
7169
7170 <p>When all the requested firmware is present, a simple message is
7171 printed instead:</p>
7172
7173 <p><pre>
7174 # isenkram-autoinstall-firmware
7175 info: did not find any firmware files requested by loaded kernel modules.  exiting
7176 #
7177 </pre></p>
7178
7179 <p>It could use some polish, but it is already working well and saving
7180 me some time when setting up new machines. :)</p>
7181
7182 <p>So, how does it work?  It look at the set of currently loaded
7183 kernel modules, and look up each one of them using modinfo, to find
7184 the firmware files listed in the module meta-information.  Next, it
7185 download the Contents file from a nearby APT mirror, and search for
7186 the firmware files in this file to locate the package with the
7187 requested firmware file.  If the package is in the non-free section, a
7188 non-free APT source is added and the package is installed using
7189 <tt>apt-get install</tt>.  The end result is a slightly better working
7190 machine.</p>
7191
7192 <p>I hope someone find time to implement a more polished version of
7193 this script as part of the hw-detect debian-installer module, to
7194 finally fix <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">BTS report
7195 #655507</a>.  There really is no need to insert USB sticks with
7196 firmware during a PXE install when the packages already are available
7197 from the nearby Debian mirror.</p>
7198
7199       </div>
7200       <div class="tags">
7201
7202
7203         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>.
7204
7205
7206       </div>
7207     </div>
7208     <div class="padding"></div>
7209
7210     <div class="entry">
7211       <div class="title">
7212         <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>
7213       </div>
7214       <div class="date">
7215         11th June 2013
7216       </div>
7217       <div class="body">
7218         <p>When installing RedHat, Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on some machines,
7219 the screen just turn black when Linux boot, either during installation
7220 or on first boot from the hard disk.  I've seen it once in a while the
7221 last few years, but only recently understood the cause.  I've seen it
7222 on HP laptops, and on my latest acquaintance the Packard Bell laptop.
7223 The reason seem to be in the wiring of some laptops.  The system to
7224 control the screen background light is inverted, so when Linux try to
7225 turn the brightness fully on, it end up turning it off instead.  I do
7226 not know which Linux drivers are affected, but this post is about the
7227 i915 driver used by the
7228 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7229 EasyNote LV</a>, Thinkpad X40 and many other laptops.</p>
7230
7231 <p>The problem can be worked around two ways.  Either by adding
7232 i915.invert_brightness=1 as a kernel option, or by adding a file in
7233 /etc/modprobe.d/ to tell modprobe to add the invert_brightness=1
7234 option when it load the i915 kernel module.  On Debian and Ubuntu, it
7235 can be done by running these commands as root:</p>
7236
7237 <pre>
7238 echo options i915 invert_brightness=1 | tee /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf
7239 update-initramfs -u -k all
7240 </pre>
7241
7242 <p>Since March 2012 there is
7243 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=4dca20efb1a9c2efefc28ad2867e5d6c3f5e1955">a
7244 mechanism in the Linux kernel</a> to tell the i915 driver which
7245 hardware have this problem, and get the driver to invert the
7246 brightness setting automatically.  To use it, one need to add a row in
7247 <a href="http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c">the
7248 intel_quirks array</a> in the driver source
7249 <tt>drivers/gpu/drm/i915/intel_display.c</tt> (look for "<tt>static
7250 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks</tt>"), specifying the PCI device
7251 number (vendor number 8086 is assumed) and subdevice vendor and device
7252 number.</p>
7253
7254 <p>My Packard Bell EasyNote LV got this output from <tt>lspci
7255 -vvnn</tt> for the video card in question:</p>
7256
7257 <p><pre>
7258 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation \
7259     3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0156] \
7260     (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
7261  Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0688]
7262  Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- \
7263     ParErr- Stepping- SE RR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
7264  Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- \
7265     <TAbort- <MAbort->SERR- <PERR- INTx-
7266  Latency: 0
7267  Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
7268  Region 0: Memory at c2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
7269  Region 2: Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
7270  Region 4: I/O ports at 4000 [size=64]
7271  Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
7272  Capabilities: <access denied>
7273  Kernel driver in use: i915
7274 </pre></p>
7275
7276 <p>The resulting intel_quirks entry would then look like this:</p>
7277
7278 <p><pre>
7279 struct intel_quirk intel_quirks[] = {
7280        ...
7281         /* Packard Bell EasyNote LV11HC needs invert brightness quirk */
7282         { 0x0156, 0x1025, 0x0688, quirk_invert_brightness },
7283        ...
7284 }
7285 </pre></p>
7286
7287 <p>According to the kernel module instructions (as seen using
7288 <tt>modinfo i915</tt>), information about hardware needing the
7289 invert_brightness flag should be sent to the
7290 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel">dri-devel
7291 (at) lists.freedesktop.org</a> mailing list to reach the kernel
7292 developers.  But my email about the laptop sent 2013-06-03 have not
7293 yet shown up in
7294 <a href="http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2013-June/thread.html">the
7295 web archive for the mailing list</a>, so I suspect they do not accept
7296 emails from non-subscribers.  Because of this, I sent my patch also to
7297 the Debian bug tracking system instead as
7298 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/710938">BTS report #710938</a>, to make
7299 sure the patch is not lost.</p>
7300
7301 <p>Unfortunately, it is not enough to fix the kernel to get Laptops
7302 with this problem working properly with Linux.  If you use Gnome, your
7303 worries should be over at this point.  But if you use KDE, there is
7304 something in KDE ignoring the invert_brightness setting and turning on
7305 the screen during login.  I've reported it to Debian as
7306 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/711237">BTS report #711237</a>, and
7307 have no idea yet how to figure out exactly what subsystem is doing
7308 this.  Perhaps you can help?  Perhaps you know what the Gnome
7309 developers did to handle this, and this can give a clue to the KDE
7310 developers?  Or you know where in KDE the screen brightness is changed
7311 during login?  If so, please update the BTS report (or get in touch if
7312 you do not know how to update BTS).</p>
7313
7314 <p>Update 2013-07-19: The correct fix for this machine seem to be
7315 acpi_backlight=vendor, to disable ACPI backlight support completely,
7316 as the ACPI information on the machine is trash and it is better to
7317 leave it to the intel video driver to control the screen
7318 backlight.</p>
7319
7320       </div>
7321       <div class="tags">
7322
7323
7324         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>.
7325
7326
7327       </div>
7328     </div>
7329     <div class="padding"></div>
7330
7331     <div class="entry">
7332       <div class="title">
7333         <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>
7334       </div>
7335       <div class="date">
7336         27th May 2013
7337       </div>
7338       <div class="body">
7339         <p>Two days ago, I asked
7340 <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
7341 I could install Linux on a Packard Bell EasyNote LV computer
7342 preinstalled with Windows 8</a>.  I found a solution, but am horrified
7343 with the obstacles put in the way of Linux users on a laptop with UEFI
7344 and Windows 8.</p>
7345
7346 <p>I never found out if the cause of my problems were the use of UEFI
7347 secure booting or fast boot.  I suspect fast boot was the problem,
7348 causing the firmware to boot directly from HD without considering any
7349 key presses and alternative devices, but do not know UEFI settings
7350 enough to tell.</p>
7351
7352 <p>There is no way to install Linux on the machine in question without
7353 opening the box and disconnecting the hard drive!  This is as far as I
7354 can tell, the only way to get access to the firmware setup menu
7355 without accepting the Windows 8 license agreement.  I am told (and
7356 found description on how to) that it is possible to configure the
7357 firmware setup once booted into Windows 8.  But as I believe the terms
7358 of that agreement are completely unacceptable, accepting the license
7359 was never an alternative.  I do not enter agreements I do not intend
7360 to follow.</p>
7361
7362 <p>I feared I had to return the laptops and ask for a refund, and
7363 waste many hours on this, but luckily there was a way to get it to
7364 work.  But I would not recommend it to anyone planning to run Linux on
7365 it, and I have become sceptical to Windows 8 certified laptops.  Is
7366 this the way Linux will be forced out of the market place, by making
7367 it close to impossible for "normal" users to install Linux without
7368 accepting the Microsoft Windows license terms?  Or at least not
7369 without risking to loose the warranty?</p>
7370
7371 <p>I've updated the
7372 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Linux Laptop
7373 wiki page for Packard Bell EasyNote LV</a>, to ensure the next person
7374 do not have to struggle as much as I did to get Linux into the
7375 machine.</p>
7376
7377 <p>Thanks to Bob Rosbag, Florian Weimer, Philipp Kern, Ben Hutching,
7378 Michael Tokarev and others for feedback and ideas.</p>
7379
7380       </div>
7381       <div class="tags">
7382
7383
7384         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>.
7385
7386
7387       </div>
7388     </div>
7389     <div class="padding"></div>
7390
7391     <div class="entry">
7392       <div class="title">
7393         <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>
7394       </div>
7395       <div class="date">
7396         25th May 2013
7397       </div>
7398       <div class="body">
7399         <p>I've run into quite a problem the last few days.  I bought three
7400 new laptops for my parents and a few others.  I bought Packard Bell
7401 Easynote LV to run Kubuntu on and use as their home computer.  But I
7402 am completely unable to figure out how to install Linux on it.  The
7403 computer is preinstalled with Windows 8, and I suspect it uses UEFI
7404 instead of a BIOS to boot.</p>
7405
7406 <p>The problem is that I am unable to get it to PXE boot, and unable
7407 to get it to boot the Linux installer from my USB stick.  I have yet
7408 to try the DVD install, and still hope it will work.  when I turn on
7409 the computer, there is no information on what buttons to press to get
7410 the normal boot menu.  I expect to get some boot menu to select PXE or
7411 USB stick booting.  When booting, it first ask for the language to
7412 use, then for some regional settings, and finally if I will accept the
7413 Windows 8 terms of use.  As these terms are completely unacceptable to
7414 me, I have no other choice but to turn off the computer and try again
7415 to get it to boot the Linux installer.</p>
7416
7417 <p>I have gathered my findings so far on a Linlap page about the
7418 <a href="http://www.linlap.com/packard_bell_easynote_lv">Packard Bell
7419 EasyNote LV</a> model.  If you have any idea how to get Linux
7420 installed on this machine, please get in touch or update that wiki
7421 page.  If I can't find a way to install Linux, I will have to return
7422 the laptop to the seller and find another machine for my parents.</p>
7423
7424 <p>I wonder, is this the way Linux will be forced out of the market
7425 using UEFI and "secure boot" by making it impossible to install Linux
7426 on new Laptops?</p>
7427
7428       </div>
7429       <div class="tags">
7430
7431
7432         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>.
7433
7434
7435       </div>
7436     </div>
7437     <div class="padding"></div>
7438
7439     <div class="entry">
7440       <div class="title">
7441         <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>
7442       </div>
7443       <div class="date">
7444         17th May 2013
7445       </div>
7446       <div class="body">
7447         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is
7448 an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools.  It
7449 contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to
7450 pupils in the primary schools.  It provide both the central server,
7451 network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of
7452 educational software.  The project was founded almost 12 years ago,
7453 2001-07-02.  If you want to support the project, which is in need for
7454 cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity,
7455 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">please
7456 donate some money</a>.
7457
7458 <p>A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing
7459 lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or
7460 Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation.  It isn't very
7461 hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by
7462 the Debian Edu installer.</p>
7463
7464 <p>The script,
7465 <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/>
7466 in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and
7467 transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation
7468 into a Debian Edu Workstation:</p>
7469
7470 <ol>
7471
7472 <li>Add skolelinux related APT sources.</li>
7473 <li>Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.</li>
7474 <li>Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in
7475     our configuration.</li>
7476 <li>Preseed debconf database with profile setup in
7477     /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages
7478     according to the profile specified in the config above,
7479     overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.</li>
7480 <li>Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything
7481     that could not be done using preseeding.</li>
7482 <li>Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.</li>
7483
7484 </ol>
7485
7486 <p>There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be
7487 replicated like this.  Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example.
7488 So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all
7489 the needed packages.</p>
7490
7491 <p>The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on
7492 setting up <a href="http://www.raspberrypi.org">Raspberry Pi</a> as a
7493 Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing
7494 <a href="http://www.raspbian.org/FrontPage‎">Raspbian</a> installation and
7495 transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or
7496 Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).</p>
7497
7498 <p>The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation.
7499 If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the
7500 PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:</p>
7501
7502 <p><pre>
7503 PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation"
7504 DESKTOP="lxde"
7505 </pre></p>
7506
7507 <p>The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in
7508 the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some
7509 virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first
7510 boot.</p>
7511
7512       </div>
7513       <div class="tags">
7514
7515
7516         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>.
7517
7518
7519       </div>
7520     </div>
7521     <div class="padding"></div>
7522
7523     <div class="entry">
7524       <div class="title">
7525         <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>
7526       </div>
7527       <div class="date">
7528         11th May 2013
7529       </div>
7530       <div class="body">
7531         <P>In January,
7532 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_IRC_channel_for_LEGO_designers_using_Debian.html">I
7533 announced a</a> new <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">IRC
7534 channel #debian-lego</a>, for those of us in the Debian and Linux
7535 community interested in <a href="http://www.lego.com/">LEGO</a>, the
7536 marvellous construction system from Denmark.  We also created
7537 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">a wiki page</a> to have
7538 a place to take notes and write down our plans and hopes.  And several
7539 people showed up to help.  I was very happy to see the effect of my
7540 call.  Since the small start, we have a debtags tag
7541 <a href="http://debtags.debian.net/search/bytag?wl=hardware::hobby:lego">hardware::hobby:lego</a>
7542 tag for LEGO related packages, and now count 10 packages related to
7543 LEGO and <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/">Mindstorms</a>:</p>
7544
7545 <p><table>
7546 <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>
7547 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/leocad">leocad</a></td><td>virtual brick CAD software</td></tr>
7548 <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>
7549 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/lnpd">lnpd</a></td><td>daemon for LNP communication with BrickOS</td></tr>
7550 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nbc">nbc</a></td><td>compiler for LEGO Mindstorms NXT bricks</td></tr>
7551 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/nqc">nqc</a></td><td>Not Quite C compiler for LEGO Mindstorms RCX</td></tr>
7552 <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>
7553 <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>
7554 <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>
7555 <tr><td><a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/t2n">t2n</a></td><td>simple command-line tool for Lego NXT</td></tr>
7556 </table></p>
7557
7558 <p>Some of these are available in Wheezy, and all but one are
7559 currently available in Jessie/testing.  leocad is so far only
7560 available in experimental.</p>
7561
7562 <p>If you care about LEGO in Debian, please join us on IRC and help
7563 adding the rest of the great free software tools available on Linux
7564 for LEGO designers.</p>
7565
7566       </div>
7567       <div class="tags">
7568
7569
7570         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/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
7571
7572
7573       </div>
7574     </div>
7575     <div class="padding"></div>
7576
7577     <div class="entry">
7578       <div class="title">
7579         <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>
7580       </div>
7581       <div class="date">
7582          5th May 2013
7583       </div>
7584       <div class="body">
7585         <p>When I woke up this morning, I was very happy to see that the
7586 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130504">release announcement
7587 for Debian Wheezy</a> was waiting in my mail box.  This is a great
7588 Debian release, and I expect to move my machines at home over to it fairly
7589 soon.</p>
7590
7591 <p>The new debian release contain heaps of new stuff, and one program
7592 in particular make me very happy to see included.  The
7593 <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/">Scratch</a> program, made famous by
7594 the <a href="http://www.code.org/">Teach kids code</a> movement, is
7595 included for the first time.  Alongside similar programs like
7596 <a href="http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/">kturtle</a> and
7597 <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art">turtleart</a>,
7598 it allow for visual programming where syntax errors can not happen,
7599 and a friendly programming environment for learning to control the
7600 computer.  Scratch will also be included in the next release of Debian
7601 Edu.</a>
7602
7603 <p>And now that Wheezy is wrapped up, we can wrap up the next Debian
7604 Edu/Skolelinux release too.  The
7605 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2013/04/msg00132.html">first
7606 alpha release</a> went out last week, and the next should soon
7607 follow.<p>
7608
7609       </div>
7610       <div class="tags">
7611
7612
7613         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>.
