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  13  <h1>
  14      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  15
  16  </h1>
  17
  18 </div>
  19
  20
  21     <h3>Entries tagged "english".</h3>
  22
  23     <div class="entry">
  24       <div class="title">
  25         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">Welcome to the world, Isenkram!</a>
  26       </div>
  27       <div class="date">
  28         22nd January 2013
  29       </div>
  30       <div class="body">
  31         <p>Yesterday, I
  32 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_prototype_ready_making_hardware_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">asked
  33 for testers</a> for my prototype for making Debian better at handling
  34 pluggable hardware devices, which I
  35 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">set
  36 out to create</a> earlier this month.  Several valuable testers showed
  37 up, and caused me to really want to to open up the development to more
  38 people.  But before I did this, I want to come up with a sensible name
  39 for this project.  Today I finally decided on a new name, and I have
  40 renamed the project from hw-support-handler to this new name.  In the
  41 process, I moved the source to git and made it available as a
  42 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/isenkram.git">collab-maint</a>
  43 repository in Debian.  The new name?  It is <strong>Isenkram</strong>.
  44 To fetch and build the latest version of the source, use</p>
  45
  46 <pre>
  47 git clone git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/isenkram.git
  48 cd isenkram && git-buildpackage
  49 </pre>
  50
  51 <p>I have not yet adjusted all files to use the new name yet.  If you
  52 want to hack on the source or improve the package, please go ahead.
  53 But please talk to me first on IRC or via email before you do major
  54 changes, to make sure we do not step on each others toes. :)</p>
  55
  56 <p>If you wonder what 'isenkram' is, it is a Norwegian word for iron
  57 stuff, typically meaning tools, nails, screws, etc.  Typical hardware
  58 stuff, in other words.  I've been told it is the Norwegian variant of
  59 the German word eisenkram, for those that are familiar with that
  60 word.</p>
  61
  62       </div>
  63       <div class="tags">
  64
  65
  66         Tags: <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>.
  67
  68
  69       </div>
  70     </div>
  71     <div class="padding"></div>
  72
  73     <div class="entry">
  74       <div class="title">
  75         <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>
  76       </div>
  77       <div class="date">
  78         21st January 2013
  79       </div>
  80       <div class="body">
  81         <p>Early this month I set out to try to
  82 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">improve
  83 the Debian support for pluggable hardware devices</a>.  Now my
  84 prototype is working, and it is ready for a larger audience.  To test
  85 it, fetch the
  86 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">source
  87 from the Debian Edu subversion repository</a>, build and install the
  88 package.  You might have to log out and in again activate the
  89 autostart script.</p>
  90
  91 <p>The design is simple:</p>
  92
  93 <ul>
  94
  95 <li>Add desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ causing a program
  96 hw-support-handlerd to start when the user log in.</li>
  97
  98 <li>This program listen for kernel events about new hardware (directly
  99 from the kernel like udev does), not using HAL dbus events as I
 100 initially did.</li>
 101
 102 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware modalias in
 103 the APT database, a database
 104 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=markup">available
 105 via HTTP</a> and a database available as part of the package.</li>
 106
 107 <li>If a package is mapped to the hardware in question, the package
 108 isn't installed yet and this is the first time the hardware was
 109 plugged in, show a desktop notification suggesting to install the
 110 package or packages.</li>
 111
 112 <li>If the user click on the 'install package now' button, ask
 113 aptdaemon via the PackageKit API to install the requrired package.</li>
 114
 115 <li>aptdaemon ask for root password or sudo password, and install the
 116 package while showing progress information in a window.</li>
 117
 118 </ul>
 119
 120 <p>I still need to come up with a better name for the system.  Here
 121 are some screen shots showing the prototype in action.  First the
 122 notification, then the password request, and finally the request to
 123 approve all the dependencies.  Sorry for the Norwegian Bokmål GUI.</p>
 124
 125 <p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-1-notification.png">
 126 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-2-password.png">
 127 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-3-dependencies.png">
 128 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-4-installing.png">
 129 <br><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-21-hw-support-5-installing-details.png" width="70%"></p>
 130
 131 <p>The prototype still need to be improved with longer timeouts, but
 132 is already useful.  The database of hardware to package mappings also
 133 need more work.  It is currently compatible with the Ubuntu way of
 134 storing such information in the package control file, but could be
 135 changed to use other formats instead or in addition to the current
 136 method.  I've dropped the use of discover for this mapping, as the
 137 modalias approach is more flexible and easier to use on Linux as long
 138 as the Linux kernel expose its modalias strings directly.</p>
 139
 140 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-21 16:50</strong>: Due to popular demand,
 141 here is the command required to check out and build the source: Use
 142 '<tt>svn checkout
 143 svn://svn.debian.org/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/; cd
 144 hw-support-handler; debuild</tt>'.  If you lack debuild, install the
 145 devscripts package.</p>
 146
 147 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-23 12:00</strong>: The project is now
 148 renamed to Isenkram and the source moved from the Debian Edu
 149 subversion repository to a Debian collab-maint git repository.  See
 150 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Welcome_to_the_world__Isenkram_.html">build
 151 instructions</a> for details.</p>
 152
 153       </div>
 154       <div class="tags">
 155
 156
 157         Tags: <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>.
 158
 159
 160       </div>
 161     </div>
 162     <div class="padding"></div>
 163
 164     <div class="entry">
 165       <div class="title">
 166         <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>
 167       </div>
 168       <div class="date">
 169         19th January 2013
 170       </div>
 171       <div class="body">
 172         <p>This Christmas my trusty old laptop died.  It died quietly and
 173 suddenly in bed.  With a quiet whimper, it went completely quiet and
 174 black.  The power button was no longer able to turn it on.  It was a
 175 IBM Thinkpad X41, and the best laptop I ever had.  Better than both
 176 Thinkpads X30, X31, X40, X60, X61 and X61S.  Far better than the
 177 Compaq I had before that.  Now I need to find a replacement.  To keep
 178 going during Christmas, I moved the one year old SSD disk to my old
 179 X40 where it fitted (only one I had left that could use it), but it is
 180 not a durable solution.
 181
 182 <p>My laptop needs are fairly modest.  This is my wishlist from when I
 183 got a new one more than 10 years ago.  It still holds true.:)</p>
 184
 185 <ul>
 186
 187 <li>Lightweight (around 1 kg) and small volume (preferably smaller
 188   than A4).</li>
 189 <li>Robust, it will be in my backpack every day.</li>
 190 <li>Three button mouse and a mouse pin instead of touch pad.</li>
 191 <li>Long battery life time.  Preferable a week.</li>
 192 <li>Internal WIFI network card.</li>
 193 <li>Internal Twisted Pair network card.</li>
 194 <li>Some USB slots (2-3 is plenty)</li>
 195 <li>Good keyboard - similar to the Thinkpad.</li>
 196 <li>Video resolution at least 1024x768, with size around 12" (A4 paper
 197 size).</li>
 198 <li>Hardware supported by Debian Stable, ie the default kernel and
 199   X.org packages.</li>
 200 <li>Quiet, preferably fan free (or at least not using the fan most of
 201   the time).
 202
 203 </ul>
 204
 205 <p>You will notice that there are no RAM and CPU requirements in the
 206 list.  The reason is simply that the specifications on laptops the
 207 last 10-15 years have been sufficient for my needs, and I have to look
 208 at other features to choose my laptop.  But are there still made as
 209 robust laptops as my X41?  The Thinkpad X60/X61 proved to be less
 210 robust, and Thinkpads seem to be heading in the wrong direction since
 211 Lenovo took over.  But I've been told that X220 and X1 Carbon might
 212 still be useful.</p>
 213
 214 <p>Perhaps I should rethink my needs, and look for a pad with an
 215 external keyboard?  I'll have to check the
 216 <a href="http://www.linux-laptop.net/">Linux Laptops site</a> for
 217 well-supported laptops, or perhaps just buy one preinstalled from one
 218 of the vendors listed on the <a href="http://linuxpreloaded.com/">Linux
 219 Pre-loaded site</a>.</p>
 220
 221       </div>
 222       <div class="tags">
 223
 224
 225         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 226
 227
 228       </div>
 229     </div>
 230     <div class="padding"></div>
 231
 232     <div class="entry">
 233       <div class="title">
 234         <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>
 235       </div>
 236       <div class="date">
 237         18th January 2013
 238       </div>
 239       <div class="body">
 240         <p>Some times I try to figure out which Iceweasel browser plugin to
 241 install to get support for a given MIME type.  Thanks to
 242 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MozillaTeam/Plugins">specifications
 243 done by Ubuntu</a> and Mozilla, it is possible to do this in Debian.
 244 Unfortunately, not very many packages provide the needed meta
 245 information, Anyway, here is a small script to look up all browser
 246 plugin packages announcing ther MIME support using this specification:</p>
 247
 248 <pre>
 249 #!/usr/bin/python
 250 import sys
 251 import apt
 252 def pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 253     cache = apt.Cache()
 254     cache.open(None)
 255     thepkgs = []
 256     for pkg in cache:
 257         version = pkg.candidate
 258         if version is None:
 259             version = pkg.installed
 260         if version is None:
 261             continue
 262         record = version.record
 263         if not record.has_key('Npp-MimeType'):
 264             continue
 265         mime_types = record['Npp-MimeType'].split(',')
 266         for t in mime_types:
 267             t = t.rstrip().strip()
 268             if t == mimetype:
 269                 thepkgs.append(pkg.name)
 270     return thepkgs
 271 mimetype = "audio/ogg"
 272 if 1 < len(sys.argv):
 273     mimetype = sys.argv[1]
 274 print "Browser plugin packages supporting %s:" % mimetype
 275 for pkg in pkgs_handling_mimetype(mimetype):
 276     print "  %s" %pkg
 277 </pre>
 278
 279 <p>It can be used like this to look up a given MIME type:</p>
 280
 281 <pre>
 282 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype
 283 Browser plugin packages supporting audio/ogg:
 284   gecko-mediaplayer
 285 % ./apt-find-browserplug-for-mimetype application/x-shockwave-flash
 286 Browser plugin packages supporting application/x-shockwave-flash:
 287   browser-plugin-gnash
 288 %
 289 </pre>
 290
 291 <p>In Ubuntu this mechanism is combined with support in the browser
 292 itself to query for plugins and propose to install the needed
 293 packages.  It would be great if Debian supported such feature too.  Is
 294 anyone working on adding it?</p>
 295
 296 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-18 14:20</strong>: The Debian BTS
 297 request for icweasel support for this feature is
 298 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/484010">#484010</a> from 2008 (and
 299 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/698426">#698426</a> from today).  Lack
 300 of manpower and wish for a different design is the reason thus feature
 301 is not yet in iceweasel from Debian.</p>
 302
 303       </div>
 304       <div class="tags">
 305
 306
 307         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 308
 309
 310       </div>
 311     </div>
 312     <div class="padding"></div>
 313
 314     <div class="entry">
 315       <div class="title">
 316         <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>
 317       </div>
 318       <div class="date">
 319         16th January 2013
 320       </div>
 321       <div class="body">
 322         <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/AppStreamDebianProposal">DEP-11
 323 proposal to add AppStream information to the Debian archive</a>, is a
 324 proposal to make it possible for a Desktop application to propose to
 325 the user some package to install to gain support for a given MIME
 326 type, font, library etc. that is currently missing.  With such
 327 mechanism in place, it would be possible for the desktop to
 328 automatically propose and install leocad if some LDraw file is
 329 downloaded by the browser.</p>
 330
 331 <p>To get some idea about the current content of the archive, I decided
 332 to write a simple program to extract all .desktop files from the
 333 Debian archive and look up the claimed MIME support there.  The result
 334 can be found on the
 335 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/pub/AppStreamTest">Skolelinux FTP
 336 site</a>.  Using the collected information, it become possible to
 337 answer the question in the title.  Here are the 20 most supported MIME
 338 types in Debian stable (Squeeze), testing (Wheezy) and unstable (Sid).