7614
7615
7616       </div>
7617     </div>
7618     <div class="padding"></div>
7619
7620     <div class="entry">
7621       <div class="title">
7622         <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>
7623       </div>
7624       <div class="date">
7625          3rd April 2013
7626       </div>
7627       <div class="body">
7628         <p>Today the <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">Isenkram
7629 package</a> finally made it into the archive, after lingering in NEW
7630 for many months.  I uploaded it to the Debian experimental suite
7631 2013-01-27, and today it was accepted into the archive.</p>
7632
7633 <p>Isenkram is a system for suggesting to users what packages to
7634 install to work with a pluggable hardware device.  The suggestion pop
7635 up when the device is plugged in.  For example if a Lego Mindstorm NXT
7636 is inserted, it will suggest to install the program needed to program
7637 the NXT controller.  Give it a go, and report bugs and suggestions to
7638 BTS. :)</p>
7639
7640       </div>
7641       <div class="tags">
7642
7643
7644         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>.
7645
7646
7647       </div>
7648     </div>
7649     <div class="padding"></div>
7650
7651     <div class="entry">
7652       <div class="title">
7653         <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>
7654       </div>
7655       <div class="date">
7656          2nd February 2013
7657       </div>
7658       <div class="body">
7659         <p>My
7660 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_backport_bitcoin_qt_version_0_7_2_2_to_Debian_Squeeze.html">last
7661 bitcoin related blog post</a> mentioned that the new
7662 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin package</a> for
7663 Debian was waiting in NEW.  It was accepted by the Debian ftp-masters
7664 2013-01-19, and have been available in unstable since then.  It was
7665 automatically copied to Ubuntu, and is available in their Raring
7666 version too.</p>
7667
7668 <p>But there is a strange problem with the build that block this new
7669 version from being available on the i386 and kfreebsd-i386
7670 architectures.  For some strange reason, the autobuilders in Debian
7671 for these architectures fail to run the test suite on these
7672 architectures (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/672524">BTS #672524</a>).
7673 We are so far unable to reproduce it when building it manually, and
7674 no-one have been able to propose a fix.  If you got an idea what is
7675 failing, please let us know via the BTS.</p>
7676
7677 <p>One feature that is annoying me with of the bitcoin client, because
7678 I often run low on disk space, is the fact that the client will exit
7679 if it run short on space (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/696715">BTS
7680 #696715</a>).  So make sure you have enough disk space when you run
7681 it. :)</p>
7682
7683 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
7684 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
7685 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
7686
7687       </div>
7688       <div class="tags">
7689
7690
7691         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>.
7692
7693
7694       </div>
7695     </div>
7696     <div class="padding"></div>
7697
7698     <div class="entry">
7699       <div class="title">
7700         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
7701       </div>
7702       <div class="date">
7703         22nd January 2013
7704       </div>
7705       <div class="body">
7706         <p>Yesterday, I
7707 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
7708 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
7709 pluggable hardware devices, which I
7710 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
7711 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
7712 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
7713 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
7714 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
7715 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
7716 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
7717 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
7718 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
7719 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
7720
7721 <pre>
7722 git clone http://anonscm.debian.org/git/collab-maint/isenkram.git
7723 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage -us -uc
7724 </pre>
7725
7726 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
7727 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
7728 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
7729 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
7730
7731 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
7732 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
7733 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
7734 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
7735 word.</p>
7736
7737 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-26</strong>: Added -us -us to build
7738 instructions, to avoid confusing people with an error from the signing
7739 process.</p>
7740
7741 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-27</strong>: Switch to HTTP URL for the git
7742 clone argument to avoid the need for authentication.</p>
7743
7744       </div>
7745       <div class="tags">
7746
7747
7748         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>.
7749
7750
7751       </div>
7752     </div>
7753     <div class="padding"></div>
7754
7755     <div class="entry">
7756       <div class="title">
7757         <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>
7758       </div>
7759       <div class="date">
7760         21st January 2013
7761       </div>
7762       <div class="body">
7763         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
7764 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
7765 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
7766 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
7767 it, fetch the
7768 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
7769 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
7770 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
7771 autostart script.</p>
7772
7773 <p>The design is simple:</p>
7774
7775 <ul>
7776
7777 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
7778 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
7779
7780 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
7781 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
7782 initially did.</li>
7783
7784 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
7785 the APT database, a database
7786 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
7787 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
7788
7789 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
7790 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
7791 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
7792 package or packages.</li>
7793
7794 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
7795 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
7796
7797 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
7798 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
7799
7800 </ul>
7801
7802 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
7803 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
7804 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
7805 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
7806
7807 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
7808 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
7809 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
7810 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
7811 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
7812
7813 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
7814 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
7815 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
7816 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
7817 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
7818 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
7819 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
7820 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
7821
7822 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
7823 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
7824 '<tt>svn checkout
7825 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
7826 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
7827 devscripts package.</p>
7828
7829 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
7830 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
7831 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
7832 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
7833 instructions</a> for details.</p>
7834
7835       </div>
7836       <div class="tags">
7837
7838
7839         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>.
7840
7841
7842       </div>
7843     </div>
7844     <div class="padding"></div>
7845
7846     <div class="entry">
7847       <div class="title">
7848         <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>
7849       </div>
7850       <div class="date">
7851         19th January 2013
7852       </div>
7853       <div class="body">
7854         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
7855 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
7856 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
7857 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
7858 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
7859 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
7860 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
7861 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
7862 not a durable solution.
7863
7864 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
7865 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
7866
7867 <ul>
7868
7869 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
7870   than A4).</li>
7871 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
7872 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
7873 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
7874 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
7875 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
7876 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
7877 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
7878 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
7879 size).</li>
7880 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
7881   X.org packages.</li>
7882 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
7883   the time).
7884
7885 </ul>
7886
7887 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
7888 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
7889 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
7890 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
7891 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
7892 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
7893 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
7894 still be useful.</p>
7895
7896 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
7897 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
7898 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
7899 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
7900 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
7901 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
7902
7903       </div>
7904       <div class="tags">
7905
7906
7907         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>.
7908
7909
7910       </div>
7911     </div>
7912     <div class="padding"></div>
7913
7914     <div class="entry">
7915       <div class="title">
7916         <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>
7917       </div>
7918       <div class="date">
7919         18th January 2013
7920       </div>
7921       <div class="body">
7922         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
7923 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
7924 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
7925 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
7926 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
7927 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
7928 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
7929
7930 <pre>
7931 #!/usr/bin/python
7932 import sys
7933 import apt
7934 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7935     cache = apt.Cache()
7936     cache.open(None)
7937     thepkgs = []
7938     for pkg in cache:
7939         version = pkg.candidate
7940         if version is None:
7941             version = pkg.installed
7942         if version is None:
7943             continue
7944         record = version.record
7945         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
7946             continue
7947         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
7948         for t in mime_types:
7949             t = t.rstrip().strip()
7950             if t == mimetype:
7951                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
7952     return thepkgs
7953 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
7954 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
7955     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
7956 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
7957 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
7958     print "  %s" %pkg
7959 </pre>
7960
7961 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
7962
7963 <pre>
7964 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
7965 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
7966   gecko-mediaplayer
7967 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
7968 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
7969   browser-plugin-gnash
7970 %
7971 </pre>
7972
7973 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
7974 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
7975 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
7976 anyone working on adding it?</p>
7977
7978 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
7979 request for icweasel support for this feature is
7980 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
7981 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
7982 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
7983 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
7984
7985       </div>
7986       <div class="tags">
7987
7988
7989         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>.
7990
7991
7992       </div>
7993     </div>
7994     <div class="padding"></div>
7995
7996     <div class="entry">
7997       <div class="title">
7998         <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>
7999       </div>
8000       <div class="date">
8001         16th January 2013
8002       </div>
8003       <div class="body">
8004         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
8005 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
8006 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
8007 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
8008 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
8009 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
8010 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
8011 downloaded by the browser.</p>
8012
8013 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
8014 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
8015 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
8016 can be found on the
8017 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
8018 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
8019 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
8020 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
8021 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
8022
8023 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
8024
8025 <pre>
8026   count MIME type
8027   ----- -----------------------
8028      32 text/plain
8029      30 audio/mpeg
8030      29 image/png
8031      28 image/jpeg
8032      27 application/ogg
8033      26 audio/x-mp3
8034      25 image/tiff
8035      25 image/gif
8036      22 image/bmp
8037      22 audio/x-wav
8038      20 audio/x-flac
8039      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8040      18 video/x-ms-asf
8041      18 audio/x-musepack
8042      18 audio/x-mpeg
8043      18 application/x-ogg
8044      17 video/mpeg
8045      17 audio/x-scpls
8046      17 audio/ogg
8047      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8048 </pre>
8049
8050 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
8051
8052 <pre>
8053   count MIME type
8054   ----- -----------------------
8055      33 text/plain
8056      32 image/png
8057      32 image/jpeg
8058      29 audio/mpeg
8059      27 image/gif
8060      26 image/tiff
8061      26 application/ogg
8062      25 audio/x-mp3
8063      22 image/bmp
8064      21 audio/x-wav
8065      19 audio/x-mpegurl
8066      19 audio/x-mpeg
8067      18 video/mpeg
8068      18 audio/x-scpls
8069      18 audio/x-flac
8070      18 application/x-ogg
8071      17 video/x-ms-asf
8072      17 text/html
8073      17 audio/x-musepack
8074      16 image/x-xbitmap
8075 </pre>
8076
8077 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
8078
8079 <pre>
8080   count MIME type
8081   ----- -----------------------
8082      31 text/plain
8083      31 image/png
8084      31 image/jpeg
8085      29 audio/mpeg
8086      28 application/ogg
8087      27 image/gif
8088      26 image/tiff
8089      26 audio/x-mp3
8090      23 audio/x-wav
8091      22 image/bmp
8092      21 audio/x-flac
8093      20 audio/x-mpegurl
8094      19 audio/x-mpeg
8095      18 video/x-ms-asf
8096      18 video/mpeg
8097      18 audio/x-scpls
8098      18 application/x-ogg
8099      17 audio/x-musepack
8100      16 video/x-ms-wmv
8101      16 video/x-msvideo
8102 </pre>
8103
8104 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
8105 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
8106 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
8107 issues.</p>
8108
8109 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
8110 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
8111
8112       </div>
8113       <div class="tags">
8114
8115
8116         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>.
8117
8118
8119       </div>
8120     </div>
8121     <div class="padding"></div>
8122
8123     <div class="entry">
8124       <div class="title">
8125         <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>
8126       </div>
8127       <div class="date">
8128         15th January 2013
8129       </div>
8130       <div class="body">
8131         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
8132 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
8133 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
8134 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
8135 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
8136 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
8137 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
8138 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
8139 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
8140 packages.</p>
8141
8142 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
8143 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
8144 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
8145 modalias.</p>
8146
8147 <p><blockquote>
8148 Package: package-name
8149 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
8150 </blockquote></p>
8151
8152 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
8153 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
8154
8155 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
8156 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
8157
8158 <p><blockquote>
8159 Package: cheese
8160 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
8161 </blockquote></p>
8162
8163 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
8164 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
8165
8166 <p><blockquote>
8167 Package: pcmciautils
8168 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
8169 </blockquote></p>
8170
8171 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
8172 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
8173
8174 <p><blockquote>
8175 Package: colorhug-client
8176 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
8177 </blockquote></p>
8178
8179 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
8180 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
8181 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
8182
8183 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
8184 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
8185 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
8186 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
8187 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
8188 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
8189 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
8190 Raring.</p>
8191
8192 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
8193 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
8194 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
8195 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
8196 try the
8197 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
8198 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
8199 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
8200 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
8201
8202 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
8203 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
8204
8205 <p><blockquote>
8206 % ./hw-support-lookup
8207 <br>yubikey-personalization
8208 <br>%
8209 </blockquote></p>
8210
8211 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
8212 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
8213
8214 <p><blockquote>
8215 % ./hw-support-lookup
8216 <br>pcmciautils
8217 <br>%
8218 </blockquote></p>
8219
8220 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
8221 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
8222 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
8223
8224 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
8225 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
8226 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
8227 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
8228 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
8229 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
8230 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
8231 see if it work.</p>
8232
8233 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8234 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8235 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8236 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8237
8238       </div>
8239       <div class="tags">
8240
8241
8242         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>.
8243
8244
8245       </div>
8246     </div>
8247     <div class="padding"></div>
8248
8249     <div class="entry">
8250       <div class="title">
8251         <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>
8252       </div>
8253       <div class="date">
8254         14th January 2013
8255       </div>
8256       <div class="body">
8257         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
8258 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
8259 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
8260 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
8261 in
8262 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8263 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
8264
8265 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
8266
8267 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
8268 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
8269 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
8270 &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;,
8271 &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
8272 &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;.
8273
8274 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
8275 this shell script:</p>
8276
8277 <pre>
8278 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
8279 </pre>
8280
8281 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
8282 using modinfo:</p>
8283
8284 <pre>
8285 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
8286 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
8287 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
8288 %
8289 </pre>
8290
8291 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
8292
8293 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
8294 Bridge memory controller:</p>
8295
8296 <p><blockquote>
8297 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
8298 </blockquote></p>
8299
8300 <p>This represent these values:</p>
8301
8302 <pre>
8303  v   00008086  (vendor)
8304  d   00002770  (device)
8305  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
8306  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
8307  bc  06        (bus class)
8308  sc  00        (bus subclass)
8309  i   00        (interface)
8310 </pre>
8311
8312 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
8313 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
8314 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
8315 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
8316
8317 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
8318 means.</p>
8319
8320 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
8321
8322 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
8323 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
8324
8325 <p><blockquote>
8326 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
8327 </blockquote></p>
8328
8329 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
8330
8331 <pre>
8332  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
8333  p    0001  (device product)
8334  d    0206  (bcddevice)
8335  dc     09  (device class)
8336  dsc    00  (device subclass)
8337  dp     00  (device protocol)
8338  ic     09  (interface class)
8339  isc    00  (interface subclass)
8340  ip     00  (interface protocol)
8341 </pre>
8342
8343 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
8344 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
8345 these alias entries show up:</p>
8346
8347 <p><blockquote>
8348 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
8349 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
8350 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
8351 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
8352 </blockquote></p>
8353
8354 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
8355 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
8356 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
8357
8358 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
8359
8360 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
8361 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
8362
8363 <p><blockquote>
8364 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8365 </blockquote></p>
8366
8367 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
8368
8369 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
8370
8371 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
8372 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
8373 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
8374
8375 <p><blockquote>
8376 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
8377 </blockquote></p>
8378
8379 <p>The values present are</p>
8380
8381 <pre>
8382  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
8383  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
8384  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
8385  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
8386  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
8387  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
8388  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
8389  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
8390  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
8391  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
8392  ct   10             (chassis type)
8393  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
8394 </pre>
8395
8396 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
8397 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
8398
8399 <pre>
8400   3 Desktop
8401   4 Low Profile Desktop
8402   5 Pizza Box
8403   6 Mini Tower
8404   7 Tower
8405   8 Portable
8406   9 Laptop
8407  10 Notebook
8408  11 Hand Held
8409  12 Docking Station
8410  13 All In One
8411  14 Sub Notebook
8412  15 Space-saving
8413  16 Lunch Box
8414  17 Main Server Chassis
8415  18 Expansion Chassis
8416  19 Sub Chassis
8417  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
8418  21 Peripheral Chassis
8419  22 RAID Chassis
8420  23 Rack Mount Chassis
8421  24 Sealed-case PC
8422  25 Multi-system
8423  26 CompactPCI
8424  27 AdvancedTCA
8425  28 Blade
8426  29 Blade Enclosing
8427 </pre>
8428
8429 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
8430 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
8431 claim it is a desktop.</p>
8432
8433 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
8434
8435 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
8436 test machine:</p>
8437
8438 <p><blockquote>
8439 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
8440 </blockquote></p>
8441
8442 <p>The values present are</p>
8443
8444 <pre>
8445   ty  01  (type)
8446   pr  00  (prototype)
8447   id  00  (id)
8448   ex  00  (extra)
8449 </pre>
8450
8451 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
8452 the valid values are.</p>
8453
8454 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
8455
8456 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
8457 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
8458 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
8459 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
8460 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
8461 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
8462 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
8463
8464 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
8465
8466 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
8467 one can use the following shell script:</p>
8468
8469 <pre>
8470   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
8471     echo "$id" ; \
8472     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
8473   done
8474 </pre>
8475
8476 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
8477 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
8478
8479 <pre>
8480   acpi:ACPI0003:
8481     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
8482   acpi:device:
8483   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
8484   acpi:IBM0068:
8485     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
8486     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
8487     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
8488     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
8489   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
8490     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
8491     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
8492     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
8493   [...]
8494 </pre>
8495
8496 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
8497 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
8498 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
8499 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
8500
8501 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
8502 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
8503 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
8504
8505       </div>
8506       <div class="tags">
8507
8508
8509         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>.
8510
8511
8512       </div>
8513     </div>
8514     <div class="padding"></div>
8515
8516     <div class="entry">
8517       <div class="title">
8518         <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>
8519       </div>
8520       <div class="date">
8521         10th January 2013
8522       </div>
8523       <div class="body">
8524         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
8525 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
8526 Launcher and updated the Debian package
8527 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
8528 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
8529 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
8530 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
8531 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
8532 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
8533 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
8534 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
8535 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
8536 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
8537 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
8538 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
8539 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
8540 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
8541 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
8542
8543       </div>
8544       <div class="tags">
8545
8546
8547         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>.
8548
8549
8550       </div>
8551     </div>
8552     <div class="padding"></div>
8553
8554     <div class="entry">
8555       <div class="title">
8556         <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>
8557       </div>
8558       <div class="date">
8559          9th January 2013
8560       </div>
8561       <div class="body">
8562         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
8563 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
8564 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
8565 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
8566 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
8567 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
8568 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
8569 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
8570 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
8571 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
8572 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
8573
8574 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
8575 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
8576 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
8577 simple:
8578
8579 <ul>
8580
8581 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
8582   starting when a user log in.</li>
8583
8584 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
8585   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
8586
8587 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
8588   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
8589   packages.</li>
8590
8591 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
8592   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
8593
8594 </ul>
8595
8596 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
8597 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
8598 discover database to find packages and
8599 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
8600 packages.</p>
8601
8602 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
8603 draft package is now checked into
8604 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
8605 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
8606 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
8607 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
8608 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
8609 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
8610 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
8611 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
8612 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
8613 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
8614 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
8615 because of the freeze).</p>
8616
8617 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
8618 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
8619 inserted):</p>
8620
8621 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
8622
8623 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
8624 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
8625 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
8626
8627 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
8628 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
8629 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
8630 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
8631 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
8632 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
8633 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
8634
8635 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
8636 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
8637 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
8638 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
8639 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
8640 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
8641 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
8642 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
8643 not be installed?</p>
8644
8645 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
8646 please send me an email. :)</p>
8647
8648       </div>
8649       <div class="tags">
8650
8651
8652         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>.
8653
8654
8655       </div>
8656     </div>
8657     <div class="padding"></div>
8658
8659     <div class="entry">
8660       <div class="title">
8661         <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>
8662       </div>
8663       <div class="date">
8664          2nd January 2013
8665       </div>
8666       <div class="body">
8667         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
8668 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
8669 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
8670 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
8671 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
8672 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
8673 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
8674 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
8675 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
8676 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
8677
8678 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
8679 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
8680 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
8681
8682       </div>
8683       <div class="tags">
8684
8685
8686         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/lego">lego</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8687
8688
8689       </div>
8690     </div>
8691     <div class="padding"></div>
8692
8693     <div class="entry">
8694       <div class="title">
8695         <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>
8696       </div>
8697       <div class="date">
8698         25th December 2012
8699       </div>
8700       <div class="body">
8701         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
8702 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
8703
8704 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
8705 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
8706 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
8707 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
8708 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
8709 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
8710 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
8711 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
8712 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
8713 name.</p>
8714
8715 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
8716 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
8717 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
8718
8719 <blockquote><pre>
8720 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
8721 cd bitcoin
8722 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
8723 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
8724 </pre></blockquote>
8725
8726 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
8727 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
8728 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
8729 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
8730 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
8731 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
8732 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
8733 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
8734 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
8735
8736 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
8737 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
8738 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8739
8740       </div>
8741       <div class="tags">
8742
8743
8744         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>.
8745
8746
8747       </div>
8748     </div>
8749     <div class="padding"></div>
8750
8751     <div class="entry">
8752       <div class="title">
8753         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
8754       </div>
8755       <div class="date">
8756         21st December 2012
8757       </div>
8758       <div class="body">
8759         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
8760 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
8761 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
8762 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
8763 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
8764 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
8765 is now maintained by a
8766 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
8767 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
8768 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
8769 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
8770 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
8771 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
8772 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
8773 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
8774 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
8775 Corallo in a
8776 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
8777 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
8778 Debian package.</p>
8779
8780 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
8781 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
8782 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
8783 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
8784 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
8785 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
8786 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
8787 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
8788 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
8789 new version to unstable.
8790
8791 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
8792 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
8793 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
8794 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
8795 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
8796 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
8797 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
8798 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
8799 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
8800 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
8801 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
8802 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
8803 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
8804 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
8805 have not tested them.</p>
8806
8807 <p>My
8808 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
8809 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
8810 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
8811 years ago, as can be
8812 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
8813 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
8814 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
8815 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
8816 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
8817 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
8818 the same address as last time,
8819 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
8820
8821       </div>
8822       <div class="tags">
8823
8824
8825         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>.
8826
8827
8828       </div>
8829     </div>
8830     <div class="padding"></div>
8831
8832     <div class="entry">
8833       <div class="title">
8834         <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>
8835       </div>
8836       <div class="date">
8837          7th September 2012
8838       </div>
8839       <div class="body">
8840         <p>As I
8841 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
8842 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
8843 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
8844 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
8845 repository for the project</a>.</p>
8846
8847 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
8848 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
8849 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
8850 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
8851
8852 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
8853 PostScript formats at
8854 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
8855 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
8856
8857       </div>
8858       <div class="tags">
8859
8860
8861         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>.
8862
8863
8864       </div>
8865     </div>
8866     <div class="padding"></div>
8867
8868     <div class="entry">
8869       <div class="title">
8870         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gratulerer_med_19__rsdagen__Debian_.html">Gratulerer med 19-årsdagen, Debian!</a>
8871       </div>
8872       <div class="date">
8873         16th August 2012
8874       </div>
8875       <div class="body">
8876         <p>I dag fyller
8877 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120813">Debian-prosjektet 19
8878 år</a>.  Jeg har fulgt det de siste 12 årene, og er veldig glad for å kunne
8879 si gratulerer med dagen, Debian!</p>
8880
8881       </div>
8882       <div class="tags">
8883
8884
8885         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
8886
8887
8888       </div>
8889     </div>
8890     <div class="padding"></div>
8891
8892     <div class="entry">
8893       <div class="title">
8894         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
8895       </div>
8896       <div class="date">
8897         24th June 2012
8898       </div>
8899       <div class="body">
8900         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
8901 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
8902 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
8903 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
8904 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
8905 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
8906 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
8907 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
8908 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
8909 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
8910 missing in my book.</p>
8911
8912 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
8913 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
8914 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
8915 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
8916 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
8917 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
8918 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
8919
8920       </div>
8921       <div class="tags">
8922
8923
8924         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>.
8925
8926
8927       </div>
8928     </div>
8929     <div class="padding"></div>
8930
8931     <div class="entry">
8932       <div class="title">
8933         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
8934       </div>
8935       <div class="date">
8936         21st November 2011
8937       </div>
8938       <div class="body">
8939         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
8940 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
8941 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
8942 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
8943 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
8944 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
8945 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
8946 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
8947 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
8948 the tools to do so.</p>
8949
8950 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
8951 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
8952 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
8953 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
8954
8955 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
8956 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
8957 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
8958 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
8959 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
8960 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
8961 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
8962 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
8963
8964 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
8965 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
8966 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
8967
8968 <p><pre>
8969 #!/usr/bin/perl
8970 use strict;
8971 use warnings;
8972 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
8973 BEGIN {
8974     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
8975     my %rhelmodules = (
8976         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
8977         );
8978     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
8979         eval "use $module;";
8980         if ($@) {
8981             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
8982             system("yum install -y $pkg");
8983             eval "use $module;";
8984         }
8985     }
8986 }
8987 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
8988
8989 upgrade_dell();
8990
8991 exit 0;
8992
8993 sub run_firmware_script {
8994     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
8995     unless ($script) {
8996         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
8997         exit 1
8998     }
8999     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
9000
9001     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
9002         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
9003     } else {
9004         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
9005     }
9006 }
9007
9008 sub run_firmware_scripts {
9009     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
9010     # Run firmware packages
9011     for my $dir (@dirs) {
9012         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
9013         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
9014         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
9015             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
9016             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
9017         }
9018         closedir $dh;
9019     }
9020 }
9021
9022 sub download {
9023     my $url = shift;
9024     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
9025     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
9026 }
9027
9028 sub upgrade_dell {
9029     my @dirs;
9030     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9031     chomp $product;
9032
9033     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
9034
9035         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
9036         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
9037
9038         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
9039             CLEANUP => 1
9040             );
9041         chdir($tmpdir);
9042         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
9043         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
9044         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
9045         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
9046         my $fwopts = "-q";
9047         if (@paths) {
9048             for my $url (@paths) {
9049                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
9050             }
9051             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
9052         } else {
9053             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9054             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9055         }
9056         chdir('/');
9057     } else {
9058         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
9059         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
9060     }
9061 }
9062
9063 sub fetch_dell_fw {
9064     my $path = shift;
9065     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
9066     download($url);
9067 }
9068
9069 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
9070 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
9071 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
9072 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
9073     my $filename = shift;
9074
9075     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
9076     chomp $product;
9077     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
9078
9079     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
9080
9081     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
9082     my @paths;
9083     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
9084         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
9085         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
9086         my $oscode;
9087         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
9088             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
9089         } else {
9090             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
9091         }
9092         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
9093         {
9094             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
9095         }
9096     }
9097     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
9098         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
9099
9100         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
9101         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
9102
9103         my $cpath = $component->{path};
9104         for my $path (@paths) {
9105             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
9106                 push(@paths, $cpath);
9107             }
9108         }
9109     }
9110     return @paths;
9111 }
9112 </pre>
9113
9114 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
9115 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
9116 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
9117 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
9118 outdated.</p>
9119
9120       </div>
9121       <div class="tags">
9122
9123
9124         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>.
9125
9126
9127       </div>
9128     </div>
9129     <div class="padding"></div>
9130
9131     <div class="entry">
9132       <div class="title">
9133         <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>
9134       </div>
9135       <div class="date">
9136          4th August 2011
9137       </div>
9138       <div class="body">
9139         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
9140 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
9141 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
9142 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
9143 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
9144 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
9145 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
9146 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
9147 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
9148
9149 <p><blockquote>
9150 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
9151 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
9152 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
9153 </blockquote></p>
9154
9155 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
9156 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
9157 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
9158 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
9159 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
9160 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
9161 hard to explain.</p>
9162
9163 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
9164 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
9165 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
9166 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
9167 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
9168 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
9169 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
9170 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
9171 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
9172 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
9173 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
9174 mode).</p>
9175
9176 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
9177 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
9178 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
9179 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
9180 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
9181 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
9182 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
9183 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
9184 after visiting single user mode.</p>
9185
9186 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
9187 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
9188 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
9189 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
9190 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
9191 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
9192 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
9193 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
9194
9195 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
9196 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
9197 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
9198
9199       </div>
9200       <div class="tags">
9201
9202
9203         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>.
9204
9205
9206       </div>
9207     </div>
9208     <div class="padding"></div>
9209
9210     <div class="entry">
9211       <div class="title">
9212         <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>
9213       </div>
9214       <div class="date">
9215         30th July 2011
9216       </div>
9217       <div class="body">
9218         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
9219 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
9220 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
9221 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
9222 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
9223 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
9224 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
9225 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
9226 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
9227 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
9228 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
9229 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
9230 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
9231
9232 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
9233 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
9234 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
9235 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
9236 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
9237 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
9238 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
9239 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
9240 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
9241
9242 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
9243 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
9244 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
9245 is presented.</p>
9246
9247 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
9248 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
9249 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
9250 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
9251 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
9252 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
9253 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
9254 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
9255 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
9256 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
9257 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
9258 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
9259 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
9260 find time to push this forward.</p>
9261
9262       </div>
9263       <div class="tags">
9264
9265
9266         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>.