 339 The complete list is available from the link above.</p>
 340
 341 <p><strong>Debian Stable:</strong></p>
 342
 343 <pre>
 344   count MIME type
 345   ----- -----------------------
 346      32 text/plain
 347      30 audio/mpeg
 348      29 image/png
 349      28 image/jpeg
 350      27 application/ogg
 351      26 audio/x-mp3
 352      25 image/tiff
 353      25 image/gif
 354      22 image/bmp
 355      22 audio/x-wav
 356      20 audio/x-flac
 357      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 358      18 video/x-ms-asf
 359      18 audio/x-musepack
 360      18 audio/x-mpeg
 361      18 application/x-ogg
 362      17 video/mpeg
 363      17 audio/x-scpls
 364      17 audio/ogg
 365      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 366 </pre>
 367
 368 <p><strong>Debian Testing:</strong></p>
 369
 370 <pre>
 371   count MIME type
 372   ----- -----------------------
 373      33 text/plain
 374      32 image/png
 375      32 image/jpeg
 376      29 audio/mpeg
 377      27 image/gif
 378      26 image/tiff
 379      26 application/ogg
 380      25 audio/x-mp3
 381      22 image/bmp
 382      21 audio/x-wav
 383      19 audio/x-mpegurl
 384      19 audio/x-mpeg
 385      18 video/mpeg
 386      18 audio/x-scpls
 387      18 audio/x-flac
 388      18 application/x-ogg
 389      17 video/x-ms-asf
 390      17 text/html
 391      17 audio/x-musepack
 392      16 image/x-xbitmap
 393 </pre>
 394
 395 <p><strong>Debian Unstable:</strong></p>
 396
 397 <pre>
 398   count MIME type
 399   ----- -----------------------
 400      31 text/plain
 401      31 image/png
 402      31 image/jpeg
 403      29 audio/mpeg
 404      28 application/ogg
 405      27 image/gif
 406      26 image/tiff
 407      26 audio/x-mp3
 408      23 audio/x-wav
 409      22 image/bmp
 410      21 audio/x-flac
 411      20 audio/x-mpegurl
 412      19 audio/x-mpeg
 413      18 video/x-ms-asf
 414      18 video/mpeg
 415      18 audio/x-scpls
 416      18 application/x-ogg
 417      17 audio/x-musepack
 418      16 video/x-ms-wmv
 419      16 video/x-msvideo
 420 </pre>
 421
 422 <p>I am told that PackageKit can provide an API to access the kind of
 423 information mentioned in DEP-11.  I have not yet had time to look at
 424 it, but hope the PackageKit people in Debian are on top of these
 425 issues.</p>
 426
 427 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-16 13:35</strong>: Updated numbers after
 428 discovering a typo in my script.</p>
 429
 430       </div>
 431       <div class="tags">
 432
 433
 434         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
 435
 436
 437       </div>
 438     </div>
 439     <div class="padding"></div>
 440
 441     <div class="entry">
 442       <div class="title">
 443         <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>
 444       </div>
 445       <div class="date">
 446         15th January 2013
 447       </div>
 448       <div class="body">
 449         <p>Yesterday, I wrote about the
 450 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Modalias_strings___a_practical_way_to_map__stuff__to_hardware.html">modalias
 451 values provided by the Linux kernel</a> following my hope for
 452 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_hardware_dongles_easier_to_use_in_Debian.html">better
 453 dongle support in Debian</a>.  Using this knowledge, I have tested how
 454 modalias values attached to package names can be used to map packages
 455 to hardware.  This allow the system to look up and suggest relevant
 456 packages when I plug in some new hardware into my machine, and replace
 457 discover and discover-data as the database used to map hardware to
 458 packages.</p>
 459
 460 <p>I create a modaliases file with entries like the following,
 461 containing package name, kernel module name (if relevant, otherwise
 462 the package name) and globs matching the relevant hardware
 463 modalias.</p>
 464
 465 <p><blockquote>
 466 Package: package-name
 467 <br>Modaliases: module(modaliasglob, modaliasglob, modaliasglob)</p>
 468 </blockquote></p>
 469
 470 <p>It is fairly trivial to write code to find the relevant packages
 471 for a given modalias value using this file.</p>
 472
 473 <p>An entry like this would suggest the video and picture application
 474 cheese for many USB web cameras (interface bus class 0E01):</p>
 475
 476 <p><blockquote>
 477 Package: cheese
 478 <br>Modaliases: cheese(usb:v*p*d*dc*dsc*dp*ic0Eisc01ip*)</p>
 479 </blockquote></p>
 480
 481 <p>An entry like this would suggest the pcmciautils package when a
 482 CardBus bridge (bus class 0607) PCI device is present:</p>
 483
 484 <p><blockquote>
 485 Package: pcmciautils
 486 <br>Modaliases: pcmciautils(pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc06sc07i*)
 487 </blockquote></p>
 488
 489 <p>An entry like this would suggest the package colorhug-client when
 490 plugging in a ColorHug with USB IDs 04D8:F8DA:</p>
 491
 492 <p><blockquote>
 493 Package: colorhug-client
 494 <br>Modaliases: colorhug-client(usb:v04D8pF8DAd*)</p>
 495 </blockquote></p>
 496
 497 <p>I believe the format is compatible with the format of the Packages
 498 file in the Debian archive.  Ubuntu already uses their Packages file
 499 to store their mappings from packages to hardware.</p>
 500
 501 <p>By adding a XB-Modaliases: header in debian/control, any .deb can
 502 announce the hardware it support in a way my prototype understand.
 503 This allow those publishing packages in an APT source outside the
 504 Debian archive as well as those backporting packages to make sure the
 505 hardware mapping are included in the package meta information.  I've
 506 tested such header in the pymissile package, and its modalias mapping
 507 is working as it should with my prototype.  It even made it to Ubuntu
 508 Raring.</p>
 509
 510 <p>To test if it was possible to look up supported hardware using only
 511 the shell tools available in the Debian installer, I wrote a shell
 512 implementation of the lookup code.  The idea is to create files for
 513 each modalias and let the shell do the matching.  Please check out and
 514 try the
 515 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/hw-support-lookup?view=co">hw-support-lookup</a>
 516 shell script.  It run without any extra dependencies and fetch the
 517 hardware mappings from the Debian archive and the subversion
 518 repository where I currently work on my prototype.</p>
 519
 520 <p>When I use it on a machine with a yubikey inserted, it suggest to
 521 install yubikey-personalization:</p>
 522
 523 <p><blockquote>
 524 % ./hw-support-lookup
 525 <br>yubikey-personalization
 526 <br>%
 527 </blockquote></p>
 528
 529 <p>When I run it on my Thinkpad X40 with a PCMCIA/CardBus slot, it
 530 propose to install the pcmciautils package:</p>
 531
 532 <p><blockquote>
 533 % ./hw-support-lookup
 534 <br>pcmciautils
 535 <br>%
 536 </blockquote></p>
 537
 538 <p>If you know of any hardware-package mapping that should be added to
 539 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/modaliases?view=co">my
 540 database</a>, please tell me about it.</p>
 541
 542 <p>It could be possible to generate several of the mappings between
 543 packages and hardware.  One source would be to look at packages with
 544 kernel modules, ie packages with *.ko files in /lib/modules/, and
 545 extract their modalias information.  Another would be to look at
 546 packages with udev rules, ie packages with files in
 547 /lib/udev/rules.d/, and extract their vendor/model information to
 548 generate a modalias matching rule.  I have not tested any of these to
 549 see if it work.</p>
 550
 551 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 552 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 553 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 554 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 555
 556       </div>
 557       <div class="tags">
 558
 559
 560         Tags: <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>.
 561
 562
 563       </div>
 564     </div>
 565     <div class="padding"></div>
 566
 567     <div class="entry">
 568       <div class="title">
 569         <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>
 570       </div>
 571       <div class="date">
 572         14th January 2013
 573       </div>
 574       <div class="body">
 575         <p>While looking into how to look up Debian packages based on hardware
 576 information, to find the packages that support a given piece of
 577 hardware, I refreshed my memory regarding modalias values, and decided
 578 to document the details.  Here are my findings so far, also available
 579 in
 580 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 581 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>:
 582
 583 <p><strong>Modalias decoded</strong></p>
 584
 585 <p>This document try to explain what the different types of modalias
 586 values stands for.  It is in part based on information from
 587 &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Modalias</a> &gt;,
 588 &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;,
 589 &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
 590 &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;.
 591
 592 <p>The modalias entries for a given Linux machine can be found using
 593 this shell script:</p>
 594
 595 <pre>
 596 find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u
 597 </pre>
 598
 599 <p>The supported modalias globs for a given kernel module can be found
 600 using modinfo:</p>
 601
 602 <pre>
 603 % /sbin/modinfo psmouse | grep alias:
 604 alias:          serio:ty05pr*id*ex*
 605 alias:          serio:ty01pr*id*ex*
 606 %
 607 </pre>
 608
 609 <p><strong>PCI subtype</strong></p>
 610
 611 <p>A typical PCI entry can look like this.  This is an Intel Host
 612 Bridge memory controller:</p>
 613
 614 <p><blockquote>
 615 pci:v00008086d00002770sv00001028sd000001ADbc06sc00i00
 616 </blockquote></p>
 617
 618 <p>This represent these values:</p>
 619
 620 <pre>
 621  v   00008086  (vendor)
 622  d   00002770  (device)
 623  sv  00001028  (subvendor)
 624  sd  000001AD  (subdevice)
 625  bc  06        (bus class)
 626  sc  00        (bus subclass)
 627  i   00        (interface)
 628 </pre>
 629
 630 <p>The vendor/device values are the same values outputted from 'lspci
 631 -n' as 8086:2770.  The bus class/subclass is also shown by lspci as
 632 0600.  The 0600 class is a host bridge.  Other useful bus values are
 633 0300 (VGA compatible card) and 0200 (Ethernet controller).</p>
 634
 635 <p>Not sure how to figure out the interface value, nor what it
 636 means.</p>
 637
 638 <p><strong>USB subtype</strong></p>
 639
 640 <p>Some typical USB entries can look like this.  This is an internal
 641 USB hub in a laptop:</p>
 642
 643 <p><blockquote>
 644 usb:v1D6Bp0001d0206dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00
 645 </blockquote></p>
 646
 647 <p>Here is the values included in this alias:</p>
 648
 649 <pre>
 650  v    1D6B  (device vendor)
 651  p    0001  (device product)
 652  d    0206  (bcddevice)
 653  dc     09  (device class)
 654  dsc    00  (device subclass)
 655  dp     00  (device protocol)
 656  ic     09  (interface class)
 657  isc    00  (interface subclass)
 658  ip     00  (interface protocol)
 659 </pre>
 660
 661 <p>The 0900 device class/subclass means hub.  Some times the relevant
 662 class is in the interface class section.  For a simple USB web camera,
 663 these alias entries show up:</p>
 664
 665 <p><blockquote>
 666 usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00
 667 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc02ip00
 668 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc01ip00
 669 <br>usb:v0AC8p3420d5000dcEFdsc02dp01ic0Eisc02ip00
 670 </blockquote></p>
 671
 672 <p>Interface class 0E01 is video control, 0E02 is video streaming (aka
 673 camera), 0101 is audio control device and 0102 is audio streaming (aka
 674 microphone).  Thus this is a camera with microphone included.</p>
 675
 676 <p><strong>ACPI subtype</strong></p>
 677
 678 <p>The ACPI type is used for several non-PCI/USB stuff.  This is an IR
 679 receiver in a Thinkpad X40:</p>
 680
 681 <p><blockquote>
 682 acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 683 </blockquote></p>
 684
 685 <p>The values between the colons are IDs.</p>
 686
 687 <p><strong>DMI subtype</strong></p>
 688
 689 <p>The DMI table contain lots of information about the computer case
 690 and model.  This is an entry for a IBM Thinkpad X40, fetched from
 691 /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/modalias:</p>
 692
 693 <p><blockquote>
 694 dmi:bvnIBM:bvr1UETB6WW(1.66):bd06/15/2005:svnIBM:pn2371H4G:pvrThinkPadX40:rvnIBM:rn2371H4G:rvrNotAvailable:cvnIBM:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
 695 </blockquote></p>
 696
 697 <p>The values present are</p>
 698
 699 <pre>
 700  bvn  IBM            (BIOS vendor)
 701  bvr  1UETB6WW(1.66) (BIOS version)
 702  bd   06/15/2005     (BIOS date)
 703  svn  IBM            (system vendor)
 704  pn   2371H4G        (product name)
 705  pvr  ThinkPadX40    (product version)
 706  rvn  IBM            (board vendor)
 707  rn   2371H4G        (board name)
 708  rvr  NotAvailable   (board version)
 709  cvn  IBM            (chassis vendor)
 710  ct   10             (chassis type)
 711  cvr  NotAvailable   (chassis version)
 712 </pre>
 713
 714 <p>The chassis type 10 is Notebook.  Other interesting values can be
 715 found in the dmidecode source:</p>
 716
 717 <pre>
 718   3 Desktop
 719   4 Low Profile Desktop
 720   5 Pizza Box
 721   6 Mini Tower
 722   7 Tower
 723   8 Portable
 724   9 Laptop
 725  10 Notebook
 726  11 Hand Held
 727  12 Docking Station
 728  13 All In One
 729  14 Sub Notebook
 730  15 Space-saving
 731  16 Lunch Box
 732  17 Main Server Chassis
 733  18 Expansion Chassis
 734  19 Sub Chassis
 735  20 Bus Expansion Chassis
 736  21 Peripheral Chassis
 737  22 RAID Chassis
 738  23 Rack Mount Chassis
 739  24 Sealed-case PC
 740  25 Multi-system
 741  26 CompactPCI
 742  27 AdvancedTCA
 743  28 Blade
 744  29 Blade Enclosing
 745 </pre>
 746
 747 <p>The chassis type values are not always accurately set in the DMI
 748 table.  For example my home server is a tower, but the DMI modalias
 749 claim it is a desktop.</p>
 750
 751 <p><strong>SerIO subtype</strong></p>
 752
 753 <p>This type is used for PS/2 mouse plugs.  One example is from my
 754 test machine:</p>
 755
 756 <p><blockquote>
 757 serio:ty01pr00id00ex00
 758 </blockquote></p>
 759
 760 <p>The values present are</p>
 761
 762 <pre>
 763   ty  01  (type)
 764   pr  00  (prototype)
 765   id  00  (id)
 766   ex  00  (extra)
 767 </pre>
 768
 769 <p>This type is supported by the psmouse driver.  I am not sure what
 770 the valid values are.</p>
 771
 772 <p><strong>Other subtypes</strong></p>
 773
 774 <p>There are heaps of other modalias subtypes according to
 775 file2alias.c.  There is the rest of the list from that source: amba,
 776 ap, bcma, ccw, css, eisa, hid, i2c, ieee1394, input, ipack, isapnp,
 777 mdio, of, parisc, pcmcia, platform, scsi, sdio, spi, ssb, vio, virtio,
 778 vmbus, x86cpu and zorro.  I did not spend time documenting all of
 779 these, as they do not seem relevant for my intended use with mapping
 780 hardware to packages when new stuff is inserted during run time.</p>
 781
 782 <p><strong>Looking up kernel modules using modalias values</strong></p>
 783
 784 <p>To check which kernel modules provide support for a given modalias,
 785 one can use the following shell script:</p>
 786
 787 <pre>
 788   for id in $(find /sys -name modalias -print0 | xargs -0 cat | sort -u); do \
 789     echo "$id" ; \
 790     /sbin/modprobe --show-depends "$id"|sed 's/^/  /' ; \
 791   done
 792 </pre>
 793
 794 <p>The output can look like this (only the first few entries as the
 795 list is very long on my test machine):</p>
 796
 797 <pre>
 798   acpi:ACPI0003:
 799     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/acpi/ac.ko
 800   acpi:device:
 801   FATAL: Module acpi:device: not found.
 802   acpi:IBM0068:
 803     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/char/nvram.ko
 804     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko
 805     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko
 806     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad_acpi.ko
 807   acpi:IBM0071:PNP0511:
 808     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/lib/crc-ccitt.ko
 809     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/net/irda/irda.ko
 810     insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/kernel/drivers/net/irda/nsc-ircc.ko
 811   [...]
 812 </pre>
 813
 814 <p>If you want to help implementing a system to let us propose what
 815 packages to install when new hardware is plugged into a Debian
 816 machine, please send me an email or talk to me on
 817 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-devel">#debian-devel</a>.</p>
 818
 819 <p><strong>Update 2013-01-15:</strong> Rewrite "cat $(find ...)" to
 820 "find ... -print0 | xargs -0 cat" to make sure it handle directories
 821 in /sys/ with space in them.</p>
 822
 823       </div>
 824       <div class="tags">
 825
 826
 827         Tags: <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>.
 828
 829
 830       </div>
 831     </div>
 832     <div class="padding"></div>
 833
 834     <div class="entry">
 835       <div class="title">
 836         <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>
 837       </div>
 838       <div class="date">
 839         10th January 2013
 840       </div>
 841       <div class="body">
 842         <p>As part of my investigation on how to improve the support in Debian
 843 for hardware dongles, I dug up my old Mark and Spencer USB Rocket
 844 Launcher and updated the Debian package
 845 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/pymissile">pymissile</a> to make
 846 sure udev will fix the device permissions when it is plugged in.  I
 847 also added a "Modaliases" header to test it in the Debian archive and
 848 hopefully make the package be proposed by jockey in Ubuntu when a user
 849 plug in his rocket launcher.  In the process I moved the source to a
 850 git repository under collab-maint, to make it easier for any DD to
 851 contribute.  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/pymissile/">Upstream</a>
 852 is not very active, but the software still work for me even after five
 853 years of relative silence.  The new git repository is not listed in
 854 the uploaded package yet, because I want to test the other changes a
 855 bit more before I upload the new version.  If you want to check out
 856 the new version with a .desktop file included, visit the
 857 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/pymissile.git">gitweb
 858 view</a> or use "<tt>git clone
 859 git://anonscm.debian.org/collab-maint/pymissile.git</tt>".</p>
 860
 861       </div>
 862       <div class="tags">
 863
 864
 865         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
 866
 867
 868       </div>
 869     </div>
 870     <div class="padding"></div>
 871
 872     <div class="entry">
 873       <div class="title">
 874         <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>
 875       </div>
 876       <div class="date">
 877          9th January 2013
 878       </div>
 879       <div class="body">
 880         <p>One thing that annoys me with Debian and Linux distributions in
 881 general, is that there is a great package management system with the
 882 ability to automatically install software packages by downloading them
 883 from the distribution mirrors, but no way to get it to automatically
 884 install the packages I need to use the hardware I plug into my
 885 machine.  Even if the package to use it is easily available from the
 886 Linux distribution.  When I plug in a LEGO Mindstorms NXT, it could
 887 suggest to automatically install the python-nxt, nbc and t2n packages
 888 I need to talk to it.  When I plug in a Yubikey, it could propose the
 889 yubikey-personalization package.  The information required to do this
 890 is available, but no-one have pulled all the pieces together.</p>
 891
 892 <p>Some years ago, I proposed to
 893 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg01206.html">use
 894 the discover subsystem to implement this</a>.  The idea is fairly
 895 simple:
 896
 897 <ul>
 898
 899 <li>Add a desktop entry in /usr/share/autostart/ pointing to a program
 900   starting when a user log in.</li>
 901
 902 <li>Set this program up to listen for kernel events emitted when new
 903   hardware is inserted into the computer.</li>
 904
 905 <li>When new hardware is inserted, look up the hardware ID in a
 906   database mapping to packages, and take note of any non-installed
 907   packages.</li>
 908
 909 <li>Show a message to the user proposing to install the discovered
 910   package, and make it easy to install it.</li>
 911
 912 </ul>
 913
 914 <p>I am not sure what the best way to implement this is, but my
 915 initial idea was to use dbus events to discover new hardware, the
 916 discover database to find packages and
 917 <a href="http://www.packagekit.org/">PackageKit</a> to install
 918 packages.</p>
 919
 920 <p>Yesterday, I found time to try to implement this idea, and the
 921 draft package is now checked into
 922 <a href="http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/debian-edu/trunk/src/hw-support-handler/">the
 923 Debian Edu subversion repository</a>.  In the process, I updated the
 924 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover-data.html">discover-data</a>
 925 package to map the USB ids of LEGO Mindstorms and Yubikey devices to
 926 the relevant packages in Debian, and uploaded a new version
 927 2.2013.01.09 to unstable.  I also discovered that the current
 928 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/discover.html">discover</a>
 929 package in Debian no longer discovered any USB devices, because
 930 /proc/bus/usb/devices is no longer present.  I ported it to use
 931 libusb as a fall back option to get it working.  The fixed package
 932 version 2.1.2-6 is now in experimental (didn't upload it to unstable
 933 because of the freeze).</p>
 934
 935 <p>With this prototype in place, I can insert my Yubikey, and get this
 936 desktop notification to show up (only once, the first time it is
 937 inserted):</p>
 938
 939 <p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-01-09-hw-autoinstall.png"></p>
 940
 941 <p>For this prototype to be really useful, some way to automatically
 942 install the proposed packages by pressing the "Please install
 943 program(s)" button should to be implemented.</p>
 944
 945 <p>If this idea seem useful to you, and you want to help make it
 946 happen, please help me update the discover-data database with mappings
 947 from hardware to Debian packages.  Check if 'discover-pkginstall -l'
 948 list the package you would like to have installed when a given
 949 hardware device is inserted into your computer, and report bugs using
 950 reportbug if it isn't.  Or, if you know of a better way to provide
 951 such mapping, please let me know.</p>
 952
 953 <p>This prototype need more work, and there are several questions that
 954 should be considered before it is ready for production use.  Is dbus
 955 the correct way to detect new hardware?  At the moment I look for HAL
 956 dbus events on the system bus, because that is the events I could see
 957 on my Debian Squeeze KDE desktop.  Are there better events to use?
 958 How should the user be notified?  Is the desktop notification
 959 mechanism the best option, or should the background daemon raise a
 960 popup instead?  How should packages be installed?  When should they
 961 not be installed?</p>
 962
 963 <p>If you want to help getting such feature implemented in Debian,
 964 please send me an email. :)</p>
 965
 966       </div>
 967       <div class="tags">
 968
 969
 970         Tags: <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>.
 971
 972
 973       </div>
 974     </div>
 975     <div class="padding"></div>
 976
 977     <div class="entry">
 978       <div class="title">
 979         <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>
 980       </div>
 981       <div class="date">
 982          2nd January 2013
 983       </div>
 984       <div class="body">
 985         <p>During Christmas, I have worked a bit on the Debian support for
 986 <a href="http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx">LEGO Mindstorm
 987 NXT</a>.  My son and I have played a bit with my NXT set, and I
 988 discovered I had to build all the tools myself because none were
 989 already in Debian Squeeze.  If Debian support for LEGO is something
 990 you care about, please join me on the IRC channel
 991 <a href="irc://irc.debian.org/%23debian-lego">#debian-lego</a> (server
 992 irc.debian.org).  There is a lot that could be done to improve the
 993 Debian support for LEGO designers.  For example both CAD software
 994 and Mindstorm compilers are missing. :)</p>
 995
 996 <p>Update 2012-01-03: A
 997 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LegoDesigners">project page</a>
 998 including links to Lego related packages is now available.</p>
 999
1000       </div>
1001       <div class="tags">
1002
1003
1004         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
1005
1006
1007       </div>
1008     </div>
1009     <div class="padding"></div>
1010
1011     <div class="entry">
1012       <div class="title">
1013         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Christmas_present_for_Skolelinux___Debian_Edu.html">A Christmas present for Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
1014       </div>
1015       <div class="date">
1016         28th December 2012
1017       </div>
1018       <div class="body">
1019         <p>I was happy to discover a few days ago that the
1020 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a>
1021 project also this year received a Christmas present from Another
1022 Agency in Trondheim.  NOK 1000,- showed up on our donation account
1023 December 24th.  I want to express our thanks for this very welcome
1024 present.  As the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is very short on
1025 funding these days, and thus lack the money to do regular developer
1026 gatherings, this donation was most welcome.  One developer gathering
1027 cost around NOK 15&nbsp;000,-, so we need quite a lot more to keep the
1028 development pace we want.  Thus, I hope their example this year is
1029 followed by many others. :)</p>
1030
1031 <p>The public list of donors can be found on
1032 <a href="http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">the
1033 donation page</a> for the project, which also contain instructions if
1034 you want to donate to the project.</p>
1035
1036       </div>
1037       <div class="tags">
1038
1039
1040         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1041
1042
1043       </div>
1044     </div>
1045     <div class="padding"></div>
1046
1047     <div class="entry">
1048       <div class="title">
1049         <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>
1050       </div>
1051       <div class="date">
1052         25th December 2012
1053       </div>
1054       <div class="body">
1055         <p>Let me start by wishing you all marry Christmas and a happy new
1056 year!  I hope next year will prove to be a good year.</p>
1057
1058 <p><a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">Bitcoin</a>, the digital
1059 decentralised "currency" that allow people to transfer bitcoins
1060 between each other with minimal overhead, is a very interesting
1061 experiment.  And as I wrote a few days ago, the bitcoin situation in
1062 <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> is about to improve a bit.
1063 The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">new debian source
1064 package</a> (version 0.7.2-2) was uploaded yesterday, and is waiting
1065 in <a href="http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html">the NEW queue</A>
1066 for one of the ftpmasters to approve the new bitcoin-qt package
1067 name.</p>
1068
1069 <p>And thanks to the great work of Jonas and the rest of the bitcoin
1070 team in Debian, you can easily test the package in Debian Squeeze
1071 using the following steps to get a set of working packages:</p>
1072
1073 <blockquote><pre>
1074 git clone git://git.debian.org/git/collab-maint/bitcoin
1075 cd bitcoin
1076 DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp fakeroot debian/rules clean
1077 DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=noupnp git-buildpackage --git-ignore-new
1078 </pre></blockquote>
1079
1080 <p>You might have to install some build dependencies as well.  The
1081 list of commands should give you two packages, bitcoind and
1082 bitcoin-qt, ready for use in a Squeeze environment.  Note that the
1083 client will download the complete set of bitcoin "blocks", which need
1084 around 5.6 GiB of data on my machine at the moment.  Make sure your
1085 ~/.bitcoin/ directory have lots of spare room if you want to download
1086 all the blocks.  The client will warn if the disk is getting full, so
1087 there is not really a problem if you got too little room, but you will
1088 not be able to get all the features out of the client.</p>
1089
1090 <p>As usual, if you use bitcoin and want to show your support of my
1091 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
1092 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1093
1094       </div>
1095       <div class="tags">
1096
1097
1098         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>.
1099
1100
1101       </div>
1102     </div>
1103     <div class="padding"></div>
1104
1105     <div class="entry">
1106       <div class="title">
1107         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a>
1108       </div>
1109       <div class="date">
1110         21st December 2012
1111       </div>
1112       <div class="body">
1113         <p>It has been a while since I wrote about
1114 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
1115 peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
1116 have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
1117 state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
1118 Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
1119 is now maintained by a
1120 <a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
1121 people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
1122 owe a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
1123 But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
1124 Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and an outdated client from
1125 backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
1126 it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
1127 situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
1128 reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
1129 Corallo in a
1130 <a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
1131 Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
1132 Debian package.</p>
1133
1134 <p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
1135 IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
1136 improve the package.  It now contains fixes for the RC issues (not from
1137 me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
1138 package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
1139 setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
1140 <a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
1141 patch to backport</a> the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
1142 it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
1143 new version to unstable.
1144
1145 <p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
1146 centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
1147 find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
1148 transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
1149 that the major credit card companies can block legal money
1150 transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
1151 need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
1152 they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
1153 Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
1154 Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
1155 pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
1156 in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
1157 use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire up to do a
1158 quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
1159 have not tested them.</p>
1160
1161 <p>My
1162 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
1163 with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
1164 I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
1165 years ago, as can be
1166 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
1167 on the blockexplorer service</a>.  Thank you everyone for your
1168 donation.  The blockexplorer service demonstrates quite well that
1169 bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
1170 number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
1171 to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
1172 the same address as last time,
1173 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
1174
1175       </div>
1176       <div class="tags">
1177
1178
1179         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>.