9267
9268
9269       </div>
9270     </div>
9271     <div class="padding"></div>
9272
9273     <div class="entry">
9274       <div class="title">
9275         <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>
9276       </div>
9277       <div class="date">
9278         29th July 2011
9279       </div>
9280       <div class="body">
9281         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
9282 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
9283 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
9284 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
9285 issues.</p>
9286
9287 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
9288 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
9289 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
9290
9291 <ol>
9292
9293 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
9294 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
9295 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
9296 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
9297 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
9298 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
9299 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
9300 Debian.</li>
9301
9302 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
9303 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
9304 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
9305 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
9306 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
9307 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
9308 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
9309 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
9310 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
9311 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
9312 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
9313 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
9314 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
9315
9316 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
9317 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
9318 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
9319 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
9320 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
9321 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
9322 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
9323 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
9324 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
9325 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
9326
9327 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
9328 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
9329 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
9330 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
9331 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
9332 latter behaviour.</li>
9333
9334 </ol>
9335
9336 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
9337 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
9338 it do not matter much.</p>
9339
9340 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
9341 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
9342 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
9343
9344       </div>
9345       <div class="tags">
9346
9347
9348         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>.
9349
9350
9351       </div>
9352     </div>
9353     <div class="padding"></div>
9354
9355     <div class="entry">
9356       <div class="title">
9357         <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>
9358       </div>
9359       <div class="date">
9360         26th July 2011
9361       </div>
9362       <div class="body">
9363         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
9364 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
9365 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
9366 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
9367 security support for a few years.</p>
9368
9369 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
9370 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
9371 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
9372 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
9373 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
9374 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
9375 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
9376 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
9377 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
9378 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
9379 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
9380 easier in the future.</p>
9381
9382 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
9383 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
9384 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
9385 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
9386 do not have time for.</p>
9387
9388       </div>
9389       <div class="tags">
9390
9391
9392         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>.
9393
9394
9395       </div>
9396     </div>
9397     <div class="padding"></div>
9398
9399     <div class="entry">
9400       <div class="title">
9401         <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>
9402       </div>
9403       <div class="date">
9404          3rd April 2011
9405       </div>
9406       <div class="body">
9407         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
9408 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
9409 update in English.</p>
9410
9411 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
9412 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
9413 of the British service
9414 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
9415 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
9416 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
9417 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
9418 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
9419 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
9420 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
9421 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
9422 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
9423 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
9424 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
9425 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
9426 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
9427
9428 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
9429 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
9430 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
9431 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
9432 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
9433 public infrastructure.</p>
9434
9435 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
9436 such service?</p>
9437
9438       </div>
9439       <div class="tags">
9440
9441
9442         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>.
9443
9444
9445       </div>
9446     </div>
9447     <div class="padding"></div>
9448
9449     <div class="entry">
9450       <div class="title">
9451         <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>
9452       </div>
9453       <div class="date">
9454         28th January 2011
9455       </div>
9456       <div class="body">
9457         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
9458 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
9459 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
9460 available on the Internet, and check our locally
9461 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
9462 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
9463 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
9464 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
9465 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
9466 out which security holes were present in our free software
9467 collection.</p>
9468
9469 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
9470 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
9471 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
9472 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
9473 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
9474 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
9475 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
9476 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
9477 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
9478 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
9479 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
9480 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
9481 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
9482 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
9483 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
9484 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
9485
9486 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
9487 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
9488 check out, one could look up
9489 <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
9490 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
9491 The most recent one is
9492 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
9493 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
9494 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
9495
9496 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
9497 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
9498 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
9499 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
9500 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
9501 security issues out.</p>
9502
9503 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
9504 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
9505 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
9506 RHEL is providing
9507 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
9508 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
9509 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
9510
9511 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
9512 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
9513 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
9514 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
9515 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
9516 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
9517 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
9518 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
9519 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
9520 established soon.</p>
9521
9522 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
9523 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
9524 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
9525 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
9526 for their packages.</p>
9527
9528       </div>
9529       <div class="tags">
9530
9531
9532         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>.
9533
9534
9535       </div>
9536     </div>
9537     <div class="padding"></div>
9538
9539     <div class="entry">
9540       <div class="title">
9541         <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>
9542       </div>
9543       <div class="date">
9544         23rd January 2011
9545       </div>
9546       <div class="body">
9547         <p>In the
9548 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
9549 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
9550 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
9551 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
9552 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
9553 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
9554 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
9555 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
9556 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
9557 one of my machines like this:</p>
9558
9559 <pre>
9560 loaded modules:
9561 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
9562 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
9563 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
9564 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
9565 10de:03ec pata_amd
9566 10de:03f6 sata_nv
9567 1022:1103 k8temp
9568 109e:036e bttv
9569 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
9570 11ab:4364 sky2
9571 </pre>
9572
9573 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
9574 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
9575
9576 <pre>
9577 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
9578     echo loaded pci modules:
9579     (
9580         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
9581         for address in * ; do
9582             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
9583                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
9584                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
9585                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
9586                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
9587                     echo "$id $module"
9588                 fi
9589             fi
9590         done
9591     )
9592     echo
9593 fi
9594 </pre>
9595
9596 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
9597 mappings:</p>
9598
9599 <pre>
9600 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
9601     echo loaded usb modules:
9602     (
9603         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
9604         for address in * ; do
9605             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
9606                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
9607                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
9608                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
9609                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
9610                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
9611                         echo "$id $module"
9612                     fi
9613                 fi
9614             fi
9615         done
9616     )
9617     echo
9618 fi
9619 </pre>
9620
9621 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
9622 well.</p>
9623
9624       </div>
9625       <div class="tags">
9626
9627
9628         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>.
9629
9630
9631       </div>
9632     </div>
9633     <div class="padding"></div>
9634
9635     <div class="entry">
9636       <div class="title">
9637         <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>
9638       </div>
9639       <div class="date">
9640         22nd December 2010
9641       </div>
9642       <div class="body">
9643         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
9644 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
9645 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
9646 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
9647 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
9648 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
9649 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
9650 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
9651 university.</p>
9652
9653 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
9654 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
9655 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
9656 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
9657 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
9658 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
9659 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
9660 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
9661
9662 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
9663 I perform on a new model.</p>
9664
9665 <ul>
9666
9667 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
9668 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
9669 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
9670
9671 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
9672 installation, X.org is working.</li>
9673
9674 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
9675 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
9676 reported by the program.</li>
9677
9678 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
9679 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
9680 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
9681 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
9682 normally test this by playing
9683 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
9684 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
9685
9686 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
9687 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
9688
9689 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
9690 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
9691
9692 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
9693 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
9694
9695 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
9696 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
9697 few.</li>
9698
9699 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
9700 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
9701 notice this.</li>
9702
9703 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
9704 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
9705 resume.</li>
9706
9707 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
9708 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
9709 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
9710 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
9711 not.</li>
9712
9713 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
9714 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
9715 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
9716 existence.</li>
9717
9718 </ul>
9719
9720 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
9721 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
9722 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
9723 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
9724 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
9725 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
9726 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
9727 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
9728
9729       </div>
9730       <div class="tags">
9731
9732
9733         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>.
9734
9735
9736       </div>
9737     </div>
9738     <div class="padding"></div>
9739
9740     <div class="entry">
9741       <div class="title">
9742         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
9743       </div>
9744       <div class="date">
9745         11th December 2010
9746       </div>
9747       <div class="body">
9748         <p>As I continue to explore
9749 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
9750 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
9751 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
9752
9753 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
9754 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
9755 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
9756 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
9757 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
9758 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
9759 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
9760 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
9761 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
9762 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
9763 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
9764 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
9765 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
9766 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
9767 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
9768 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
9769 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
9770 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
9771 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
9772 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
9773
9774 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
9775 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
9776 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
9777 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
9778 If the Skolelinux foundation
9779 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
9780 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
9781 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
9782 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
9783 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
9784 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
9785 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
9786 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
9787
9788 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
9789 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
9790 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
9791 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
9792 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
9793 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
9794 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
9795 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
9796 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
9797 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
9798 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
9799 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
9800 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
9801 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
9802 currencies.</p>
9803
9804 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
9805 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
9806 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
9807 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
9808 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
9809 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
9810 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
9811 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
9812 BitCoins.  Check out
9813 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
9814 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
9815 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
9816 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
9817 yet.</p>
9818
9819 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
9820 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
9821 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
9822 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
9823 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
9824
9825       </div>
9826       <div class="tags">
9827
9828
9829         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>.
9830
9831
9832       </div>
9833     </div>
9834     <div class="padding"></div>
9835
9836     <div class="entry">
9837       <div class="title">
9838         <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>
9839       </div>
9840       <div class="date">
9841         10th December 2010
9842       </div>
9843       <div class="body">
9844         <p>With this weeks lawless
9845 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
9846 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
9847 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
9848 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
9849 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
9850 A blog post from
9851 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
9852 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
9853 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
9854 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
9855 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
9856 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
9857 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
9858
9859 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
9860 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
9861 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
9862 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
9863 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
9864 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
9865 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
9866 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
9867 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
9868 Debian</a> soon.</p>
9869
9870 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
9871 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
9872 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
9873 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
9874 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
9875 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
9876 you can even get
9877 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
9878 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
9879 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
9880 on the current exchange rates.</p>
9881
9882 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
9883 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
9884 donations to the address
9885 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
9886
9887       </div>
9888       <div class="tags">
9889
9890
9891         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>.
9892
9893
9894       </div>
9895     </div>
9896     <div class="padding"></div>
9897
9898     <div class="entry">
9899       <div class="title">
9900         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
9901       </div>
9902       <div class="date">
9903         27th November 2010
9904       </div>
9905       <div class="body">
9906         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
9907 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
9908 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
9909 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
9910 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
9911 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
9912 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
9913 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
9914
9915 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
9916 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9917 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
9918 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
9919 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
9920 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
9921 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
9922 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
9923 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
9924 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
9925 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
9926
9927 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
9928 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
9929 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
9930 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
9931 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
9932 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
9933 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
9934 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
9935 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
9936 what is going on.</p>
9937
9938       </div>
9939       <div class="tags">
9940
9941
9942         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>.
9943
9944
9945       </div>
9946     </div>
9947     <div class="padding"></div>
9948
9949     <div class="entry">
9950       <div class="title">
9951         <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>
9952       </div>
9953       <div class="date">
9954         22nd November 2010
9955       </div>
9956       <div class="body">
9957         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
9958 upgrade testing of the
9959 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
9960 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
9961 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
9962 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
9963
9964 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
9965
9966 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
9967
9968 <blockquote><p>
9969   apache2.2-bin
9970   aptdaemon
9971   baobab
9972   binfmt-support
9973   browser-plugin-gnash
9974   cheese-common
9975   cli-common
9976   cups-pk-helper
9977   dmz-cursor-theme
9978   empathy
9979   empathy-common
9980   freedesktop-sound-theme
9981   freeglut3
9982   gconf-defaults-service
9983   gdm-themes
9984   gedit-plugins
9985   geoclue
9986   geoclue-hostip
9987   geoclue-localnet
9988   geoclue-manual
9989   geoclue-yahoo
9990   gnash
9991   gnash-common
9992   gnome
9993   gnome-backgrounds
9994   gnome-cards-data
9995   gnome-codec-install
9996   gnome-core
9997   gnome-desktop-environment
9998   gnome-disk-utility
9999   gnome-screenshot
10000   gnome-search-tool
10001   gnome-session-canberra
10002   gnome-system-log
10003   gnome-themes-extras
10004   gnome-themes-more
10005   gnome-user-share
10006   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10007   gstreamer0.10-tools
10008   gtk2-engines
10009   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10010   gtk2-engines-smooth
10011   hamster-applet
10012   libapache2-mod-dnssd
10013   libapr1
10014   libaprutil1
10015   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
10016   libaprutil1-ldap
10017   libart2.0-cil
10018   libboost-date-time1.42.0
10019   libboost-python1.42.0
10020   libboost-thread1.42.0
10021   libchamplain-0.4-0
10022   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
10023   libcheese-gtk18
10024   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10025   libcryptui0
10026   libdiscid0
10027   libelf1
10028   libepc-1.0-2
10029   libepc-common
10030   libepc-ui-1.0-2
10031   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10032   libfreerdp0
10033   libgconf2.0-cil
10034   libgdata-common
10035   libgdata7
10036   libgdu-gtk0
10037   libgee2
10038   libgeoclue0
10039   libgexiv2-0
10040   libgif4
10041   libglade2.0-cil
10042   libglib2.0-cil
10043   libgmime2.4-cil
10044   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10045   libgnome2.24-cil
10046   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
10047   libgpod-common
10048   libgpod4
10049   libgtk2.0-cil
10050   libgtkglext1
10051   libgtksourceview2.0-common
10052   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10053   libmono-addins0.2-cil
10054   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
10055   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10056   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
10057   libmono-posix2.0-cil
10058   libmono-security2.0-cil
10059   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10060   libmono-system2.0-cil
10061   libmtp8
10062   libmusicbrainz3-6
10063   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
10064   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
10065   libopal3.6.8
10066   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
10067   libpt2.6.7
10068   libpython2.6
10069   librpm1
10070   librpmio1
10071   libsdl1.2debian
10072   libsrtp0
10073   libssh-4
10074   libtelepathy-farsight0
10075   libtelepathy-glib0
10076   libtidy-0.99-0
10077   media-player-info
10078   mesa-utils
10079   mono-2.0-gac
10080   mono-gac
10081   mono-runtime
10082   nautilus-sendto
10083   nautilus-sendto-empathy
10084   p7zip-full
10085   pkg-config
10086   python-aptdaemon
10087   python-aptdaemon-gtk
10088   python-axiom
10089   python-beautifulsoup
10090   python-bugbuddy
10091   python-clientform
10092   python-coherence
10093   python-configobj
10094   python-crypto
10095   python-cupshelpers
10096   python-elementtree
10097   python-epsilon
10098   python-evolution
10099   python-feedparser
10100   python-gdata
10101   python-gdbm
10102   python-gst0.10
10103   python-gtkglext1
10104   python-gtksourceview2
10105   python-httplib2
10106   python-louie
10107   python-mako
10108   python-markupsafe
10109   python-mechanize
10110   python-nevow
10111   python-notify
10112   python-opengl
10113   python-openssl
10114   python-pam
10115   python-pkg-resources
10116   python-pyasn1
10117   python-pysqlite2
10118   python-rdflib
10119   python-serial
10120   python-tagpy
10121   python-twisted-bin
10122   python-twisted-conch
10123   python-twisted-core
10124   python-twisted-web
10125   python-utidylib
10126   python-webkit
10127   python-xdg
10128   python-zope.interface
10129   remmina
10130   remmina-plugin-data
10131   remmina-plugin-rdp
10132   remmina-plugin-vnc
10133   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10134   rhythmbox-plugins
10135   rpm-common
10136   rpm2cpio
10137   seahorse-plugins
10138   shotwell
10139   software-center
10140   system-config-printer-udev
10141   telepathy-gabble
10142   telepathy-mission-control-5
10143   telepathy-salut
10144   tomboy
10145   totem
10146   totem-coherence
10147   totem-mozilla
10148   totem-plugins
10149   transmission-common
10150   xdg-user-dirs
10151   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
10152   xserver-xephyr
10153 </p></blockquote>
10154
10155 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10156
10157 <blockquote><p>
10158   cheese
10159   ekiga
10160   eog
10161   epiphany-extensions
10162   evolution-exchange
10163   fast-user-switch-applet
10164   file-roller
10165   gcalctool
10166   gconf-editor
10167   gdm
10168   gedit
10169   gedit-common
10170   gnome-games
10171   gnome-games-data
10172   gnome-nettool
10173   gnome-system-tools
10174   gnome-themes
10175   gnuchess
10176   gucharmap
10177   guile-1.8-libs
10178   libavahi-ui0
10179   libdmx1
10180   libgalago3
10181   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10182   libgtksourceview2.0-0
10183   liblircclient0
10184   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
10185   libspeexdsp1
10186   libsvga1
10187   rhythmbox
10188   seahorse
10189   sound-juicer
10190   system-config-printer
10191   totem-common
10192   transmission-gtk
10193   vinagre
10194   vino
10195 </p></blockquote>
10196
10197 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10198
10199 <blockquote><p>
10200   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10201 </p></blockquote>
10202
10203 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10204
10205 <blockquote><p>
10206 [nothing]
10207 </p></blockquote>
10208
10209 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10210
10211 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10212
10213 <blockquote><p>
10214   ksmserver
10215 </p></blockquote>
10216
10217 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10218
10219 <blockquote><p>
10220   kwin
10221   network-manager-kde
10222 </p></blockquote>
10223
10224 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10225
10226 <blockquote><p>
10227   arts
10228   dolphin
10229   freespacenotifier
10230   google-gadgets-gst
10231   google-gadgets-xul
10232   kappfinder
10233   kcalc
10234   kcharselect
10235   kde-core
10236   kde-plasma-desktop
10237   kde-standard
10238   kde-window-manager
10239   kdeartwork
10240   kdeartwork-emoticons
10241   kdeartwork-style
10242   kdeartwork-theme-icon
10243   kdebase
10244   kdebase-apps
10245   kdebase-workspace
10246   kdebase-workspace-bin
10247   kdebase-workspace-data
10248   kdeeject
10249   kdelibs
10250   kdeplasma-addons
10251   kdeutils
10252   kdewallpapers
10253   kdf
10254   kfloppy
10255   kgpg
10256   khelpcenter4
10257   kinfocenter
10258   konq-plugins-l10n
10259   konqueror-nsplugins
10260   kscreensaver
10261   kscreensaver-xsavers
10262   ktimer
10263   kwrite
10264   libgle3
10265   libkde4-ruby1.8
10266   libkonq5
10267   libkonq5-templates
10268   libnetpbm10
10269   libplasma-ruby
10270   libplasma-ruby1.8
10271   libqt4-ruby1.8
10272   marble-data
10273   marble-plugins
10274   netpbm
10275   nuvola-icon-theme
10276   plasma-dataengines-workspace
10277   plasma-desktop
10278   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
10279   plasma-runners-addons
10280   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
10281   plasma-scriptengine-python
10282   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
10283   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
10284   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
10285   plasma-scriptengines
10286   plasma-wallpapers-addons
10287   plasma-widget-folderview
10288   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10289   ruby
10290   sweeper
10291   update-notifier-kde
10292   xscreensaver-data-extra
10293   xscreensaver-gl
10294   xscreensaver-gl-extra
10295   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10296 </p></blockquote>
10297
10298 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10299
10300 <blockquote><p>
10301   ark
10302   google-gadgets-common
10303   google-gadgets-qt
10304   htdig
10305   kate
10306   kdebase-bin
10307   kdebase-data
10308   kdepasswd
10309   kfind
10310   klipper
10311   konq-plugins
10312   konqueror
10313   ksysguard
10314   ksysguardd
10315   libarchive1
10316   libcln6
10317   libeet1
10318   libeina-svn-06
10319   libggadget-1.0-0b
10320   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
10321   libgps19
10322   libkdecorations4
10323   libkephal4
10324   libkonq4
10325   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
10326   libkscreensaver5
10327   libksgrd4
10328   libksignalplotter4
10329   libkunitconversion4
10330   libkwineffects1a
10331   libmarblewidget4
10332   libntrack-qt4-1
10333   libntrack0
10334   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
10335   libplasmaclock4a
10336   libplasmagenericshell4
10337   libprocesscore4a
10338   libprocessui4a
10339   libqalculate5
10340   libqedje0a
10341   libqtruby4shared2
10342   libqzion0a
10343   libruby1.8
10344   libscim8c2a
10345   libsmokekdecore4-3
10346   libsmokekdeui4-3
10347   libsmokekfile3
10348   libsmokekhtml3
10349   libsmokekio3
10350   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
10351   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
10352   libsmokekparts3
10353   libsmokektexteditor3
10354   libsmokekutils3
10355   libsmokenepomuk3
10356   libsmokephonon3
10357   libsmokeplasma3
10358   libsmokeqtcore4-3
10359   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
10360   libsmokeqtgui4-3
10361   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
10362   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
10363   libsmokeqtscript4-3
10364   libsmokeqtsql4-3
10365   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
10366   libsmokeqttest4-3
10367   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
10368   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
10369   libsmokeqtxml4-3
10370   libsmokesolid3
10371   libsmokesoprano3
10372   libtaskmanager4a
10373   libtidy-0.99-0
10374   libweather-ion4a
10375   libxklavier16
10376   libxxf86misc1
10377   okteta
10378   oxygencursors
10379   plasma-dataengines-addons
10380   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
10381   plasma-widget-lancelot
10382   plasma-widgets-addons
10383   plasma-widgets-workspace
10384   polkit-kde-1
10385   ruby1.8
10386   systemsettings
10387   update-notifier-common
10388 </p></blockquote>
10389
10390 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
10391 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
10392 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
10393 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
10394
10395       </div>
10396       <div class="tags">
10397
10398
10399         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>.
10400
10401
10402       </div>
10403     </div>
10404     <div class="padding"></div>
10405
10406     <div class="entry">
10407       <div class="title">
10408         <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>
10409       </div>
10410       <div class="date">
10411         22nd November 2010
10412       </div>
10413       <div class="body">
10414         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
10415 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
10416 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
10417 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
10418 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
10419 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
10420 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
10421 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
10422 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
10423
10424 <p>I found
10425 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
10426 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
10427 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
10428 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
10429 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
10430 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
10431
10432 <pre>
10433 #!/bin/sh
10434
10435 # Based on
10436 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
10437
10438 set -e
10439 set -x
10440
10441 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
10442     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
10443     exit 1
10444 else
10445     host="$1"
10446 fi
10447
10448 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
10449     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
10450     exit 1
10451 fi
10452
10453 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
10454 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
10455 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
10456 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
10457
10458 img=$host.img
10459 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
10460 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
10461
10462 parted $img mklabel msdos
10463 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
10464 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
10465 parted $img set 1 boot on
10466
10467 modprobe dm-mod
10468 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
10469 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
10470
10471 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
10472 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
10473 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
10474
10475 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
10476 losetup -d /dev/loop0
10477 </pre>
10478
10479 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
10480 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
10481
10482 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
10483 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
10484 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
10485 seem to work just fine.</p>
10486
10487       </div>
10488       <div class="tags">
10489
10490
10491         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>.
10492
10493
10494       </div>
10495     </div>
10496     <div class="padding"></div>
10497
10498     <div class="entry">
10499       <div class="title">
10500         <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>
10501       </div>
10502       <div class="date">
10503         20th November 2010
10504       </div>
10505       <div class="body">
10506         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
10507 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
10508 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
10509 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
10510
10511 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
10512 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
10513 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
10514
10515 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
10516
10517 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10518
10519 <blockquote><p>
10520   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
10521   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
10522   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
10523   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
10524   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
10525   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
10526   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
10527   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
10528   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
10529   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
10530   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
10531   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
10532   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
10533   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
10534   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
10535   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
10536   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
10537   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
10538   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
10539   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
10540   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
10541   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
10542   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
10543   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
10544   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
10545   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
10546   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
10547   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
10548   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
10549   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
10550   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
10551   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10552   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
10553   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
10554   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
10555   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
10556   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
10557   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
10558   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
10559   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
10560   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
10561   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
10562   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
10563   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
10564   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
10565   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
10566   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
10567   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
10568   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
10569   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
10570   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
10571   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
10572   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
10573   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
10574   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
10575   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
10576   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
10577   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
10578   zip
10579 </p></blockquote>
10580
10581 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
10582
10583 <blockquote><p>
10584   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
10585   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
10586   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
10587   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
10588   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
10589   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
10590   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
10591   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
10592   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
10593   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
10594   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
10595   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10596   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10597   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10598   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
10599   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
10600   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10601   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
10602   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
10603   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
10604   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
10605   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
10606   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10607   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
10608   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
10609   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
10610   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
10611   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
10612   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
10613 </p></blockquote>
10614
10615 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10616
10617 <blockquote><p>
10618   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10619 </p></blockquote>
10620
10621 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10622
10623 <blockquote><p>
10624 [nothing]
10625 </p></blockquote>
10626
10627 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
10628
10629 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10630
10631 <blockquote><p>
10632   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
10633   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
10634   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
10635   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
10636   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
10637   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
10638   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
10639   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
10640   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
10641   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
10642   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
10643   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
10644   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
10645   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
10646   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
10647   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
10648   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
10649   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
10650   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
10651   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
10652   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
10653   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
10654   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
10655   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
10656   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
10657   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
10658   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
10659   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
10660   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
10661   ttf-sazanami-gothic
10662 </p></blockquote>
10663
10664 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10665
10666 <blockquote><p>
10667   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
10668   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
10669   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
10670   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
10671   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
10672   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
10673   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
10674   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
10675   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
10676   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
10677   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
10678   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
10679   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
10680   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
10681   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
10682   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
10683   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
10684   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
10685   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
10686   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
10687   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
10688   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
10689   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
10690   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
10691   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
10692   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
10693   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
10694   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
10695   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
10696   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
10697   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
10698   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
10699   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
10700 </p></blockquote>
10701
10702 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10703
10704 <blockquote><p>
10705   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
10706   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
10707   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
10708   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
10709   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
10710   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
10711   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
10712 </p></blockquote>
10713
10714 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10715
10716 <blockquote><p>
10717   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
10718 </p></blockquote>
10719
10720       </div>
10721       <div class="tags">
10722
10723
10724         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>.
10725
10726
10727       </div>
10728     </div>
10729     <div class="padding"></div>
10730
10731     <div class="entry">
10732       <div class="title">
10733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
10734       </div>
10735       <div class="date">
10736         20th November 2010
10737       </div>
10738       <div class="body">
10739         <p>Answering
10740 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
10741 call from the Gnash project</a> for
10742 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
10743 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
10744 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
10745 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
10746 releases out more often.</p>
10747
10748 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
10749 I have considered setting up a <a
10750 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
10751 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
10752 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
10753 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
10754 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
10755 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
10756 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
10757 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
10758 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
10759 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
10760 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
10761 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
10762
10763       </div>
10764       <div class="tags">
10765
10766
10767         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>.
10768
10769
10770       </div>
10771     </div>
10772     <div class="padding"></div>
10773
10774     <div class="entry">
10775       <div class="title">
10776         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
10777       </div>
10778       <div class="date">
10779          9th November 2010
10780       </div>
10781       <div class="body">
10782         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
10783
10784 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
10785 3D linked in from
10786 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
10787 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
10788
10789       </div>
10790       <div class="tags">
10791
10792
10793         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>.
10794
10795
10796       </div>
10797     </div>
10798     <div class="padding"></div>
10799
10800     <div class="entry">
10801       <div class="title">
10802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
10803       </div>
10804       <div class="date">
10805         24th October 2010
10806       </div>
10807       <div class="body">
10808         <p>Some updates.</p>
10809
10810 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
10811 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
10812 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
10813 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
10814 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
10815 :)</p>
10816
10817 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
10818 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
10819 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
10820 It is called
10821 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
10822 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
10823 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
10824 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
10825 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
10826 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
10827
10828 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
10829 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
10830 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
10831 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
10832 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
10833 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
10834 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
10835 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
10836 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
10837 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
10838
10839       </div>
10840       <div class="tags">
10841
10842
10843         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>.
10844
10845
10846       </div>
10847     </div>
10848     <div class="padding"></div>
10849
10850     <div class="entry">
10851       <div class="title">
10852         <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>
10853       </div>
10854       <div class="date">
10855          4th September 2010
10856       </div>
10857       <div class="body">
10858         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
10859 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
10860 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
10861 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
10862 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
10863 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
10864 installed.</p>
10865
10866 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
10867 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
10868 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
10869 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
10870 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
10871 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
10872 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
10873 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
10874 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
10875
10876 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
10877 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
10878 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
10879 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
10880 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
10881 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
10882 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
10883 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
10884 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
10885 pages they want to visit.</p>
10886
10887 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
10888 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
10889 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
10890 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
10891 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
10892 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
10893 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
10894 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
10895 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
10896 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
10897 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
10898
10899       </div>
10900       <div class="tags">
10901
10902
10903         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>.
10904
10905
10906       </div>
10907     </div>
10908     <div class="padding"></div>
10909
10910     <div class="entry">
10911       <div class="title">
10912         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
10913       </div>
10914       <div class="date">
10915         27th July 2010
10916       </div>
10917       <div class="body">
10918         <p>I discovered this while doing
10919 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
10920 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
10921 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
10922 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
10923 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
10924
10925 <p>An example is from todays
10926 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
10927 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
10928 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
10929 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
10930 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
10931 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
10932 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
10933
10934 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
10935
10936 <blockquote><pre>
10937 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
10938  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
10939   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
10940 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
10941  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
10942 </pre></blockquote>
10943
10944 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
10945 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
10946 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
10947 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
10948 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
10949 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
10950 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
10951 of dependency loops.</p>
10952
10953 <p>Thanks to
10954 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
10955 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
10956 dependencies
10957 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
10958 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
10959
10960 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
10961 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
10962 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
10963 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
10964 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
10965 it.</p>
10966
10967       </div>
10968       <div class="tags">
10969
10970
10971         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>.
10972
10973
10974       </div>
10975     </div>
10976     <div class="padding"></div>
10977
10978     <div class="entry">
10979       <div class="title">
10980         <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>
10981       </div>
10982       <div class="date">
10983         17th July 2010
10984       </div>
10985       <div class="body">
10986         <p>This is a
10987 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
10988 on my
10989 <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
10990 work</a> on
10991 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
10992 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
10993
10994 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
10995 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
10996 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
10997 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
10998
10999 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
11000 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
11001 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
11002
11003 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
11004
11005 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
11006 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
11007 the web.