1180
1181
1182       </div>
1183     </div>
1184     <div class="padding"></div>
1185
1186     <div class="entry">
1187       <div class="title">
1188         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html">Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</a>
1189       </div>
1190       <div class="date">
1191         18th December 2012
1192       </div>
1193       <div class="body">
1194         <p>A few days ago I came across
1195 <a href="http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/">a blog post from Joey
1196 Hess</a> describing <a href="http://ledger-cli.org/">ledger</a> and
1197 hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
1198 interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
1199 accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
1200 the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
1201 look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
1202 the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
1203 text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there
1204
1205 are at least <a href="https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports">five
1206 different implementations</a> able to read the format.  An example
1207 entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
1208 generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:</p>
1209
1210 <blockquote><pre>
1211 2004-05-27 Book Store
1212       Expenses:Books                 $20.00
1213       Liabilities:Visa
1214 </pre></blockquote>
1215
1216 <p>The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
1217 look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
1218 <a href="http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/">Christine
1219 Spang</a>,
1220 <a href="http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html">Pete
1221 Keen</a>,
1222 <a href="http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/">Andrew
1223 Cantino</a> and
1224 <a href="http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/">Ronald
1225 Ip</a> describing how they use it, as well as a post from
1226 <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo">Bradley
1227 M. Kuhn</a> at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
1228 recommendations fitting my need.</p>
1229
1230 <p>The <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html">ledger</a>
1231 package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
1232 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html">hledger</a>
1233 package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
1234 seemed the best choice to get started.</p>
1235
1236 <p>To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
1237 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger">web scraper</a> for
1238 <a href="http://www.lodo.no/">LODO</a>, the accounting system used by
1239 the <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a> association, and started to
1240 play with the data set.  I'm not really deeply into accounting, but I
1241 am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
1242 using the "<tt>ledger balance</tt>" command.  But I will have to
1243 gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
1244 for the organisations I am involved in.</p>
1245
1246       </div>
1247       <div class="tags">
1248
1249
1250         Tags: <a href="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>.
1251
1252
1253       </div>
1254     </div>
1255     <div class="padding"></div>
1256
1257     <div class="entry">
1258       <div class="title">
1259         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html">Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</a>
1260       </div>
1261       <div class="date">
1262          6th December 2012
1263       </div>
1264       <div class="body">
1265         <p>Where I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of
1266 Oslo</a>, we use the
1267 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/">Cerebrum user
1268 administration system</a> to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
1269 I've known since the system was written that the server is providing
1270 an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC">XML-RPC</a> API, but
1271 I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
1272 always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
1273 to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
1274 virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
1275 Python.</p>
1276
1277 <p>I started by looking at the source of the Java
1278 <a href="http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/">bofh
1279 client</a>, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
1280 googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
1281 <a href="http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html">a
1282 simple example in</a> the XML-RPC howto.</p>
1283
1284 <p>This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
1285 commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
1286 user currently logged in:</p>
1287
1288 <blockquote><pre>
1289 #!/usr/bin/env python
1290 import getpass
1291 import xmlrpclib
1292 server_url = 'https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000';
1293 username = getpass.getuser()
1294 password = getpass.getpass()
1295 server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
1296 #print server.get_commands(sessionid)
1297 sessionid = server.login(username, password)
1298 print server.run_command(sessionid, "user_info", username)
1299 result = server.logout(sessionid)
1300 print result
1301 </pre></blockquote>
1302
1303 <p>Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
1304 and DHCP updates I wanted to do.</p>
1305
1306       </div>
1307       <div class="tags">
1308
1309
1310         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin</a>.
1311
1312
1313       </div>
1314     </div>
1315     <div class="padding"></div>
1316
1317     <div class="entry">
1318       <div class="title">
1319         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_the_value_of_copyright_taxed_.html">Why isn't the value of copyright taxed?</a>
1320       </div>
1321       <div class="date">
1322         17th November 2012
1323       </div>
1324       <div class="body">
1325         <p>While working on a
1326 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Norwegian
1327 translation of the Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a> (76% done),
1328 which cover the problems with todays copyright law and how it stifles
1329 creativity, one idea occurred to me.  The idea is to get the tax
1330 office to help make more works enter the public domain and also help
1331 make it easier to clear rights for using copyrighted works.</p>
1332
1333 <p>I mentioned this idea briefly during Yesterdays
1334 <a href="http://www.farmann.no/2012/11/14/john-perry-barlow-in-oslo-friday-nov-16
1335 -15-30-19-00/">presentation
1336 by John Perry Barlow</a>, and concluded that it was best to put it
1337 in writing for a wider audience.  The idea is not really based on the
1338 argument that copyrighted works are "intellectual property", as the
1339 core requirement is that copyrighted work have value for the copyright
1340 holder and the tax office like to collect their share from any value
1341 controlled by the citizens in a country.  I'm sharing the idea here to
1342 let others consider it and perhaps shoot it down with a fresh set of
1343 arguments.</p>
1344
1345 <p>Most valuables are taxed by the government.  At least here in
1346 Norway, the amount of money you have, the value of our land property,
1347 the value of your house, the value of your car, the value of our
1348 stocks and other valuables are all added together.  If the tax value
1349 of these values exceed your debt, you have to pay the tax office some
1350 taxes for these values.  And copyrighted work have value.  It have
1351 value for the rights holder, who can earn money selling access to the
1352 work.  But it is not included in the tax calculations?  Why not?</p>
1353
1354 <p>If the government want to tax copyrighted works, it would want to
1355 maintain a database of all the copyrighted works and who are the
1356 rights holders for a given works, to be able to associate the works
1357 value to the right citizen or company for tax purposes.  If such
1358 database exist, it will become a lot easier to find out who to talk to
1359 for clearing permissions to use a copyrighted work, which is a very
1360 hard operation with todays copyright law.  To ensure that copyright
1361 holders keep the database up-to-date, it would have to become a
1362 requirement to be able to collect money for granting access to
1363 copyrighted works that the work is listed in the database with the
1364 correct right holder.</p>
1365
1366 <p>If copyright causes copyright holders to have to pay more taxes,
1367 they will have a small incentive to "disown" their copyright, and let
1368 the work enter the public domain. For works with several right holders
1369 one of the right holders could state (and get it registered in the
1370 database) that she do not need to be consulted when clearing rights to
1371 use the work in question and thus will not get any income from that
1372 work.  Stating this would have to be impossible to revert and stop the
1373 tax office from adding the value of that work to the given citizens
1374 tax calculation.  I assume the copyright law would stay the same,
1375 allowing creators to pick a license of their choosing, and also
1376 allowing them to put their work directly in the public domain.  The
1377 existence of such database will make it even easier to clear rights,
1378 and if the right holders listed in the database is taxed, this system
1379 would increase the amount of works that enter the public domain.</p>
1380
1381 <p>The effect would be that the tax office help to make it easier to
1382 get rights to use the works that have not yet entered the public
1383 domain and help to get more work into the public domain and .</p>
1384
1385 <p>Why have such taxing not happened yet?  I am sure the tax office
1386 would like to tax copyrighted work values if they could.</p>
1387
1388       </div>
1389       <div class="tags">
1390
1391
1392         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
1393
1394
1395       </div>
1396     </div>
1397     <div class="padding"></div>
1398
1399     <div class="entry">
1400       <div class="title">
1401         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html">Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</a>
1402       </div>
1403       <div class="date">
1404         14th November 2012
1405       </div>
1406       <div class="body">
1407         <p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
1408 href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
1409 community.  I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
1410 if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
1411 After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
1412 the people behind the German
1413 "<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
1414 project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview.  Give a warm
1415 welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
1416
1417 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1418
1419 <p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
1420 Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
1421 two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
1422
1423 <p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
1424 the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
1425 Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
1426 growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
1427 system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-).  We are also
1428 in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
1429
1430 <p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
1431 nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there.  Besides
1432 that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
1433 working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
1434 Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
1435 relationship management and the communication processes in the
1436 project.</p>
1437
1438 <p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
1439 and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
1440 and a yoga teacher.</p>
1441
1442 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
1443 project?</strong></p>
1444
1445 <p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
1446
1447 <p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
1448 Free Software.  At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
1449 founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
1450 their IT environment.  Often when Mike came home from working at the
1451 newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
1452 several points where the communication with the schools head or the
1453 teachers did not work.  So we were clear that he would not work for
1454 one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
1455 between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
1456 parents.</p>
1457
1458 <p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
1459 started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
1460 schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
1461 Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
1462 networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
1463 Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
1464 Germany.</p>
1465
1466 <p>For information about our school project you can read
1467 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
1468 interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
1469
1470 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1471 Edu?</strong></p>
1472
1473 <p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
1474 answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
1475
1476 <p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
1477 and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
1478 background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
1479 and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
1480 something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
1481 ;-). This is of course a user experience.  What I also get as a big
1482 advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
1483 works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
1484 teachers, parents...</p>
1485
1486 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
1487 Edu?</strong></p>
1488
1489 <p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
1490 Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
1491
1492 <p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
1493 the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
1494 marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
1495 schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
1496 I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
1497
1498 <p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
1499 do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
1500 democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
1501 and helpful.  I am also missing some kind of contact between the
1502 Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
1503 level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
1504 different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
1505
1506 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
1507
1508 <p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
1509 on.  As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
1510 LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
1511 my N900 running with Maemo.</p>
1512
1513 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
1514 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
1515
1516 <p>I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
1517 Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
1518 schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
1519 that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
1520 strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
1521
1522 <ul>
1523
1524 <li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
1525 concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
1526 kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
1527
1528 <li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
1529 are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
1530 beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
1531 they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
1532 they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
1533 needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
1534 we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
1535
1536 <li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
1537 co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
1538 contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
1539 offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
1540
1541 </ul>
1542
1543       </div>
1544       <div class="tags">
1545
1546
1547         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
1548
1549
1550       </div>
1551     </div>
1552     <div class="padding"></div>
1553
1554     <div class="entry">
1555       <div class="title">
1556         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_European_Central_Bank__ECB__take_a_look_at_bitcoin.html">The European Central Bank (ECB) take a look at bitcoin</a>
1557       </div>
1558       <div class="date">
1559          4th November 2012
1560       </div>
1561       <div class="body">
1562         <p>Slashdot just ran a story about the European Central Bank (ECB)
1563 <a href="http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/virtualcurrencyschemes201210en.pdf">releasing
1564 a report (PDF)</a> about virtual currencies and
1565 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>.  It is interesting to
1566 see how a member of the bitcoin community
1567 <a href="http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-ecb-report-on-bitcoin-and-virtual-currencies.html">receive
1568 the report</a>.  As for the future, I suspect the central banks and
1569 the governments will outlaw bitcoin if it gain any popularity, to avoid
1570 competition.  My thoughts go to the
1571 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wörgl">Wörgl experiment</a> with
1572 negative inflation on cash which was such a success that it was
1573 terminated by the Austrian National Bank in 1933.  A successful
1574 alternative would be a threat to the current money system and gain
1575 powerful forces to work against it.</p>
1576
1577 <p>While checking out the current status of bitcoin, I also discovered
1578 that the community already seem to have
1579 <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/27/3271637/bitcoin-savings-trust-pyramid-scheme-shuts-down">experienced
1580 its first pyramid game / Ponzi scheme</a>.  Not very surprising, given
1581 how members of "small" communities tend to trust each other.  I guess
1582 enterprising crocks will try again and again, as they do anywhere
1583 wealth is available.</p>
1584
1585       </div>
1586       <div class="tags">
1587
1588
1589         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
1590
1591
1592       </div>
1593     </div>
1594     <div class="padding"></div>
1595
1596     <div class="entry">
1597       <div class="title">
1598         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html">12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</a>
1599       </div>
1600       <div class="date">
1601         26th October 2012
1602       </div>
1603       <div class="body">
1604         <p>I work at the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
1605 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
1606 all over the place.  I am also a member (and currently leader) of
1607 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG association</a>, which in turn
1608 make me a member of <a href="http://www.usenix.org/">USENIX</a>.  NUUG
1609 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
1610 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
1611 is a US based member organisation with similar targets.  And thanks to
1612 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
1613 <a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login">;login:</a> in the
1614 mail several times a year.  The magazine is great, and I read most of
1615 it every time.</p>
1616
1617 <p>In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
1618 article by <a href="http://www.skendric.com/">Stuart Kendrick</a> from
1619 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
1620 "<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down">What
1621 Takes Us Down</a>" (longer version also
1622 <a href="http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf">available
1623 from his own site</a>), where he report what he found when he
1624 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
1625 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
1626 etc etc.  The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
1627 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
1628 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.<p>
1629
1630 <p>The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
1631 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
1632 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
1633 assumtions on scope and user impact.  Here is the two example from the
1634 article: First the unplanned outage:
1635
1636 <blockquote><pre>
1637 Subject:     Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
1638 Severity:    Critical (Unplanned)
1639 Start:       Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
1640 End:         Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
1641 Duration:    40 minutes
1642 Scope:       Exchange 2003
1643 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
1644              a cluster failover.
1645
1646 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
1647              access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
1648 Technician:  [xxx]
1649 </pre></blockquote>
1650
1651 Next the planned outage:
1652
1653 <blockquote><pre>
1654 Subject:     H Building Switch Upgrades
1655 Severity:    Major (Planned)
1656 Start:       Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
1657 End:         Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
1658 Duration:    10 hours
1659 Scope:       H2 Transport
1660 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
1661              stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
1662              4510s.
1663 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
1664              this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
1665              connectivity.
1666 Technician:  [xxx]
1667 </pre></blockquote>
1668
1669 <p>He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
1670 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
1671 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
1672 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
1673 people to write '2012-06-16 06:00 +0000' instead of the start time
1674 format listed above).  There are also other issues with the format
1675 that could be improved, read the article for the details.</p>
1676
1677 <p>I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
1678 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
1679 university too.  We do register
1680 <a href="http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/">planned
1681 changes and outages in a calendar</a>, and report the to a mailing
1682 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
1683 report to the same location for unplanned outages.  Perhaps something
1684 for other sites to consider too?</p>
1685
1686       </div>
1687       <div class="tags">
1688
1689
1690         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
1691
1692
1693       </div>
1694     </div>
1695     <div class="padding"></div>
1696
1697     <div class="entry">
1698       <div class="title">
1699         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Amazon_steal_books_from_customer_and_throw_out_her_out_without_any_explanation.html">Amazon steal books from customer and throw out her out without any explanation</a>
1700       </div>
1701       <div class="date">
1702         22nd October 2012
1703       </div>
1704       <div class="body">
1705         <p>A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of
1706 <a href="http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/">how
1707 Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account
1708 and refuse to tell the customer why</a>.  If a real book store did
1709 this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property
1710 and theft.  The story has spread around the net today.  A bit more
1711 background information is available in Norwegian from
1712 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904658/hun-ble-kastet-ut-av-amazon">digi.no</a>.