11008
11009 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
11010 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
11011 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
11012 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
11013 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
11014 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
11015
11016 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
11017 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
11018 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
11019 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
11020 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
11021 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
11022 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
11023 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
11024 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
11025 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
11026 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
11027 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
11028 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
11029 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
11030 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
11031 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
11032
11033 <blockquote><pre>
11034 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11035   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11036   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11037   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11038   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11039   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11040   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11041
11042 ldapsearch -h ldap \
11043   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
11044   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
11045   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
11046   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
11047   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
11048 </pre></blockquote>
11049
11050 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
11051 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
11052 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
11053 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11054 also exist.</p>
11055
11056 <blockquote><pre>
11057 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11058 objectclass: top
11059 objectclass: dnsdomain
11060 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11061 dc: tjener
11062 arecord: 10.0.2.2
11063 associateddomain: tjener.intern
11064
11065 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11066 objectclass: top
11067 objectclass: dnsdomain2
11068 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11069 dc: 2
11070 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
11071 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
11072 </pre></blockquote>
11073
11074 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
11075 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
11076 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
11077 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
11078 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
11079 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
11080 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
11081 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
11082 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
11083 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
11084 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
11085 instead.</p>
11086
11087 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
11088 like this:</p>
11089
11090 <blockquote><pre>
11091 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11092   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
11093   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
11094   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
11095   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
11096   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
11097
11098 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
11099   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
11100 </pre></blockquote>
11101
11102 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
11103 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
11104 reverse lookups.</p>
11105
11106 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
11107 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
11108 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
11109 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
11110
11111 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
11112 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
11113 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
11114
11115 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
11116 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
11117 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
11118 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
11119 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
11120
11121 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
11122 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
11123 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
11124 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
11125 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
11126
11127 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
11128 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
11129 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
11130 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
11131 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
11132 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
11133
11134 <blockquote><pre>
11135 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
11136     SUP top
11137     AUXILIARY
11138     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
11139           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
11140           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
11141           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
11142           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
11143     ))
11144 </pre></blockquote>
11145
11146 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
11147 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
11148 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
11149 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
11150 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
11151 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
11152
11153 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
11154
11155 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
11156 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
11157 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
11158 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
11159 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
11160
11161 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
11162 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
11163 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
11164 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
11165
11166 <blockquote><pre>
11167 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
11168 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
11169 </pre></blockquote>
11170
11171 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
11172 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
11173 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
11174 search result is this entry:</p>
11175
11176 <blockquote><pre>
11177 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11178 cn: dhcp
11179 objectClass: top
11180 objectClass: dhcpServer
11181 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11182 </pre></blockquote>
11183
11184 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
11185 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
11186 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
11187 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
11188 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
11189 The search result is this entry:</p>
11190
11191 <blockquote><pre>
11192 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11193 cn: DHCP Config
11194 objectClass: top
11195 objectClass: dhcpService
11196 objectClass: dhcpOptions
11197 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11198 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
11199 dhcpStatements: authoritative
11200 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
11201 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
11202 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
11203 </pre></blockquote>
11204
11205 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
11206 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
11207 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
11208 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
11209 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
11210 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
11211 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
11212 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
11213 related computer objects.</p>
11214
11215 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
11216 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
11217 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
11218 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
11219 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
11220 like:</p>
11221
11222 <blockquote><pre>
11223 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11224 cn: hostname
11225 objectClass: top
11226 objectClass: dhcpHost
11227 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11228 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
11229 </pre></blockquote>
11230
11231 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
11232 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
11233 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
11234 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
11235 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
11236 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
11237 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
11238 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
11239 structural object class.
11240
11241 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
11242
11243 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
11244 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
11245 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
11246 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
11247 in the configuration.</p>
11248
11249 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
11250 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
11251 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
11252 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
11253 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
11254 structure.</p>
11255
11256 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
11257 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
11258
11259 <blockquote><pre>
11260 ou=services
11261   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
11262     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
11263     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11264       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11265         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11266     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
11267       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
11268         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
11269     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
11270       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
11271 </pre></blockquote>
11272
11273 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
11274 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
11275 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
11276 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
11277
11278 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
11279 like this:</p>
11280
11281 <blockquote><pre>
11282 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11283 dc: hostname
11284 objectClass: top
11285 objectClass: dhcpHost
11286 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11287 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
11288 associateddomain: hostname.intern
11289 arecord: 10.11.12.13
11290 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11291 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
11292 </pre></blockquote>
11293
11294 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
11295 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
11296 auxiliary object class.</p>
11297
11298       </div>
11299       <div class="tags">
11300
11301
11302         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>.
11303
11304
11305       </div>
11306     </div>
11307     <div class="padding"></div>
11308
11309     <div class="entry">
11310       <div class="title">
11311         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
11312       </div>
11313       <div class="date">
11314         14th July 2010
11315       </div>
11316       <div class="body">
11317         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
11318 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
11319 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
11320 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
11321 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
11322
11323 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
11324 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
11325
11326 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
11327 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
11328 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
11329 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
11330 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
11331 to a slave DNS server.</p>
11332
11333 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
11334 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
11335 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
11336 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
11337 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
11338 seem to work.</p>
11339
11340 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
11341 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
11342 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
11343 this:</p>
11344
11345 <blockquote><pre>
11346   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11347   cn: hostname
11348   objectClass: dhcphost
11349   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
11350   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
11351   associateddomain: hostname.intern
11352   arecord: 10.11.12.13
11353   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
11354   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
11355   ldapconfigsound: Y
11356 </pre></blockquote>
11357
11358 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
11359 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
11360 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
11361 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
11362
11363 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
11364 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
11365 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
11366 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
11367 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
11368 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
11369 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
11370 might be a good place to put it.</p>
11371
11372 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11373 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11374
11375       </div>
11376       <div class="tags">
11377
11378
11379         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>.
11380
11381
11382       </div>
11383     </div>
11384     <div class="padding"></div>
11385
11386     <div class="entry">
11387       <div class="title">
11388         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
11389       </div>
11390       <div class="date">
11391         11th July 2010
11392       </div>
11393       <div class="body">
11394         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
11395 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
11396 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
11397 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
11398
11399 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
11400 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
11401 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
11402 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
11403 LTSP clients.</p>
11404
11405 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
11406 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
11407 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
11408
11409 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
11410 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
11411 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
11412
11413 <blockquote><pre>
11414 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
11415 #
11416 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
11417 #
11418 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
11419 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
11420 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
11421 #
11422 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
11423 # existence of attribute names.
11424 #
11425 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
11426 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
11427 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
11428 #
11429 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
11430 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
11431 #
11432 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
11433 #     SUP top
11434 #     AUXILIARY
11435 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
11436
11437 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
11438 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
11439     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
11440     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
11441         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
11442         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
11443             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
11444             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
11445             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
11446             # bass value on to clients
11447             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
11448         done
11449     done
11450 fi
11451 </pre></blockquote>
11452
11453 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
11454 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
11455 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
11456 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
11457 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
11458
11459 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11460 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11461
11462 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
11463 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
11464 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
11465 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
11466 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
11467 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
11468
11469       </div>
11470       <div class="tags">
11471
11472
11473         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>.
11474
11475
11476       </div>
11477     </div>
11478     <div class="padding"></div>
11479
11480     <div class="entry">
11481       <div class="title">
11482         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11483       </div>
11484       <div class="date">
11485          9th July 2010
11486       </div>
11487       <div class="body">
11488         <p>Since
11489 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
11490 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
11491 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
11492 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
11493 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
11494 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
11495 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
11496 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
11497 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
11498 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
11499 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
11500 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
11501 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
11502
11503       </div>
11504       <div class="tags">
11505
11506
11507         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>.
11508
11509
11510       </div>
11511     </div>
11512     <div class="padding"></div>
11513
11514     <div class="entry">
11515       <div class="title">
11516         <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>
11517       </div>
11518       <div class="date">
11519          3rd July 2010
11520       </div>
11521       <div class="body">
11522         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
11523 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
11524 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
11525 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
11526 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
11527 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
11528 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
11529 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
11530
11531 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
11532 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
11533 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
11534 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
11535 publish the difference.</p>
11536
11537 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
11538
11539 <blockquote><p>
11540   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
11541   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
11542   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
11543   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
11544   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
11545   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11546   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
11547   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
11548 </p></blockquote>
11549
11550 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
11551
11552 <blockquote><p>
11553   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
11554   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
11555   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
11556   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
11557   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
11558   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
11559   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
11560   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
11561   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11562   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11563   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
11564   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
11565   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
11566   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
11567   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
11568   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
11569   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
11570   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
11571   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
11572   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
11573 </p></blockquote>
11574
11575 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
11576
11577 <blockquote><p>
11578   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
11579   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
11580   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11581   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11582   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
11583   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
11584   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
11585   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11586   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11587   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11588   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11589   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
11590   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
11591   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
11592   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
11593   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
11594   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
11595   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
11596   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
11597   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
11598   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
11599 </p></blockquote>
11600
11601 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
11602
11603 <blockquote><p>
11604   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
11605   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
11606   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
11607 </p></blockquote>
11608
11609 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
11610 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
11611 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
11612 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
11613 the difference somewhat.
11614
11615       </div>
11616       <div class="tags">
11617
11618
11619         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>.
11620
11621
11622       </div>
11623     </div>
11624     <div class="padding"></div>
11625
11626     <div class="entry">
11627       <div class="title">
11628         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11629       </div>
11630       <div class="date">
11631         28th June 2010
11632       </div>
11633       <div class="body">
11634         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
11635 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
11636 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
11637 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
11638 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
11639 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
11640 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
11641 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
11642 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
11643 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
11644
11645 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
11646 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
11647 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
11648 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
11649 released.</p>
11650
11651 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
11652 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
11653 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
11654 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
11655
11656 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
11657 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11658
11659 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
11660 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
11661 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
11662 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
11663 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
11664
11665       </div>
11666       <div class="tags">
11667
11668
11669         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>.
11670
11671
11672       </div>
11673     </div>
11674     <div class="padding"></div>
11675
11676     <div class="entry">
11677       <div class="title">
11678         <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>
11679       </div>
11680       <div class="date">
11681         24th June 2010
11682       </div>
11683       <div class="body">
11684         <p>A while back, I
11685 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
11686 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
11687 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
11688 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
11689
11690 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
11691 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
11692 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
11693 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
11694
11695 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
11696 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
11697 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
11698 Debian Edu.</p>
11699
11700 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
11701 the
11702 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
11703 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
11704 available today from IETF.</p>
11705
11706 <pre>
11707 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
11708 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
11709 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
11710  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
11711         NAME 'dhcpHost'
11712         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
11713 -       SUP top
11714 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
11715         MUST cn
11716         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
11717         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
11718 </pre>
11719
11720 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
11721 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
11722 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
11723
11724 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11725 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11726
11727       </div>
11728       <div class="tags">
11729
11730
11731         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>.
11732
11733
11734       </div>
11735     </div>
11736     <div class="padding"></div>
11737
11738     <div class="entry">
11739       <div class="title">
11740         <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>
11741       </div>
11742       <div class="date">
11743         16th June 2010
11744       </div>
11745       <div class="body">
11746         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
11747 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
11748 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
11749 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
11750 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
11751 this:
11752
11753 <blockquote><pre>
11754 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11755 tasksel --new-install
11756 </pre></blockquote>
11757
11758 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
11759 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
11760 any output what so ever.
11761
11762 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
11763 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
11764 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
11765 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
11766 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
11767 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
11768 code like this:
11769
11770 <blockquote><pre>
11771 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11772 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
11773 $cmd
11774 </pre></blockquote>
11775
11776 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
11777 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
11778 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
11779 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
11780 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
11781 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
11782 installation.</p>
11783
11784 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
11785 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
11786 like this.</p>
11787
11788       </div>
11789       <div class="tags">
11790
11791
11792         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>.
11793
11794
11795       </div>
11796     </div>
11797     <div class="padding"></div>
11798
11799     <div class="entry">
11800       <div class="title">
11801         <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>
11802       </div>
11803       <div class="date">
11804         13th June 2010
11805       </div>
11806       <div class="body">
11807         <p>My
11808 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
11809 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
11810 finally made the upgrade logs available from
11811 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
11812 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
11813 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
11814 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
11815
11816 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
11817 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
11818 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
11819 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
11820 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
11821 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
11822 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
11823 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
11824
11825 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
11826 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
11827 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
11828 too surprising.</p>
11829
11830 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11831 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
11832 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
11833 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11834 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11835 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
11836 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
11837 continue.</p>
11838
11839 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
11840 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11841   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11842   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11843   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11844   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11845   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11846   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11847   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11848   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11849   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11850   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11851   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11852   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11853   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11854   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11855   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11856   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11857   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11858   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11859   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11860   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11861   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11862   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11863   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11864   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11865   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11866   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11867   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11868   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
11869
11870 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
11871
11872 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11873   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11874   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11875   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11876   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11877   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11878   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11879   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11880   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11881   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11882   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11883   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11884   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11885   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11886   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11887   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11888   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11889   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11890   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11891   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11892   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11893   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11894   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11895   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11896   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11897   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11898   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11899   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11900   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11901   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11902   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11903   zip</p>
11904
11905 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
11906
11907 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11908   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11909   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11910   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11911   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11912   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11913   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11914   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11915   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11916   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11917   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11918   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11919   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11920   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11921   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11922   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11923   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11924   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11925   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11926   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11927   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11928   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11929   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11930   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11931   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11932   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11933   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11934   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
11935
11936 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
11937 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11938   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11939   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11940   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11941   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11942   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11943   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11944   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11945   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11946   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11947   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11948   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11949   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11950   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11951   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11952   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11953   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11954   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11955   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11956   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11957   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11958   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11959   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11960   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11961   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11962   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11963   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11964   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11965   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11966   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11967   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11968   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11969   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11970   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11971   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11972   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11973   xulrunner-1.9</p>
11974
11975
11976       </div>
11977       <div class="tags">
11978
11979
11980         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>.
11981
11982
11983       </div>
11984     </div>
11985     <div class="padding"></div>
11986
11987     <div class="entry">
11988       <div class="title">
11989         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
11990       </div>
11991       <div class="date">
11992         11th June 2010
11993       </div>
11994       <div class="body">
11995         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
11996 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
11997 have been discovered and reported in the process
11998 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
11999 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
12000 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
12001 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
12002 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
12003
12004 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
12005 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
12006 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
12007 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
12008 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
12009 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
12010
12011 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
12012 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
12013 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12014 is created.  The bug report
12015 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
12016 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
12017 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
12018 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
12019 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
12020 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
12021 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
12022 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
12023 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
12024 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
12025 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
12026 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
12027 Debian Squeeze.</p>
12028
12029 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
12030 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
12031 trick:</p>
12032
12033 <blockquote><pre>
12034 #!/bin/sh
12035 set -ex
12036
12037 if [ "$1" ] ; then
12038     desktop=$1
12039 else
12040     desktop=gnome
12041 fi
12042
12043 from=lenny
12044 to=squeeze
12045
12046 exec &lt; /dev/null
12047 unset LANG
12048 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
12049 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
12050 fuser -mv .
12051 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
12052 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12053 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
12054 #!/bin/sh
12055 exit 101
12056 EOF
12057 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
12058 exit_cleanup() {
12059     umount $tmpdir/proc
12060 }
12061 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
12062 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
12063 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
12064
12065 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
12066
12067 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
12068 # to return the correct answers.
12069 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
12070     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
12071
12072 # Include the desktop and laptop task
12073 for test in desktop laptop ; do
12074     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
12075 #!/bin/sh
12076 exit 2
12077 EOF
12078     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
12079 done
12080
12081 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
12082 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
12083 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
12084 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
12085
12086 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
12087 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
12088 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
12089 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
12090 fuser -mv
12091 </pre></blockquote>
12092
12093 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
12094 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
12095 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
12096 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
12097 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
12098 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
12099
12100 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
12101 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
12102 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
12103 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
12104 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
12105 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
12106 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
12107
12108 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
12109 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
12110 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
12111 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
12112 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
12113 packages.</p>
12114
12115       </div>
12116       <div class="tags">
12117
12118
12119         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>.
12120
12121
12122       </div>
12123     </div>
12124     <div class="padding"></div>
12125
12126     <div class="entry">
12127       <div class="title">
12128         <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>
12129       </div>
12130       <div class="date">
12131          6th June 2010
12132       </div>
12133       <div class="body">
12134         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
12135 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
12136 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
12137 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
12138 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
12139 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
12140 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
12141
12142 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
12143 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
12144 COLUMNS):</p>
12145
12146 <blockquote><pre>
12147 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
12148 previous=N
12149 PREVLEVEL=
12150 RUNLEVEL=
12151 runlevel=S
12152 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
12153 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
12154 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
12155 </pre></blockquote>
12156
12157 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
12158 script.</p>
12159
12160 <blockquote><pre>
12161 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
12162 previous=N
12163 PREVLEVEL=N
12164 RUNLEVEL=S
12165 runlevel=S
12166 </pre></blockquote>
12167
12168 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
12169 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
12170 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
12171
12172 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
12173 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
12174 choice.</p>
12175
12176       </div>
12177       <div class="tags">
12178
12179
12180         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>.
12181
12182
12183       </div>
12184     </div>
12185     <div class="padding"></div>
12186
12187     <div class="entry">
12188       <div class="title">
12189         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
12190       </div>
12191       <div class="date">
12192          6th June 2010
12193       </div>
12194       <div class="body">
12195         <p>Via the
12196 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
12197 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
12198 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
12199 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
12200 following the standards wars of today.</p>
12201
12202       </div>
12203       <div class="tags">
12204
12205
12206         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>.
12207
12208
12209       </div>
12210     </div>
12211     <div class="padding"></div>
12212
12213     <div class="entry">
12214       <div class="title">
12215         <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>
12216       </div>
12217       <div class="date">
12218          3rd June 2010
12219       </div>
12220       <div class="body">
12221         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
12222 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
12223 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
12224 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
12225 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
12226
12227 <blockquote><pre>
12228 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
12229   vendor                    count
12230   Dell Computer Corporation     1
12231     PowerEdge 1750              1
12232   IBM                           1
12233     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
12234   Intel                         2
12235   [no-dmi-info]                 3
12236 maintainer:~#
12237 </pre></blockquote>
12238
12239 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
12240 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
12241 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
12242 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
12243 option to list the individual machines.</p>
12244
12245 <p>A larger list is
12246 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
12247 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
12248 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
12249 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
12250 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
12251 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
12252 collector.</p>
12253
12254       </div>
12255       <div class="tags">
12256
12257
12258         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>.
12259
12260
12261       </div>
12262     </div>
12263     <div class="padding"></div>
12264
12265     <div class="entry">
12266       <div class="title">
12267         <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>
12268       </div>
12269       <div class="date">
12270          1st June 2010
12271       </div>
12272       <div class="body">
12273         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
12274 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
12275 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
12276 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
12277 wait.</p>
12278
12279 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
12280 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
12281 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
12282 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
12283 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
12284 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
12285
12286 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
12287 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
12288 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
12289 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
12290 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
12291 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
12292 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
12293 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
12294
12295 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
12296
12297       </div>
12298       <div class="tags">
12299
12300
12301         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>.
12302
12303
12304       </div>
12305     </div>
12306     <div class="padding"></div>
12307
12308     <div class="entry">
12309       <div class="title">
12310         <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>
12311       </div>
12312       <div class="date">
12313         27th May 2010
12314       </div>
12315       <div class="body">
12316         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
12317 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
12318 issues are known and should be solved:
12319
12320 <p><ul>
12321
12322 <li>The wicd package seen to
12323 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
12324 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
12325 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
12326 seem to be on the case.</li>
12327
12328 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
12329 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
12330 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
12331 maintainer is on the case.</li>
12332
12333 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
12334 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
12335 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
12336 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
12337 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
12338 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
12339 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
12340 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
12341
12342 </ul></p>
12343
12344 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
12345 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
12346 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
12347 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
12348
12349 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12350 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12351 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12352 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12353
12354 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
12355
12356       </div>
12357       <div class="tags">
12358
12359
12360         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>.
12361
12362
12363       </div>
12364     </div>
12365     <div class="padding"></div>
12366
12367     <div class="entry">
12368       <div class="title">
12369         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
12370       </div>
12371       <div class="date">
12372         22nd May 2010
12373       </div>
12374       <div class="body">
12375         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
12376 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
12377 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
12378 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
12379
12380 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
12381 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
12382 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
12383 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
12384 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
12385 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
12386 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
12387 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
12388 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
12389 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
12390 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
12391 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
12392 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
12393 going to work.</p>
12394
12395 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
12396 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
12397 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
12398 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
12399 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
12400 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
12401 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
12402 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
12403 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
12404 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
12405 Edu.</p>
12406
12407 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
12408 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
12409 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
12410 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
12411 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
12412 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
12413
12414 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
12415 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
12416
12417       </div>
12418       <div class="tags">
12419
12420
12421         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>.
12422
12423
12424       </div>
12425     </div>
12426     <div class="padding"></div>
12427
12428     <div class="entry">
12429       <div class="title">
12430         <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>
12431       </div>
12432       <div class="date">
12433         14th May 2010
12434       </div>
12435       <div class="body">
12436         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
12437 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
12438 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
12439 expected, if I am to believe the
12440 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12441 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
12442 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
12443 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
12444 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
12445 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
12446 version.</p>
12447
12448 More information about
12449 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12450 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
12451 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
12452 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12453
12454 <blockquote><pre>
12455 CONCURRENCY=none
12456 </pre></blockquote>
12457
12458 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12459 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12460 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12461 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12462
12463       </div>
12464       <div class="tags">
12465
12466
12467         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>.
12468
12469
12470       </div>
12471     </div>
12472     <div class="padding"></div>
12473
12474     <div class="entry">
12475       <div class="title">
12476         <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>
12477       </div>
12478       <div class="date">
12479         14th May 2010
12480       </div>
12481       <div class="body">
12482         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
12483 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
12484 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
12485 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
12486 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
12487 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
12488 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
12489 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
12490
12491 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
12492 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
12493 this on the collector host:</p>
12494
12495 <blockquote><pre>
12496 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
12497 </pre></blockquote>
12498
12499 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
12500 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
12501
12502 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
12503 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
12504 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
12505 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
12506 written yet.</p>
12507
12508       </div>
12509       <div class="tags">
12510
12511
12512         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>.
12513
12514
12515       </div>
12516     </div>
12517     <div class="padding"></div>
12518
12519     <div class="entry">
12520       <div class="title">
12521         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
12522       </div>
12523       <div class="date">
12524         13th May 2010
12525       </div>
12526       <div class="body">
12527         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
12528 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
12529 has been
12530 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
12531
12532 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
12533 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
12534 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
12535 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
12536 based boot system.  Tollef is
12537 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
12538 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
12539 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
12540 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
12541 at the moment do not.</p>
12542
12543 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
12544 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
12545 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
12546 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
12547 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
12548 way forward.</p>
12549
12550 <p>In the mean time, based on the
12551 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12552 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
12553 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
12554 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
12555 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
12556 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
12557 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
12558 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
12559
12560       </div>
12561       <div class="tags">
12562
12563
12564         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>.
12565
12566
12567       </div>
12568     </div>
12569     <div class="padding"></div>
12570
12571     <div class="entry">
12572       <div class="title">
12573         <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>
12574       </div>
12575       <div class="date">
12576          6th May 2010
12577       </div>
12578       <div class="body">
12579         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
12580 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
12581 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
12582 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
12583 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12584 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
12585 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12586
12587 <blockquote><pre>
12588 CONCURRENCY=makefile
12589 </pre></blockquote>
12590
12591 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
12592 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
12593 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
12594 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
12595 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
12596 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
12597 make this happen.</p>
12598
12599 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
12600 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
12601 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
12602 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
12603 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
12604
12605 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
12606 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
12607 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
12608 fix the remaining issues.</p>
12609
12610 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12611 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12612 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12613 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12614
12615       </div>
12616       <div class="tags">
12617
12618
12619         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>.
12620
12621
12622       </div>
12623     </div>
12624     <div class="padding"></div>
12625
12626     <div class="entry">
12627       <div class="title">
12628         <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>
12629       </div>
12630       <div class="date">
12631         27th July 2009
12632       </div>
12633       <div class="body">
12634         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
12635 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
12636 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
12637 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
12638 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
12639 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
12640 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
12641
12642 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
12643 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
12644 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
12645
12646       </div>
12647       <div class="tags">
12648
12649
12650         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>.
12651
12652
12653       </div>
12654     </div>
12655     <div class="padding"></div>
12656
12657     <div class="entry">
12658       <div class="title">
12659         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
12660       </div>
12661       <div class="date">
12662         22nd July 2009
12663       </div>
12664       <div class="body">
12665         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
12666 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
12667 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
12668 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
12669 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
12670 the package up to date.</p>
12671
12672 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
12673 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
12674 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
12675 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
12676 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
12677 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
12678 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
12679 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
12680 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
12681 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
12682 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
12683 working on the future release.</p>
12684
12685 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
12686 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
12687
12688       </div>
12689       <div class="tags">
12690
12691
12692         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>.
12693
12694
12695       </div>
12696     </div>
12697     <div class="padding"></div>
12698
12699     <div class="entry">
12700       <div class="title">
12701         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
12702       </div>
12703       <div class="date">
12704         24th June 2009
12705       </div>
12706       <div class="body">
12707         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
12708 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
12709 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
12710 funded
12711 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
12712 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
12713 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
12714 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
12715 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
12716 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
12717
12718 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
12719 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
12720 boot:</p>
12721
12722 <ul>
12723
12724 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
12725
12726 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
12727    clock is in UTC.</li>
12728
12729 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
12730    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12731    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
12732
12733 </ul>
12734
12735 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
12736 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
12737 Villegas</a>.
12738
12739 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
12740 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
12741 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
12742 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
12743 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
12744 using this.</p>
12745
12746 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
12747 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
12748 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
12749 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
12750 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
12751 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
12752 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
12753
12754       </div>
12755       <div class="tags">
12756
12757
12758         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>.
12759
12760
12761       </div>
12762     </div>
12763     <div class="padding"></div>
12764
12765     <div class="entry">
12766       <div class="title">
12767         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/BSAs_p_stander_om_piratkopiering_m_ter_motstand.html">BSAs påstander om piratkopiering møter motstand</a>
12768       </div>
12769       <div class="date">
12770         17th May 2009
12771       </div>
12772       <div class="body">
12773         <p>Hvert år de siste årene har BSA, lobbyfronten til de store
12774 programvareselskapene som Microsoft og Apple, publisert en rapport der
12775 de gjetter på hvor mye piratkopiering påfører i tapte inntekter i
12776 ulike land rundt om i verden.  Resultatene er tendensiøse.  For noen
12777 dager siden kom
12778 <a href="http://global.bsa.org/globalpiracy2008/studies/globalpiracy2008.pdf">siste
12779 rapport</a>, og det er flere kritiske kommentarer publisert de siste
12780 dagene.  Et spesielt interessant kommentar fra Sverige,
12781 <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.229795/bsa-hoftade-sverigesiffror">BSA
12782 höftade Sverigesiffror</a>, oppsummeres slik:</p>
12783
12784 <blockquote>
12785 I sin senaste rapport slår BSA fast att 25 procent av all mjukvara i
12786 Sverige är piratkopierad. Det utan att ha pratat med ett enda svenskt
12787 företag. "Man bör nog kanske inte se de här siffrorna som helt
12788 exakta", säger BSAs Sverigechef John Hugosson.
12789 </blockquote>
12790
12791 <p>Mon tro om de er like metodiske når de gjetter på andelen piratkopiering i Norge?  To andre kommentarer er <a
12792 href="http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/comment/2242134/bsa-piracy-figures-shot-reality">BSA
12793 piracy figures need a shot of reality</a> og <a
12794 href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3958/125/">Does The WIPO
12795 Copyright Treaty Work?</a></p>
12796
12797 <p>Fant lenkene via <a
12798 href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/17/1632242">oppslag
12799 på Slashdot</a>.</p>
12800
12801       </div>
12802       <div class="tags">
12803
12804
12805         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</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>.
12806
12807
12808       </div>
12809     </div>
12810     <div class="padding"></div>
12811
12812     <div class="entry">
12813       <div class="title">
12814         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IDG_mener_linux_i_servermarkedet_vil_vokse_med_21__i_2009.html">IDG mener linux i servermarkedet vil vokse med 21% i 2009</a>
12815       </div>
12816       <div class="date">
12817          7th May 2009
12818       </div>
12819       <div class="body">
12820         <p>Kom over
12821 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10216873-16.html">interessante
12822 tall</a> fra IDG om utviklingen av linuxservermarkedet.  Fikk meg til
12823 å tenke på antall tjenermaskiner ved Universitetet i Oslo der jeg
12824 jobber til daglig.  En rask opptelling forteller meg at vi har 490
12825 (61%) fysiske unix-tjener (mest linux men også noen solaris) og 196
12826 (25%) windowstjenere, samt 112 (14%) virtuelle unix-tjenere.  Med den
12827 bakgrunnskunnskapen kan jeg godt tro at IDG er inne på noe.</p>
12828
12829       </div>
12830       <div class="tags">
12831
12832
12833         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
12834
12835
12836       </div>
12837     </div>
12838     <div class="padding"></div>
12839
12840     <div class="entry">
12841       <div class="title">
12842         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kryptert_harddisk___naturligvis.html">Kryptert harddisk - naturligvis</a>
12843       </div>
12844       <div class="date">
12845          2nd May 2009
12846       </div>
12847       <div class="body">
12848         <p><a href="http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1658676.ece">Dagens
12849 IT melder</a> at Intel hevder at det er dyrt å miste en datamaskin,
12850 når en tar tap av arbeidstid, fortrolige dokumenter,
12851 personopplysninger og alt annet det innebærer.  Det er ingen tvil om
12852 at det er en kostbar affære å miste sin datamaskin, og det er årsaken
12853 til at jeg har kryptert harddisken på både kontormaskinen og min
12854 bærbare.  Begge inneholder personopplysninger jeg ikke ønsker skal
12855 komme på avveie, den første informasjon relatert til jobben min ved
12856 Universitetet i Oslo, og den andre relatert til blant annet
12857 foreningsarbeide.  Kryptering av diskene gjør at det er lite
12858 sannsynlig at dophoder som kan finne på å rappe maskinene får noe ut
12859 av dem.  Maskinene låses automatisk etter noen minutter uten bruk,
12860 og en reboot vil gjøre at de ber om passord før de vil starte opp.