1713 It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used
1714 this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was
1715 introduced many years back.  And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was
1716 willing to
1717 <a href="http://boingboing.net/2009/07/20/amazons-orwellian-de.html">
1718 break into customers equipment and remove the books</a> people had
1719 bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the
1720 customers who had bought it.  From the official comments, it even
1721 sounded like
1722 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html">Amazon
1723 would never do that again</a>.  And here we are, three years
1724 later.</p>
1725
1726 <p>And thought this action is
1727 <a href="http://www.itavisen.no/904648/forbrukerraadet-helt-haarreisende">against
1728 Norwegian regulations and law</a>, it is according to the terms of use
1729 as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to
1730 Norwegian laws.  It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms
1731 of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer
1732 rights.</p>
1733
1734 <p>Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without
1735 unacceptable terms.  For example
1736 <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about 40,000
1737 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a> (1,652
1738 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The Internet
1739 Archive</a> (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which
1740 can read by anyone and shared with anyone.</p>
1741
1742 <p>Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In
1743 the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon
1744 restored the account of the user, as reported by
1745 <a href="http://www.digi.no/904675/helomvending-fra-amazon">digi.no</a>
1746 and <a href="http://nrk.no/kultur-og-underholdning/1.8368487">NRK</a>.
1747 Apparently public pressure work.  The story from Martin have seen
1748 several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite
1749 a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention.  But even when the
1750 account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist.  I recommend
1751 reading two opinions from
1752 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm">Simon
1753 Phipps</a> and
1754 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/10/is-amazon-playing-fair/index.htm">Glen
1755 Moody</a> if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more
1756 details about the original story.</p>
1757
1758       </div>
1759       <div class="tags">
1760
1761
1762         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>.
1763
1764
1765       </div>
1766     </div>
1767     <div class="padding"></div>
1768
1769     <div class="entry">
1770       <div class="title">
1771         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_fight_for_freedom_and_privacy.html">The fight for freedom and privacy</a>
1772       </div>
1773       <div class="date">
1774         18th October 2012
1775       </div>
1776       <div class="body">
1777         <p>Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the
1778 drain, and it is hard to fight against it.  I try to do my best, but
1779 time is limited.  I hope you do your best too.  A few years ago I came
1780 across a marvellous drawing by
1781 <a href="http://www.claybennett.com/about.html">Clay Bennett</a>
1782 visualising some of what is going on.
1783
1784 <p><a href="http://www.claybennett.com/pages/security_fence.html">
1785 <img src="http://www.claybennett.com/images/archivetoons/security_fence.jpg"></a></p>
1786
1787 <blockquote>
1788 «They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
1789 safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.» - Benjamin Franklin
1790 </blockquote>
1791
1792 <p>Do you feel safe at the airport?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when
1793 you see a surveillance camera?  I do not.  Do you feel safe when you
1794 leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions?  I do not.  I
1795 just remember <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">the
1796 Panopticon</a>, and can not help to think that we are slowly
1797 transforming our society to a huge Panopticon on our own.</p>
1798
1799       </div>
1800       <div class="tags">
1801
1802
1803         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
1804
1805
1806       </div>
1807     </div>
1808     <div class="padding"></div>
1809
1810     <div class="entry">
1811       <div class="title">
1812         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColonHelp_produser_sue_WordPress_to_silence_critic.html">ColonHelp produser sue WordPress to silence critic</a>
1813       </div>
1814       <div class="date">
1815         12th October 2012
1816       </div>
1817       <div class="body">
1818         <p>Thanks to a blog post by
1819 <a href="http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.no/2012/10/a-shitstorm-is-comming.html">Eddy
1820 Petrișor</a>, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
1821 company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
1822 According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
1823 <a href="http://insulaindoielii.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/colon-help-sues-wordpress/">ColonHelp
1824 and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions</a>, the producer
1825 sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information.  To check if
1826 the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
1827 wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
1828 seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic.  However, we
1829 don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
1830 matter".</p>
1831
1832 <p>The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
1833 foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
1834 reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
1835 health of its users.  This caused the company behind the product,
1836 Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
1837 the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
1838 to argue its side.</p>
1839
1840 <p>This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
1841 deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly.  Lets hope the
1842 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect">Streisand
1843 effect</a> can make it rethink its strategy.</p>
1844
1845 <p>What is the harm, you might think.  I suggest you take a look at
1846 <a href="http://www.whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html">a list of
1847 victims of detoxification</a>.</p>
1848
1849       </div>
1850       <div class="tags">
1851
1852
1853         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis</a>.
1854
1855
1856       </div>
1857     </div>
1858     <div class="padding"></div>
1859
1860     <div class="entry">
1861       <div class="title">
1862         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_is_your_local_library_collecting_the__wrong__computer_books_.html">Why is your local library collecting the "wrong" computer books?</a>
1863       </div>
1864       <div class="date">
1865          3rd October 2012
1866       </div>
1867       <div class="body">
1868         <p>I just read the blog post from Tim Retout
1869 <a href="http://retout.co.uk/blog/2012/10/02/the-library-challenge">about
1870 the computer science book collection available in his local
1871 library</a>, and just wanted to share my comment on his theory about
1872 computer books becoming obsolete so soon.  That is part of the reason
1873 why the selection is so sad in almost any local library (it is in mine
1874 too), but I believe the major contributing factor is that the people
1875 buying books to the library have no way to know a good and future
1876 computer classic from trash.  And they need to know which one will
1877 become a classic in the future, as they would normally buy one of the
1878 recently published books.</p>
1879
1880 <p>During my university years, I worked for a while at the university
1881 library, and even there the person in charge of buying computer
1882 related books (and in fact any natural science related book), did not
1883 know enough about computers to make a good educated guess.  Once, just
1884 before Christmas, they had some leftover money on the book budget and
1885 I was asked if I could pick out a lot of computer books in the
1886 university book store, for the library to buy for their collection.  I
1887 had a great time picking all the books I dreamt of buying and reading,
1888 and the books I knew were classics (like most of the
1889 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Richard_Stevens">Stevens
1890 collection</a>).  I picked several of the generic O'Reilly books (ie
1891 documenting protocols, formats and systems, not specific versions of
1892 products) and stayed away from the 'teach yourself X in N days' class.
1893 I had a great time, and probably picked out more than a hundred books
1894 for the library that evening.</p>
1895
1896 <p>The sad fact is that there is no way a overworked librarian is
1897 going to know that for example
1898 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming">The
1899 Practice of Programming</a> is a must-have in any computer library,
1900 and they will most of the time end up picking the wrong books to buy.
1901 Perhaps you can help your local library make better choices by giving
1902 the suggestions for books to get?  I know they would love to hear from
1903 you, even if their budget might block them from getting your favourite
1904 book right away.</p>
1905
1906       </div>
1907       <div class="tags">
1908
1909
1910         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
1911
1912
1913       </div>
1914     </div>
1915     <div class="padding"></div>
1916
1917     <div class="entry">
1918       <div class="title">
1919         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Seventy_percent_done_with_Norwegian_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Seventy percent done with Norwegian docbook version of Free Culture</a>
1920       </div>
1921       <div class="date">
1922         23rd September 2012
1923       </div>
1924       <div class="body">
1925         <p>Since this summer, I have worked in my spare time on a Norwegian <a
1926 href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book <a
1927 href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
1928 The reason is that this book is a great primer on what problems exist
1929 in the current copyright laws, and I want it to be available also for
1930 those that are reluctant do read an English book.
1931
1932 When I started, I
1933 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
1934 for volunteers</a> to help me, but too few have volunteered so far,
1935 and progress is a bit slow.  Anyway, today I broken the 70 percent
1936 mark for the first rough translation.  At the moment, less than 700
1937 strings (paragraphs, index terms, titles) are left to translate.  With
1938 my current progress of 10-20 strings per day, it will take a while to
1939 complete the translation.  This graph show the updated progress:</p>
1940
1941 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
1942
1943 <p>Progress have slowed down lately due to family and work
1944 commitments.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out
1945 the project files currently available from
1946 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
1947
1948 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
1949 the updated
1950 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
1951 and
1952 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
1953 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
1954 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
1955 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
1956
1957       </div>
1958       <div class="tags">
1959
1960
1961         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
1962
1963
1964       </div>
1965     </div>
1966     <div class="padding"></div>
1967
1968     <div class="entry">
1969       <div class="title">
1970         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Giorgio_Pioda.html">Debian Edu interview: Giorgio Pioda</a>
1971       </div>
1972       <div class="date">
1973         17th September 2012
1974       </div>
1975       <div class="body">
1976         <p>After a long break in my row of interviews with people in the
1977 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
1978 community, I finally found time to wrap up another.  This time it is
1979 Giorgio Pioda, which showed up on the mailing list at the start of
1980 this year, asking questions and inspiring us to improve the first time
1981 administrators experience with Skolelinux. :) The interview was
1982 conduced in May, but I only found time to publish it now.</p>
1983
1984 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
1985
1986 <p>I have a PhD in chemistry but since several years I work as teacher
1987 in secondary (15-18 year old students) and tertiary (a kind of "light"
1988 university) schools. Five years ago I started to manage a Learning
1989 Management Service server and slowly I got more and more involved with
1990 IT. 3 years ago the graduating schools moved completely to Linux and I
1991 got the head of the IT for this. The experience collected in chemistry
1992 labs computers (for example NMR analysis of protein folding) and in
1993 the IT-courses during university where sufficient to start. Self
1994 training is anyway very important</p>
1995
1996 <p>I live in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, and the
1997 <a href="http://www.spse.ch/">SPSE school</a> (secondary) is a very
1998 special sport school for young people who try to became sport pro (for
1999 all sports, we have dozens of disciplines represented) and we are
2000 recognised by the Olympic Swiss Organisation.
2001
2002 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2003 project?</strong></p>
2004
2005 <p>Looking for Linux / Primary Domain Controller (PDC) I found it
2006 already several years ago. But since the system was still not
2007 Kerberized and since our schools relies strongly on laptops I didn't
2008 use it. I plan to introduce it in the next future, probably for the
2009 next school year, since the squeeze release solved this security
2010 hole.</p>
2011
2012 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2013 Edu?</strong></p>
2014
2015 <p>Many. First of all there is a strong and living community that is
2016 very generous for help and hints.  Chat help is crucial, together with
2017 the mailing list.  Second. With Skolelinux you get an already well
2018 engineered platform and you don't have to start to build up your PDC
2019 and your clients from GNU/scratch; I've already done this once and I
2020 can tell it, it is hard. Third, since Skolelinux is a standard
2021 platform, it is way easier to educate other IT people and even if the
2022 head IT is sick another one could pick up the task without too much
2023 hassle.</p>
2024
2025 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2026 Edu?</strong></p>
2027
2028 <p>The only real problem I see is that it is a little too less
2029 flexible at client level. Debian stable is rocky and desirable, but
2030 there are many reasons that force for another choice. For example the
2031 need of new drivers for new PC, or the need for a specific OS for some
2032 devices that have specific software packages for another specific
2033 distribution (I have such a case for whiteboards that have only
2034 Ubuntu packages). Thus, I prepared compatibility packages educlient
2035 and eduroaming, hoping not to use them ;-)</p>
2036
2037 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2038
2039 <p>I have a Debian Stable PDC at school (Kerberos, NIS, NFS) with
2040 mixed Debian and Ubuntu clients. If you think that this triad
2041 combination is exotic... well I discovered right yesterday that
2042 <a href="http://moo.nac.uci.edu/~hjm/Perceus-Report.html">Perceus</a>
2043 has the same...</p>
2044
2045 <p>For myself I run Debian wheezy/sid, but this combination is good
2046 only I you have enough competence to fix stuff for yourself, if
2047 something breaks.  Daily I use texmacs, gnumeric, a little bit of R
2048 statistics, kmplot, and less frequently OpenOffice.org.</p>
2049
2050 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2051 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2052
2053 <P>I think that the only real argument that school managers "hear" is
2054 cost reduction. They don't give too much weight on quality, stability,
2055 just because they are normally not open to change.</p>
2056
2057 <p>Students adapts very quickly to GNU/Linux (and for them being able
2058 to switch between different OS is a plus value); teachers and managers
2059 don't.</p>
2060
2061 <p>We decided to move to Linux because students at our school have own
2062 laptop and we have the responsibility to keep the laptop ready to use;
2063 we were really unsatisfied with Microsoft since every Monday we had 20
2064 machine to fix for viral infections... With Linux this has been
2065 reduced to zero, since people installs almost only from official
2066 repositories. I think that our special needs brought us to Linux.
2067 Those who don't have such needs will hardly move to Linux.</p>
2068
2069       </div>
2070       <div class="tags">
2071
2072
2073         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2074
2075
2076       </div>
2077     </div>
2078     <div class="padding"></div>
2079
2080     <div class="entry">
2081       <div class="title">
2082         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_activity_to_standardise_video_codec.html">IETF activity to standardise video codec</a>
2083       </div>
2084       <div class="date">
2085         15th September 2012
2086       </div>
2087       <div class="body">
2088         <p>After the
2089 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">Opus
2090 codec made</a> it into <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> as
2091 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716</a>, I had a look
2092 to see if there is any activity in IETF to standardise a video codec
2093 too, and I was happy to discover that there is some activity in this
2094 area.  A non-"working group" mailing list
2095 <a href="https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/video-codec">video-codec</a>
2096 was
2097 <a href="http://ietf.10.n7.nabble.com/New-Non-WG-Mailing-List-video-codec-Video-codec-BoF-discussion-list-td119548.html">created 2012-08-20</a>.  It is intended to discuss the topic and if a
2098 formal working group should be formed.</p>
2099
2100 <p>I look forward to see how this plays out.  There is already
2101 <a href="http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/video-codec/current/msg00003.html">an
2102 email from someone</a> in the MPEG group at ISO asking people to
2103 participate in the ISO group.  Given how ISO failed with OOXML and given
2104 that it so far (as far as I can remember) only have produced
2105 multimedia formats requiring royalty payments, I suspect
2106 joining the ISO group would be a complete waste of time, but I am not
2107 involved in any codec work and my opinion will not matter much.</p>
2108
2109 <p>If one of my readers is involved with codec work, I hope she will
2110 join this work to standardise a royalty free video codec within
2111 IETF.</p>
2112
2113       </div>
2114       <div class="tags">
2115
2116
2117         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2118
2119
2120       </div>
2121     </div>
2122     <div class="padding"></div>
2123
2124     <div class="entry">
2125       <div class="title">
2126         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/IETF_standardize_its_first_multimedia_codec__Opus.html">IETF standardize its first multimedia codec: Opus</a>
2127       </div>
2128       <div class="date">
2129         12th September 2012
2130       </div>
2131       <div class="body">
2132         <p>Yesterday, <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> announced the
2133 publication of of
2134 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716">RFC 6716, the Definition
2135 of the Opus Audio Codec</a>, a low latency, variable bandwidth, codec
2136 intended for both VoIP, film and music.  This is the first time, as
2137 far as I know, that IETF have standardized a multimedia codec.  In
2138 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3533">RFC 3533</a>, IETF
2139 standardized the OGG container format, and it has proven to be a great
2140 royalty free container for audio, video and movies.  I hope IETF will
2141 continue to standardize more royalty free codeces, after ISO and MPEG
2142 have proven incapable of securing everyone equal rights to publish
2143 multimedia content on the Internet.</p>
2144
2145 <p>IETF require two interoperating independent implementations to
2146 ratify a standard, and have so far ensured to only standardize royalty
2147 free specifications.  Both are key factors to allow everyone (rich and
2148 poor), to compete on equal terms on the Internet.</p>
2149
2150 <p>Visit the <a href="http://opus-codec.org/">Opus project page</a> if
2151 you want to learn more about the solution.</p>
2152
2153       </div>
2154       <div class="tags">
2155
2156
2157         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
2158
2159
2160       </div>
2161     </div>
2162     <div class="padding"></div>
2163
2164     <div class="entry">
2165       <div class="title">
2166         <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>
2167       </div>
2168       <div class="date">
2169          7th September 2012
2170       </div>
2171       <div class="body">
2172         <p>As I
2173 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">mentioned
2174 this summer</a>, I have created a Computer Science song book a few
2175 years ago, and today I finally found time to create a public
2176 <a href="https://gitorious.org/pere-cs-songbook/pere-cs-songbook">Gitorious
2177 repository for the project</a>.</p>
2178
2179 <p>If you want to help out, please clone the source and submit patches
2180 to the HTML version.  To generate the PDF and PostScript version,
2181 please use prince XML, or let me know about a useful free software
2182 processor capable of creating a good looking PDF from the HTML.</p>
2183
2184 <p>Want to sing?  You can still find the song book in HTML, PDF and
2185 PostScript formats at
2186 <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's Computer
2187 Science Songbook</a>.</p>
2188
2189       </div>
2190       <div class="tags">
2191
2192
2193         Tags: <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>.
2194
2195
2196       </div>
2197     </div>
2198     <div class="padding"></div>
2199
2200     <div class="entry">
2201       <div class="title">
2202         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html">Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don't forget Officeshots)</a>
2203       </div>
2204       <div class="date">
2205         23rd August 2012
2206       </div>
2207       <div class="body">
2208         <p>I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
2209 <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233">Microsoft
2210 have been forced to open Office</a>, and it made me remember and
2211 revisit the great site
2212 <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">officeshots</a> which allow you
2213 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format.  I
2214 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)</p>
2215
2216       </div>
2217       <div class="tags">
2218
2219
2220         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
2221
2222
2223       </div>
2224     </div>
2225     <div class="padding"></div>
2226
2227     <div class="entry">
2228       <div class="title">
2229         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Half_way_there_with_translated_docbook_version_of_Free_Culture.html">Half way there with translated docbook version of Free Culture</a>
2230       </div>
2231       <div class="date">
2232         17th August 2012
2233       </div>
2234       <div class="body">
2235         <p>In my spare time, I currently work on a Norwegian
2236 <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
2237 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig,
2238 to get a Norwegian text explaining the problems with the copyright law
2239 I can give to my parents and others that are reluctant to read an
2240 English book.  It is a marvellous set of examples on how the ever
2241 expanding copyright regulations hurt culture and society.  When the
2242 translation is done, I hope to find funding to print and ship a copy
2243 to all the members of the Norwegian parliament, before they sit down
2244 to debate the latest revisions to the Norwegian copyright law.  This
2245 summer I
2246 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">called
2247 for volunteers</a> to help me, and I have been able to secure the
2248 valuable contribution from at least one other Norwegian.</p>
2249
2250 <p>Two days ago, we finally broke the 50% mark.  Then more than 50% of
2251 the number of strings to translate (normally paragraphs, but also
2252 titles and index entries are also counted).  All parts from the
2253 beginning up to and including chapter four is translated.  So is
2254 chapters six, seven and the conclusion.  I created a graph to show the
2255 progress:</p>
2256
2257 <img width="80%" align="center" src="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/progress.png">
2258
2259 <p>The number of strings to translate increase as I insert the index
2260 entries into the docbook.  They were missing with the docbook version
2261 I initially started with.  There are still quite a few index entries
2262 missing, but everyone starting with A, B, O, Z and Y are done.  I
2263 currently focus on completing the index entries, to get a complete
2264 english version of the docbook source.</p>
2265
2266 <p>There is still need for translators and people with docbook
2267 knowledge, to be able to get a good looking book (I still struggle
2268 with dblatex, xmlto and docbook-xsl) as well as to do the draft
2269 translation and proof reading.  And I would like the figures to be
2270 redrawn as SVGs to make it easy to translate them.  Any SVG master
2271 around?  I am sure there are some legal terms that are unfamiliar to
2272 me.  If you want to help, please get in touch, and check out the
2273 project files currently available from <a
2274 href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2275
2276 <p>If you are curious what the translated book currently look like,
2277 the updated
2278 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>
2279 and
2280 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
2281 are published on github.  The HTML version is published as well, but
2282 github hand it out with MIME type text/plain, confusing browsers, so I
2283 saw no point in linking to that version.</p>
2284
2285       </div>
2286       <div class="tags">
2287
2288
2289         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2290
2291
2292       </div>
2293     </div>
2294     <div class="padding"></div>
2295
2296     <div class="entry">
2297       <div class="title">
2298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a>
2299       </div>
2300       <div class="date">
2301         10th August 2012
2302       </div>
2303       <div class="body">
2304         <p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
2305 the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
2306 this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
2307 also', 'index' etc.  And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
2308 this work just fine.  For example a German user can start the document
2309 with &lt;book lang="de"&gt;, and the document will show up with the
2310 correct content with any of the docbook processors.  This is not the
2311 case for the language
2312 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
2313 am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
2314
2315 <p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
2316 because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
2317 all tools.  I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
2318 dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way.  Some
2319 of them do not handle it at all.</p>
2320
2321 <p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
2322 this mess.  Norwegian is not one, but two written variants.  The
2323 variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål.  There are three
2324 two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
2325 is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
2326 Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
2327 many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
2328 is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
2329 In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
2330 alias for 'nb'.</p>
2331
2332 <p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian.  The dblatex tool only
2333 understand 'nn'.  There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
2334 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
2335 (BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
2336 language code is not recognised.  The docbook-xsl tool chain only
2337 recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The xmlto tool only recognise
2338 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'.  The end result that there is no language
2339 code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
2340 at the same time. :(</p>
2341
2342 <p>The correct solution is to use &lt;book lang="nb"&gt;, but it will
2343 take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
2344 processors. :(</p>
2345
2346 <p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
2347
2348       </div>
2349       <div class="tags">
2350
2351
2352         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2353
2354
2355       </div>
2356     </div>
2357     <div class="padding"></div>
2358
2359     <div class="entry">
2360       <div class="title">
2361         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best_way_to_create_a_docbook_book_.html">Best way to create a docbook book?</a>
2362       </div>
2363       <div class="date">
2364         31st July 2012
2365       </div>
2366       <div class="body">
2367         <p>I tried to send this text to the
2368 <a href="https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/">docbook-apps
2369 mailing list at lists.oasis-open.org</a>, but it only accept messages
2370 from subscribers and rejected my post, and I completely lack the
2371 bandwidth required to subscribe to another mailing list, so instead I
2372 try to post my message here and hope my blog readers can help me
2373 out.</p>
2374
2375 <p>I am quite new to docbook processing, and am climbing a steep
2376 learning curve at the moment.</p>
2377
2378 <p>To give you some background, I am working on a Norwegian
2379 translation of the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, and I use
2380 docbook to handle the process.  The files to build the book are
2381 available from
2382 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.
2383 The book got around 400 pages with parts, images, footnotes, tables,
2384 index entries etc, which has proven to be a challenge for the free
2385 software docbook processors.  My build platform is Debian GNU/Linux
2386 Squeeze.</p>
2387
2388 <p>I want to build PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book, and have
2389 tried different tool chains to do the conversion from docbook to these
2390 formats.  I am currently focusing on the PDF version, and have a few
2391 problems.</p>
2392
2393 <ul>
2394
2395 <li>Using dblatex, the &lt;part&gt; handling is not the way I want to,
2396    as &lt;/part&gt; do not really end the &lt;part&gt;. (See
2397    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683166">BTS report #683166</a>), the
2398    xetex backend (needed to process UTF-8) give incorrect hyphens in
2399    index references spanning several pages (See
2400    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682901">BTS report #682901</a>), and
2401    I am unable to get the norwegian template texts (See
2402    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">BTS report #682936</a>).</li>
2403
2404 <li>Using straight xmlto fail with some latex error (See
2405    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683163">BTS report
2406    #683163</a>).</li>
2407
2408 <li>Using xmlto with the fop backend fail to handle images (do not
2409    show up in the PDF), fail to handle a long footnote (overlap
2410    footnote and text body, see
2411    <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/683197">BTS report #683197</a>), and
2412    fail to create a correct index (some lack page ref, and the page
2413    refs listed are not right).</li>
2414
2415 <li>Using xmlto with the dblatex backend behave like dblatex.</li>
2416
2417 <li>Using docbook-xls with xsltproc + fop have the same footnote and
2418    index problems the xmlto + fop processing.</li>
2419
2420 </ul>
2421
2422 <p>So I wonder, what would be the best way to create the PDF version
2423 of this book?  Are some of the bugs found above solved in new or
2424 experimental versions of some docbook tool chain?</p>
2425
2426 <p>What about HTML and EPUB versions?</p>
2427
2428       </div>
2429       <div class="tags">
2430
2431
2432         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>.
2433
2434
2435       </div>
2436     </div>
2437     <div class="padding"></div>
2438
2439     <div class="entry">
2440       <div class="title">
2441         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">Free Culture in Norwegian - 5 chapters done, 74 percent left to do</a>
2442       </div>
2443       <div class="date">
2444         21st July 2012
2445       </div>
2446       <div class="body">
2447         <p>I reported earlier that I am working on
2448 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">a
2449 norwegian version</a> of the book
2450 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
2451 Progress is good, and yesterday I got a major contribution from Anders
2452 Hagen Jarmund completing chapter six.  The source files as well as a
2453 PDF and EPUB version of this book are available from
2454 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2455
2456 <p>I am happy to report that the draft for the first two chapters
2457 (preface, introduction) is complete, and three other chapters are also
2458 completely translated.  This completes 26 percent of the number of
2459 strings (equivalent to paragraphs) in the book, and there is thus 74
2460 percent left to translate.  A graph of the progress is present at the
2461 bottom of the github project page.  There is still room for more
2462 contributors.  Get in touch or send github pull requests with fixes if
2463 you got time and are willing to help make this book make it to
2464 print. :)</p>
2465
2466 <p>The book translation framework could also be a good basis for other
2467 translations, if you want the book to be available in your
2468 language.</p>
2469
2470       </div>
2471       <div class="tags">
2472
2473
2474         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
2475
2476
2477       </div>
2478     </div>
2479     <div class="padding"></div>
2480
2481     <div class="entry">
2482       <div class="title">
2483         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Call_for_help_from_docbook_expert_to_tag_Free_Culture_by_Lawrence_Lessig.html">Call for help from docbook expert to tag Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig</a>
2484       </div>
2485       <div class="date">
2486         16th July 2012
2487       </div>
2488       <div class="body">
2489         <p>I am currently working on a
2490 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dugnad_for___sende_norsk_versjon_av_Free_Culture_til_stortingets_representanter_.html">project
2491 to translate</a> the book
2492 <a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig
2493 to Norwegian.  And the source we base our translation on is the
2494 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook">docbook</a> version, to
2495 allow us to use po4a and .po files to handle the translation, and for
2496 this to work well the docbook source document need to be properly
2497 tagged.  The source files of this project is available from
2498 <a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>.</p>
2499
2500 <p>The problem is that the docbook source have flaws, and we have
2501 no-one involved in the project that is a docbook expert.  Is there a
2502 docbook expert somewhere that is interested in helping us create a
2503 well tagged docbook version of the book, and adjust our build process
2504 for the PDF, EPUB and HTML version of the book?  This will provide a
2505 well tagged English version (our source document), and make it a lot
2506 easier for us to create a good Norwegian version.  If you can and want
2507 to help, please get in touch with me or fork the github project and
2508 send pull requests with fixes. :)</p>
2509
2510       </div>
2511       <div class="tags">
2512
2513
2514         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
2515
2516
2517       </div>
2518     </div>
2519     <div class="padding"></div>
2520
2521     <div class="entry">
2522       <div class="title">
2523         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a>
2524       </div>
2525       <div class="date">
2526          9th July 2012
2527       </div>
2528       <div class="body">
2529         <p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2530 Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
2531 recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
2532 country Sweden.  This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
2533 this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
2534 to adjust and scale the just released
2535 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
2536 Wheezy</a> setup to his liking.  He granted me an interview, and I am
2537 happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
2538
2539 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2540
2541 <p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
2542 the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
2543 background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
2544 "folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups.  In
2545 Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
2546 in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
2547 just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
2548 perspective when working with IT.</p>
2549
2550 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2551 project?</strong></p>
2552
2553 I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
2554 now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
2555 time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
2556 a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
2557 K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
2558 seriously into Skolelinux instead.