12861 Jeg bruker Debian på begge maskinene, og installasjonssystemet der
12862 gjør det trivielt å sette opp krypterte disker.  Jeg har LVM på toppen
12863 av krypterte partisjoner, slik at alt av datapartisjoner er kryptert.
12864 Jeg anbefaler alle å kryptere diskene på sine bærbare.  Kostnaden når
12865 det er gjort slik jeg gjør det er minimale, og gevinstene er
12866 betydelige.  En bør dog passe på passordet.  Hvis det går tapt, må
12867 maskinen reinstalleres og alt er tapt.</p>
12868
12869 <p>Krypteringen vil ikke stoppe kompetente angripere som f.eks. kjøler
12870 ned minnebrikkene før maskinen rebootes med programvare for å hente ut
12871 krypteringsnøklene.  Kostnaden med å forsvare seg mot slike angripere
12872 er for min del høyere enn gevinsten.  Jeg tror oddsene for at
12873 f.eks. etteretningsorganisasjoner har glede av å titte på mine
12874 maskiner er minimale, og ulempene jeg ville oppnå ved å forsøke å
12875 gjøre det vanskeligere for angripere med kompetanse og ressurser er
12876 betydelige.</p>
12877
12878       </div>
12879       <div class="tags">
12880
12881
12882         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</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>.
12883
12884
12885       </div>
12886     </div>
12887     <div class="padding"></div>
12888
12889     <div class="entry">
12890       <div class="title">
12891         <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>
12892       </div>
12893       <div class="date">
12894          2nd May 2009
12895       </div>
12896       <div class="body">
12897         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
12898 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
12899 do not yet know them.</p>
12900
12901 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
12902 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
12903 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
12904 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
12905 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
12906 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
12907 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
12908 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
12909 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
12910 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
12911 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
12912
12913 <p>The second one is
12914 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
12915 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
12916 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
12917 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
12918 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
12919 and the company behind it is running
12920 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
12921 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
12922 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
12923 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
12924 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
12925 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
12926 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
12927 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
12928
12929 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
12930 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
12931 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
12932 surrounded by today.</p>
12933
12934       </div>
12935       <div class="tags">
12936
12937
12938         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>.
12939
12940
12941       </div>
12942     </div>
12943     <div class="padding"></div>
12944
12945     <div class="entry">
12946       <div class="title">
12947         <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>
12948       </div>
12949       <div class="date">
12950         28th April 2009
12951       </div>
12952       <div class="body">
12953         <p>Julien Blache
12954 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
12955 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
12956 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
12957 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
12958 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
12959 properties.</p>
12960
12961       </div>
12962       <div class="tags">
12963
12964
12965         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>.
12966
12967
12968       </div>
12969     </div>
12970     <div class="padding"></div>
12971
12972     <div class="entry">
12973       <div class="title">
12974         <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>
12975       </div>
12976       <div class="date">
12977         30th March 2009
12978       </div>
12979       <div class="body">
12980         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
12981 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
12982 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
12983 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
12984 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
12985 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
12986 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
12987 application.</p>
12988
12989 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
12990 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
12991 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
12992 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
12993 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
12994 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
12995 blocked from doing so.</p>
12996
12997 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
12998 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
12999 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
13000 requirements change.</p>
13001
13002 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
13003 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
13004 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
13005
13006       </div>
13007       <div class="tags">
13008
13009
13010         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>.
13011
13012
13013       </div>
13014     </div>
13015     <div class="padding"></div>
13016
13017     <div class="entry">
13018       <div class="title">
13019         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
13020       </div>
13021       <div class="date">
13022         29th March 2009
13023       </div>
13024       <div class="body">
13025         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
13026 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
13027 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
13028 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
13029 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
13030 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
13031 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
13032 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
13033 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
13034 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
13035 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
13036 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
13037 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
13038 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
13039 now. :)</p>
13040
13041       </div>
13042       <div class="tags">
13043
13044
13045         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>.
13046
13047
13048       </div>
13049     </div>
13050     <div class="padding"></div>
13051
13052     <div class="entry">
13053       <div class="title">
13054         <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>
13055       </div>
13056       <div class="date">
13057         29th March 2009
13058       </div>
13059       <div class="body">
13060         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
13061 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
13062 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
13063 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
13064 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
13065 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
13066
13067 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
13068 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
13069 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
13070 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
13071 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
13072 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
13073 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
13074 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
13075 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
13076 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
13077 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
13078 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
13079 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
13080
13081 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
13082 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
13083 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
13084 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
13085
13086 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
13087 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
13088
13089 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
13090 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
13091 new IETF work group?</p>
13092
13093       </div>
13094       <div class="tags">
13095
13096
13097         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>.
13098
13099
13100       </div>
13101     </div>
13102     <div class="padding"></div>
13103
13104     <div class="entry">
13105       <div class="title">
13106         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Endelig_er_Debian_Lenny_gitt_ut.html">Endelig er Debian Lenny gitt ut</a>
13107       </div>
13108       <div class="date">
13109         15th February 2009
13110       </div>
13111       <div class="body">
13112         <p>Endelig er <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a>
13113 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090214">Lenny</a> gitt ut.
13114 Et langt steg videre for Debian-prosjektet, og en rekke nye
13115 programpakker blir nå tilgjengelig for de av oss som bruker den
13116 stabile utgaven av Debian.  Neste steg er nå å få
13117 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> /
13118 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> ferdig
13119 oppdatert for den nye utgaven, slik at en oppdatert versjon kan
13120 slippes løs på skolene.  Takk til alle debian-utviklerne som har
13121 gjort dette mulig.  Endelig er f.eks. fungerende avhengighetsstyrt
13122 bootsekvens tilgjengelig i stabil utgave, vha pakken
13123 <tt>insserv</tt>.</p>
13124
13125       </div>
13126       <div class="tags">
13127
13128
13129         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/norsk">norsk</a>.
13130
13131
13132       </div>
13133     </div>
13134     <div class="padding"></div>
13135
13136     <div class="entry">
13137       <div class="title">
13138         <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>
13139       </div>
13140       <div class="date">
13141          7th December 2008
13142       </div>
13143       <div class="body">
13144         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13145 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13146 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13147 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
13148 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13149 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
13150 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13151 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
13152
13153 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13154 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13155 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13156 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
13157 of these cards.</p>
13158
13159       </div>
13160       <div class="tags">
13161
13162
13163         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>.
13164
13165
13166       </div>
13167     </div>
13168     <div class="padding"></div>
13169
13170     <div class="entry">
13171       <div class="title">
13172         <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>
13173       </div>
13174       <div class="date">
13175         25th November 2008
13176       </div>
13177       <div class="body">
13178         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
13179 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
13180 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
13181 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
13182 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
13183 notes are available on
13184 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
13185 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
13186 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
13187 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
13188 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
13189 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
13190 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
13191 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
13192 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
13193
13194 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
13195 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
13196
13197       </div>
13198       <div class="tags">
13199
13200
13201         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>.
13202
13203
13204       </div>
13205     </div>
13206     <div class="padding"></div>
13207
13208     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="debian.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
13209     <div id="sidebar">
13210
13211
13212
13213 <h2>Archive</h2>
13214 <ul>
13215
13216 <li>2018
13217 <ul>
13218
13219 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/01/">January (1)</a></li>
13220
13221 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/02/">February (5)</a></li>
13222
13223 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/03/">March (5)</a></li>
13224
13225 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13226
13227 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13228
13229 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2018/07/">July (3)</a></li>
13230
13231 </ul></li>
13232
13233 <li>2017
13234 <ul>
13235
13236 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/01/">January (4)</a></li>
13237
13238 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13239
13240 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/03/">March (5)</a></li>
13241
13242 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/04/">April (2)</a></li>
13243
13244 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/06/">June (5)</a></li>
13245
13246 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/07/">July (1)</a></li>
13247
13248 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/08/">August (1)</a></li>
13249
13250 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/09/">September (3)</a></li>
13251
13252 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/10/">October (5)</a></li>
13253
13254 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13255
13256 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2017/12/">December (4)</a></li>
13257
13258 </ul></li>
13259
13260 <li>2016
13261 <ul>
13262
13263 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/01/">January (3)</a></li>
13264
13265 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/02/">February (2)</a></li>
13266
13267 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13268
13269 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/04/">April (8)</a></li>
13270
13271 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/05/">May (8)</a></li>
13272
13273 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13274
13275 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13276
13277 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/08/">August (5)</a></li>
13278
13279 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/09/">September (2)</a></li>
13280
13281 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/10/">October (3)</a></li>
13282
13283 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/11/">November (8)</a></li>
13284
13285 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2016/12/">December (5)</a></li>
13286
13287 </ul></li>
13288
13289 <li>2015
13290 <ul>
13291
13292 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13293
13294 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13295
13296 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/03/">March (1)</a></li>
13297
13298 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/04/">April (4)</a></li>
13299
13300 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13301
13302 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/06/">June (4)</a></li>
13303
13304 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/07/">July (6)</a></li>
13305
13306 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/08/">August (2)</a></li>
13307
13308 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/09/">September (2)</a></li>
13309
13310 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13311
13312 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/11/">November (6)</a></li>
13313
13314 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2015/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13315
13316 </ul></li>
13317
13318 <li>2014
13319 <ul>
13320
13321 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13322
13323 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/02/">February (3)</a></li>
13324
13325 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/03/">March (8)</a></li>
13326
13327 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13328
13329 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/05/">May (1)</a></li>
13330
13331 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13332
13333 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/07/">July (2)</a></li>
13334
13335 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/08/">August (2)</a></li>
13336
13337 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/09/">September (5)</a></li>
13338
13339 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/10/">October (6)</a></li>
13340
13341 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13342
13343 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2014/12/">December (5)</a></li>
13344
13345 </ul></li>
13346
13347 <li>2013
13348 <ul>
13349
13350 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
13351
13352 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/02/">February (9)</a></li>
13353
13354 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/03/">March (9)</a></li>
13355
13356 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/04/">April (6)</a></li>
13357
13358 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13359
13360 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/06/">June (10)</a></li>
13361
13362 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13363
13364 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13365
13366 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/09/">September (5)</a></li>
13367
13368 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/10/">October (7)</a></li>
13369
13370 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/11/">November (9)</a></li>
13371
13372 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13373
13374 </ul></li>
13375
13376 <li>2012
13377 <ul>
13378
13379 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13380
13381 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
13382
13383 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
13384
13385 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
13386
13387 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
13388
13389 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
13390
13391 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
13392
13393 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13394
13395 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
13396
13397 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
13398
13399 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
13400
13401 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13402
13403 </ul></li>
13404
13405 <li>2011
13406 <ul>
13407
13408 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
13409
13410 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13411
13412 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
13413
13414 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13415
13416 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13417
13418 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13419
13420 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13421
13422 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13423
13424 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
13425
13426 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13427
13428 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13429
13430 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
13431
13432 </ul></li>
13433
13434 <li>2010
13435 <ul>
13436
13437 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13438
13439 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
13440
13441 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13442
13443 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13444
13445 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13446
13447 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
13448
13449 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
13450
13451 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
13452
13453 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
13454
13455 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13456
13457 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
13458
13459 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
13460
13461 </ul></li>
13462
13463 <li>2009
13464 <ul>
13465
13466 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
13467
13468 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
13469
13470 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
13471
13472 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
13473
13474 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13475
13476 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
13477
13478 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
13479
13480 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13481
13482 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
13483
13484 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13485
13486 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13487
13488 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13489
13490 </ul></li>
13491
13492 <li>2008
13493 <ul>
13494
13495 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
13496
13497 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13498
13499 </ul></li>
13500
13501 </ul>
13502
13503
13504
13505 <h2>Tags</h2>
13506 <ul>
13507
13508  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (16)</a></li>
13509
13510  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
13511
13512  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
13513
13514  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
13515
13516  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (9)</a></li>
13517
13518  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (17)</a></li>
13519
13520  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
13521
13522  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/chrpath">chrpath (2)</a></li>
13523
13524  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (159)</a></li>
13525
13526  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (158)</a></li>
13527
13528  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian-handbook">debian-handbook (4)</a></li>
13529
13530  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (10)</a></li>
13531
13532  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/dld">dld (17)</a></li>
13533
13534  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (25)</a></li>
13535
13536  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
13537
13538  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (377)</a></li>
13539
13540  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (23)</a></li>
13541
13542  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (13)</a></li>
13543
13544  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (32)</a></li>
13545
13546  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freedombox">freedombox (9)</a></li>
13547
13548  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (18)</a></li>
13549
13550  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/h264">h264 (20)</a></li>
13551
13552  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (42)</a></li>
13553
13554  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (16)</a></li>
13555
13556  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (20)</a></li>
13557
13558  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (9)</a></li>
13559
13560  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lego">lego (4)</a></li>
13561
13562  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (8)</a></li>
13563
13564  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lsdvd">lsdvd (2)</a></li>
13565
13566  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
13567
13568  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/mesh network">mesh network (8)</a></li>
13569
13570  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (41)</a></li>
13571
13572  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software (10)</a></li>
13573
13574  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (299)</a></li>
13575
13576  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (190)</a></li>
13577
13578  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (33)</a></li>
13579
13580  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
13581
13582  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (71)</a></li>
13583
13584  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (107)</a></li>
13585
13586  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (2)</a></li>
13587
13588  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reactos">reactos (1)</a></li>
13589
13590  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
13591
13592  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (3)</a></li>
13593
13594  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (10)</a></li>
13595
13596  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
13597
13598  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (6)</a></li>
13599
13600  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
13601
13602  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (54)</a></li>
13603
13604  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
13605
13606  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (5)</a></li>
13607
13608  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (55)</a></li>
13609
13610  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (6)</a></li>
13611
13612  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (12)</a></li>
13613
13614  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (55)</a></li>
13615
13616  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (4)</a></li>
13617
13618  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/usenix">usenix (2)</a></li>
13619
13620  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (9)</a></li>
13621
13622  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/verkidetfri">verkidetfri (11)</a></li>
13623
13624  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (65)</a></li>
13625
13626  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
13627
13628  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (41)</a></li>
13629
13630 </ul>
13631
13632
13633     </div>
13634     <p style="text-align: right">
13635  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.6</a>
13636 </p>
13637
13638   </body>
13639 </html>