2559
2560 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2561 Edu?</strong></p>
2562
2563 The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
2564 distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
2565 integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
2566 administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
2567 based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
2568 well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
2569 when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
2570 showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
2571 mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
2572 same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
2573 setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
2574 workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
2575 thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
2576 convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
2577 projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
2578 small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
2579 have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
2580 clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time.  Our
2581 old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
2582 nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
2583 comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
2584 such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
2585 quicker to update.
2586
2587 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
2588 Edu?</strong></p>
2589
2590 <p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
2591 we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
2592 year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
2593 sound from working with them.  It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
2594 to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
2595 a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
2596
2597 <p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
2598 install time.  In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
2599 distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
2600 That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
2601 Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
2602 to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
2603 support for single-sign on.  That will make the transition to free
2604 software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
2605 need.  No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
2606 some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
2607 run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes.  We run a journalist
2608 education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
2609 by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association).  Our
2610 education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
2611 are done.  This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
2612
2613 <p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
2614 magazines.  We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
2615 market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
2616 world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
2617 to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
2618 are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
2619 edit and compile a newspaper.  But politically at our school we are not
2620 there yet.  And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
2621
2622 <p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
2623 the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
2624 Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
2625 Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
2626 tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
2627 program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
2628 studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
2629 want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise.  Those
2630 things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
2631 have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
2632 fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
2633 one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
2634 because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
2635 sound file.</p>
2636
2637 <p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
2638 will try.  The problem is the students have certain expectations when
2639 they start an education towards a profession.  So the programs has to
2640 look and feel professional.  Good thing with radio, there are many
2641 programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
2642 as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
2643 program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
2644 learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
2645 the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
2646
2647 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
2648
2649 <p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days.  I use almost
2650 only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
2651 to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
2652 )</p>
2653
2654 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
2655 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
2656
2657 <p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
2658 source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
2659 it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
2660 flawlessly.  The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
2661 will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
2662 students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
2663 clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
2664 idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
2665 the administration.  It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
2666 open source, if the principal has to run Windows.  It also creates a
2667 problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
2668 will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
2669 support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
2670 desktop is essential.  At least at our school, where we have mixed
2671 level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
2672
2673 <p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
2674 useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
2675 article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
2676 management with Airtime</a>,
2677 <a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
2678 claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
2679 <a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
2680 be complete radio broadcast automation solution.  All of them seem
2681 useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
2682
2683       </div>
2684       <div class="tags">
2685
2686
2687         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
2688
2689
2690       </div>
2691     </div>
2692     <div class="padding"></div>
2693
2694     <div class="entry">
2695       <div class="title">
2696         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a>
2697       </div>
2698       <div class="date">
2699          8th July 2012
2700       </div>
2701       <div class="body">
2702         <p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
2703 of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
2704 in schools and municipalities.  We provide what the happy users of
2705 Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
2706 alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution.  I
2707 was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
2708 Steinberg in his blog post
2709 "<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
2710 you recognize the million pound chair?</a>".  Read it and weep for the
2711 spending of your tax money.</p>
2712
2713 <p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
2714 projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
2715 causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
2716 to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
2717 public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
2718 purchases.</p>
2719
2720       </div>
2721       <div class="tags">
2722
2723
2724         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2725
2726
2727       </div>
2728     </div>
2729     <div class="padding"></div>
2730
2731     <div class="entry">
2732       <div class="title">
2733         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a>
2734       </div>
2735       <div class="date">
2736          7th July 2012
2737       </div>
2738       <div class="body">
2739         <p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
2740 Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
2741 software.  It is one of the packages not installed by default but
2742 provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
2743 is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
2744 information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
2745 the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
2746 receive.  The software is
2747
2748 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
2749 graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
2750 result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
2751 both teachers and students.  It is available both for
2752 <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
2753 Windows</a>.</p>
2754
2755 <p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
2756 feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
2757
2758 <p><ul>
2759
2760   <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
2761     You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
2762
2763   <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
2764     (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
2765     (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
2766     (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
2767     (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
2768     (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
2769     sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
2770     (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
2771     </li>
2772
2773   <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
2774     semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
2775
2776   <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
2777     GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
2778
2779   <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
2780     with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
2781
2782   <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
2783
2784   <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
2785     formats </li>
2786
2787   <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
2788     and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
2789     non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
2790     (as separate sets)</li>
2791
2792   <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
2793     (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
2794     percentage)</li>
2795
2796   <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
2797     demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
2798     memory):
2799     <ul>
2800       <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
2801       <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
2802       <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
2803       <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
2804       <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
2805       <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
2806       <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
2807       <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
2808       <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
2809       <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
2810           students sets for each activity.  (it is possible
2811           also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
2812           activity)</li>
2813       <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
2814       <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
2815     </ul></li>
2816
2817   <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
2818     <ul>
2819       <li>Break periods</li>
2820       <li>For teacher(s):
2821         <ul>
2822           <li>Not available periods</li>
2823           <li>Max/min days per week</li>
2824           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
2825           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
2826           <li>Min hours daily</li>
2827           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
2828
2829           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
2830             days per week</li>
2831         </ul></li>
2832       <li>For students (sets):
2833         <ul>
2834           <li>Not available periods</li>
2835           <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
2836           <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
2837           <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
2838           <li>Min hours daily</li>
2839           <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
2840
2841           <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
2842             days per week</li>
2843         </ul></li>
2844       <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
2845         <ul>
2846           <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
2847           <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
2848           <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
2849           <li>Min/max days between them</li>
2850           <li>End(s) students day</li>
2851           <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
2852           <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
2853             flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
2854           <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
2855           <li>Not overlapping</li>
2856           <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
2857           <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
2858         </ul></li>
2859     </ul></li>
2860
2861   <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
2862     <ul>
2863       <li>Room not available periods</li>
2864       <li>For teacher(s):
2865         <ul>
2866           <li>Home room(s)</li>
2867           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
2868           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
2869         </ul>
2870       </li>
2871
2872       <li>For students (sets):
2873         <ul>
2874           <li>Home room(s)</li>
2875           <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
2876           <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
2877         </ul>
2878       </li>
2879       <li>Preferred room(s):
2880         <ul>
2881           <li>For a subject</li>
2882           <li>For an activity tag</li>
2883           <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
2884           <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
2885         </ul>
2886       </li>
2887
2888       <li>For a set of activities:
2889         <ul>
2890           <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
2891         </ul>
2892       </li>
2893     </ul>
2894   </li>
2895 </ul></p>
2896
2897 <p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
2898 planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it.  If you
2899 need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
2900 manually, check it out.
2901
2902 A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
2903 <a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
2904 blog post from MarvelSoft</a>.  If you find FET useful, please provide
2905 a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
2906 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
2907 section</a>.</p>
2908
2909       </div>
2910       <div class="tags">
2911
2912
2913         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
2914
2915
2916       </div>
2917     </div>
2918     <div class="padding"></div>
2919
2920     <div class="entry">
2921       <div class="title">
2922         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Can_Zimbra_be_told_to_send_autoreplies_to_the_From__address_.html">Can Zimbra be told to send autoreplies to the From: address?</a>
2923       </div>
2924       <div class="date">
2925          3rd July 2012
2926       </div>
2927       <div class="body">
2928         <p>In the NUUG <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a>
2929 project (Norwegian version of
2930 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> from
2931 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a>), we have discovered
2932 a problem with the municipalities using
2933 <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a>.  When FiksGataMi send a
2934 problem report to the government, the email From: address is set to
2935 the address of the person reporting the problem, while envelope sender
2936 is set to the FiksGataMi contact address.  The intention is to make
2937 sure the municipality send any replies to the person reporting the
2938 problem, while any email delivery problems are sent to us in NUUG.
2939 This work well in most cases, but not for Karmøy municipality using
2940 Zimbra.  Karmøy is using the vacation message function in Zimbra to
2941 send an automatic reply to report that the message has been received,
2942 and this message is sent to the envelope sender and not the address in
2943 the From: header.</p>
2944
2945 <p>This causes the automatic message from Karmøy to go to NUUGs
2946 request-tracker instance instead of to the person reporting the
2947 problem.  We can not really change the envelope sender address, as
2948 this would make it impossible for us to discover when there are
2949 problems with the MTAs receiving problem reports.  We have been in
2950 contact with the people at Karmøy municipality, and they are willing
2951 to adjust Zimbra if something can be changed there to get a better
2952 behaviour.</p>
2953
2954 <p>The default behaviour of Zimbra is as far as I can tell according
2955 to the specification in RFC 3834, which recommend that vacation
2956 messages are sent to the envelope sender and not to the From: address.
2957 But I wonder if it is possible to adjust or configure Zimbra to behave
2958 differently.  Anyone know?  Please let us know at
2959 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
2960 (at) nuug.no</a>.</p>
2961
2962       </div>
2963       <div class="tags">
2964
2965
2966         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
2967
2968
2969       </div>
2970     </div>
2971     <div class="padding"></div>
2972
2973     <div class="entry">
2974       <div class="title">
2975         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Jos__Luis_Redrejo_Rodr_guez.html">Debian Edu interview: José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez</a>
2976       </div>
2977       <div class="date">
2978         26th June 2012
2979       </div>
2980       <div class="body">
2981         <p>I've been too busy at home, but finally I found time to wrap up
2982 another interview with the people behind
2983 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
2984 This time we get to know José Luis Redrejo Rodríguez, one of our great
2985 helpers from Spain.  His effort was the reason we added support for
2986 several desktop types (KDE, Gnome and most recently LXDE) in Debian
2987 Edu, and have all of these available in the recently published
2988 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
2989 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
2990
2991 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
2992
2993 <p>I'm a father, teacher and engineer who is working for the Education
2994 ministry of the Region of Extremadura (Spain) in the implementation of
2995 ICT in schools</p>
2996
2997 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
2998 project?</strong></p>
2999
3000 <p>At 2006, I verified that both, we in Extremadura and Skolelinux
3001 project, had been working in parallel for some years, doing very
3002 similar things, using very similar tools and with similar targets, so
3003 I decided it was time to join forces as much as possible.</p>
3004
3005 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3006 Edu?</strong></p>
3007
3008 <p>A community of highly skilled experts working together, with a
3009 really open schema of collaboration and work. I really love the
3010 concepts of Do-ocracy and Merit-ocracy and the way these concepts are
3011 been used everyday inside Debian Edu.</p>
3012
3013 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3014 Edu?</strong></p>
3015
3016 <p>Sometimes the differences in the implementations, laws or
3017 economical and technical resources in the different countries don't
3018 allow us to agree in the same solution for all of us, and several
3019 approaches are needed, what is a waste of effort. Also, there is a
3020 lack of more man power to be able to follow the fast evolution of the
3021 technologies in school.</p>
3022
3023 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3024
3025 <p>Debian, of course, and due to my kind of job I am most of my time
3026 between Iceweasel, <a href="http://www.geany.org/">Geany</a> and
3027 <a href="http://www.ohloh.net/p/gnome-terminator">Terminator</a>.</p>
3028
3029 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3030 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3031
3032 <p>I think there is not a single strategy because there are very
3033 different scenarios: schools with mixed proprietary and free
3034 environments, schools using only workstations, other schools using
3035 laptops, netbooks, tablets, interactive white-boards, etc.</p>
3036
3037 <p>Also the range of ages of the students is very broad and you can
3038 not use the same solutions for primary schools and secondary or even
3039 universities. So different strategies are needed.</p>
3040
3041 <p>But, looking at these differences, and looking back to the things
3042 we've done and implemented, and the places were we have spent most of
3043 our forces, I think we should focus as much as possible in free
3044 multi-platform environments, using only standards tools, and moving
3045 more and more to Internet or network solutions that could be deployed
3046 using wireless. I think we'll see more and more personal devices in
3047 the schools, devices the students and teachers will take home with
3048 them, so the solutions must be able to be taken at home and continue
3049 working there.</p>
3050
3051       </div>
3052       <div class="tags">
3053
3054
3055         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3056
3057
3058       </div>
3059     </div>
3060     <div class="padding"></div>
3061
3062     <div class="entry">
3063       <div class="title">
3064         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Song_book_for_Computer_Scientists.html">Song book for Computer Scientists</a>
3065       </div>
3066       <div class="date">
3067         24th June 2012
3068       </div>
3069       <div class="body">
3070         <p>Many years ago, while studying Computer Science at the
3071 <a href="http://www.uit.no/">University of Tromsø</a>, I started
3072 collecting computer related songs for use at parties.  The original
3073 version was written in LaTeX, but a few years ago I got help from
3074 Håkon W. Lie, one of the inventors of W3C CSS, to convert it to HTML
3075 while keeping the ability to create a nice book in PDF format.  I have
3076 not had time to maintain the book for a while now, and guess I should
3077 put it up on some public version control repository where others can
3078 help me extend and update the book.  If anyone is volunteering to help
3079 me with this, send me an email.  Also let me know if there are songs
3080 missing in my book.</p>
3081
3082 <p>I have not mentioned the book on my blog so far, and it occured to
3083 me today that I really should let all my readers share the joys of
3084 singing out load about programming, computers and computer networks.
3085 Especially now that <a href="http://debconf12.debconf.org/">Debconf
3086 12</a> is about to start (and I am not going).  Want to sing?  Check
3087 out <a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/cs-songbook/">Petter's
3088 Computer Science Songbook</a>.
3089
3090       </div>
3091       <div class="tags">
3092
3093
3094         Tags: <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>.
3095
3096
3097       </div>
3098     </div>
3099     <div class="padding"></div>
3100
3101     <div class="entry">
3102       <div class="title">
3103         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html">Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</a>
3104       </div>
3105       <div class="date">
3106         11th June 2012
3107       </div>
3108       <div class="body">
3109         <p>During my work on
3110 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
3111 based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
3112 addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally found time to wrap up my
3113 notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
3114 explanation.</p>
3115
3116 <p><ul>
3117
3118 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
3119 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
3120 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
3121 system depend on tasksel tasks in
3122 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
3123 installation.</li>
3124
3125 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
3126 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
3127 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
3128 at least try to enable it for these services:
3129 <ul>
3130
3131   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
3132     quotas.</li>
3133   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
3134   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
3135   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
3136   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
3137   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
3138
3139 </ul></li>
3140
3141 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
3142 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
3143 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
3144 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
3145
3146 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
3147 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
3148 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
3149
3150 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
3151 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
3152 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
3153 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
3154 it and upload.  After this is done we need to adjust
3155 debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
3156
3157 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
3158 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
3159 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
3160 in Wheezy.
3161
3162 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
3163 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
3164 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
3165
3166 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
3167 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
3168 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
3169 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
3170
3171 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
3172 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
3173 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
3174 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
3175
3176 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
3177 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
3178 Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
3179
3180 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
3181 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
3182 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
3183
3184 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
3185 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
3186 requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
3187 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
3188 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
3189
3190 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
3191 <ul>
3192
3193 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
3194 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
3195 <li>and probably more?</li>
3196 </ul></li>
3197
3198 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
3199 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
3200 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
3201 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
3202 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
3203 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
3204 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
3205 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
3206
3207
3208 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
3209 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
3210 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
3211 use.</li>
3212
3213 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
3214 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
3215 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
3216 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
3217 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
3218
3219 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
3220 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
3221 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
3222 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
3223 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
3224 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
3225
3226 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
3227 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
3228 There are at least three implementations,
3229 <a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
3230 <a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
3231 <a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
3232 them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The challenges is
3233 how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
3234 and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
3235 given room.</li>
3236
3237 <li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
3238 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
3239 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
3240 provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
3241 them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
3242 configuration and data with the central server.  This should be
3243 investigated.</li>
3244
3245 </ul></p>
3246
3247 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
3248 version.</p>
3249
3250       </div>
3251       <div class="tags">
3252
3253
3254         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3255
3256
3257       </div>
3258     </div>
3259     <div class="padding"></div>
3260
3261     <div class="entry">
3262       <div class="title">
3263         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html">TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</a>
3264       </div>
3265       <div class="date">
3266          9th June 2012
3267       </div>
3268       <div class="body">
3269         <p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
3270 <a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
3271 with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
3272 me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
3273 recognition on the TV image itself.  It could let the viewer know who
3274 is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
3275 company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
3276 evaluate what is being said and done.  That would be a feature I would
3277 be willing to pay for.</p>
3278
3279 <p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
3280 household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
3281 It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
3282 <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
3283 Orwell</a>.</p>
3284
3285       </div>
3286       <div class="tags">
3287
3288
3289         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance</a>.
3290
3291
3292       </div>
3293     </div>
3294     <div class="padding"></div>
3295
3296     <div class="entry">
3297       <div class="title">
3298         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html">Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</a>
3299       </div>
3300       <div class="date">
3301          6th June 2012
3302       </div>
3303       <div class="body">
3304         <p>A few days ago
3305 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
3306 reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
3307 unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
3308 <a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
3309 by Daniel De Marco in february</a>.  Combined with my web scraping
3310 code for HP, Dell and IBM
3311 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
3312 2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
3313 <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
3314 web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
3315 support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
3316
3317 <p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
3318 output:
3319
3320 <blockquote><pre>
3321 % GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
3322 supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
3323 %
3324 </pre></blockquote>
3325
3326 <p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
3327 support for other vendors.  The python source is available on
3328 Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
3329
3330       </div>
3331       <div class="tags">
3332
3333
3334         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3335
3336
3337       </div>
3338     </div>
3339     <div class="padding"></div>
3340
3341     <div class="entry">
3342       <div class="title">
3343         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</a>
3344       </div>
3345       <div class="date">
3346          2nd June 2012
3347       </div>
3348       <div class="body">
3349         <p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
3350 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3351 mailing list.  He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
3352 thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
3353 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3354 Squeeze</a> version.</p>
3355
3356 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3357
3358 <p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
3359 Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
3360 (Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
3361 by Angela).</p>
3362
3363 <p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
3364 and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
3365 touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
3366 the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
3367 becoming an osteopath.</p>
3368
3369 <p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
3370 have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
3371 introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
3372 "IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
3373 skills with communication skills.</p>
3374
3375 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3376 project?</strong></p>
3377
3378 <p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
3379 "IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
3380 reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
3381 people said.  From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
3382 distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
3383
3384 <p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
3385 commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
3386 Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
3387 went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
3388 and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
3389 Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
3390 got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
3391 attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
3392 the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
3393
3394 <p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
3395 people.  People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
3396 protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
3397
3398 <p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
3399
3400 <p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
3401 bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
3402 by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
3403 whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
3404 IT solution.  The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
3405 customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
3406 possible.  In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
3407 standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
3408 degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
3409 locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
3410 point.</p>
3411
3412 <p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
3413 all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
3414 for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
3415 has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
3416 of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
3417 tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
3418
3419 <p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
3420 defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
3421 Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
3422 equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
3423 teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
3424 spare time.</p>
3425
3426 <p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
3427 networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
3428 here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
3429 teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
3430 non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
3431
3432 <p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
3433 class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
3434 avoidance do exist.</p>
3435
3436 <p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
3437 social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
3438 for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
3439 several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
3440 they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
3441 at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
3442 and probably a gain for all.</p>
3443
3444 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3445 Edu?</strong></p>
3446
3447 <p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
3448 any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
3449 the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
3450 workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
3451 project communication, honest communication within the group of
3452 developers, etc.</p>
3453
3454 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3455 Edu?</strong></p>
3456
3457 <p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
3458
3459 <p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
3460 #311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
3461 client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
3462 should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
3463 about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
3464 several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
3465 contribute).</p>
3466
3467 <p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
3468 find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
3469 Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
3470 promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
3471 there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
3472 these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
3473 all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
3474 meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
3475 there being rather disconnected from the development department of
3476 Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
3477
3478 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3479
3480 <p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
3481
3482 <p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
3483 serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
3484 more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
3485
3486 <p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
3487 development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
3488 PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
3489 is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
3490
3491 <p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
3492 as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
3493 I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
3494 the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
3495 whiteboard.</p>
3496
3497 <p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
3498
3499 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3500 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3501
3502 <p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
3503 enrol people.</p>
3504
3505       </div>
3506       <div class="tags">
3507
3508
3509         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3510
3511
3512       </div>
3513     </div>
3514     <div class="padding"></div>
3515
3516     <div class="entry">
3517       <div class="title">
3518         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</a>
3519       </div>
3520       <div class="date">
3521          1st June 2012
3522       </div>
3523       <div class="body">
3524         <p>A few years ago I wrote
3525 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
3526 to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers.  Recently
3527 I have learned from colleges here at the
3528 <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
3529 made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service.  Given
3530 the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
3531 readable information about the support status.  This perl code
3532 demonstrate how to do it:</p>
3533
3534 <p><pre>
3535 use strict;
3536 use warnings;
3537 use SOAP::Lite;
3538 use Data::Dumper;
3539 my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
3540 my $App = 'test';
3541 my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
3542 my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
3543 my $s = SOAP::Lite
3544     -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
3545     -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
3546     -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
3547     ;
3548 my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
3549     SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
3550     SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
3551     SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
3552 );
3553 print Dumper($a -> result) ;
3554 </pre></p>
3555
3556 <p>The output can look like this:</p>
3557
3558 <p><pre>
3559 $VAR1 = {
3560           'Asset' => {
3561                      'Entitlements' => {
3562                                        'EntitlementData' => [
3563                                                             {
3564                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
3565                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
3566                                                               'Provider' => '',
3567                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
3568                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
3569                                                             },
3570                                                             {
3571                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
3572                                                               'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
3573                                                               'Provider' => '',
3574                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
3575                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
3576                                                             },
3577                                                             {
3578                                                               'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
3579                                                               'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
3580                                                               'Provider' => '',
3581                                                               'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
3582                                                               'DaysLeft' => '0'
3583                                                             }
3584                                                           ]
3585                                      },
3586                      'AssetHeaderData' => {
3587                                           'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
3588                                           'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
3589                                           'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
3590                                           'Buid' => '2323',
3591                                           'Region' => 'Europe',
3592                                           'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
3593                                           'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
3594                                         }
3595                    }
3596         };
3597 </pre></p>
3598
3599 <p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
3600 service outside the
3601 <a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
3602 documentation</a>, and according to
3603 <a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
3604 comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
3605 scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
3606
3607 <p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service.  If
3608 you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
3609
3610       </div>
3611       <div class="tags">
3612
3613
3614         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
3615
3616
3617       </div>
3618     </div>
3619     <div class="padding"></div>
3620
3621     <div class="entry">
3622       <div class="title">
3623         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_monitor_calibration_using_ColorHug.html">First monitor calibration using ColorHug</a>
3624       </div>
3625       <div class="date">
3626         31st May 2012
3627       </div>
3628       <div class="body">
3629         <p>A few days ago my color calibration gadget
3630 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">ColorHug</a> arrived in the
3631 mail, and I've had a few days to test it.  As all my machines are
3632 running Debian Squeeze, where
3633 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">the
3634 calibration software</a> is missing (it is present in Wheezy and Sid),
3635 I ran the calibration using the Fedora based live CD.  This worked
3636 just fine.  So far I have only done the quick calibration.  It was
3637 slow enough for me, so I will leave the more extensive calibration for
3638 another day.</p>
3639
3640 <p>After calibration, I get a
3641 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile">ICC color
3642 profile</a> file that can be passed to programs understanding such
3643 tools.  KDE do not seem to understand it out of the box, so I searched
3644 for command line tools to use to load the color profile into X.
3645 xcalib was the first one I found, and it seem to work fine for single
3646 monitor setups.  But for my video player, a laptop with a flat screen
3647 attached, it was unable to load the color profile for the correct
3648 monitor.  After searching a bit, I
3649 <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1347896">discovered</a>
3650 that the dispwin tool from the argyll package would do what I wanted,
3651 and a simple</p>
3652
3653 <p><pre>
3654 dispwin -d 1 profile.icc
3655 </pre></p>
3656
3657 <p>later I had the color profile loaded for the correct monitor.  The
3658 result was a bit more pink than I expected.  I guess I picked the
3659 wrong monitor type for the "led" monitor I got, but the result is good
3660 enough for now.</p>
3661
3662       </div>
3663       <div class="tags">
3664
3665
3666         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3667
3668
3669       </div>
3670     </div>
3671     <div class="padding"></div>
3672
3673     <div class="entry">
3674       <div class="title">
3675         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Ralf_Gesellensetter.html">Debian Edu interview: Ralf Gesellensetter</a>
3676       </div>
3677       <div class="date">
3678         27th May 2012
3679       </div>
3680       <div class="body">
3681         <p>In 2003, a German teacher showed up on the
3682 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
3683 mailing list with interesting problems and reports proving he setting
3684 up Linux for a (for us at the time) lot of pupils.  His name was Ralf
3685 Gesellensetter, and he has been an important tester and contributor
3686 since then, helping to make sure the
3687 <a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
3688 Squeeze</a> release became as good as it is..</p>
3689
3690 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3691
3692 <p>I am a teacher from Germany, and my subjects are Geography,
3693 Mathematics, and Computer Science ("Informatik"). During the past 12
3694 years (since 2000), I have been working for a comprehensive (and soon,
3695 also inclusive) school leading to all kind of general levels, such as
3696 O- or A-level ("Abitur").  For quite as long, I've been taking care of
3697 our computer network.</p>
3698
3699 <p>Now, in my early 40s, I enjoy the privilege of spending a lot of my
3700 spare time together with my wife, our son (3 years) and our daughter
3701 (4 months).</p>
3702
3703 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3704 project?</strong></p>
3705
3706 <p>We had tried different Linux based school servers, when members of
3707 my local Linux User Group (LUG OWL) detected Skolelinux. I remember
3708 very well, being part of a party celebrating the Linux New Media Award
3709 ("Best Newcomer Distribution", also nominated: Ubuntu) that was given
3710 to Skolelinux at Linux World Exposition in Frankfurt, 2005 (IIRC). Few
3711 months later, I had the chance to join a developer meeting in Ulsrud
3712 (Oslo) and to hand out the award to Knut Yrvin and others.  For more
3713 than 7 years, Skolelinux is part of our schools infrastructure, namely
3714 our main server (tjener), one LTSP (today without thin clients), and
3715 approximately 50 work stations. Most of these have the option to boot a
3716 locally installed Skolelinux image.  As a consequence, I joined quite
3717 a few events dealing with free software or Linux, and met many Debian
3718 (Edu) developers. All of them seemed quite nice and competent to me,
3719 one more reason to stick to Skolelinux.</p>
3720
3721 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3722 Edu?</strong></p>
3723
3724 <p>Debian driven, you are given all the advantages of a community
3725 project including well maintained updates. Once, you are familiar with
3726 the network layout, you can easily roll out an entire educational
3727 computer infrastructure, from just one installation media. As only
3728 free software (FOSS) is used, that supports even elderly hardware,
3729 up-sizing your IT equipment is only limited by space (i.e. available
3730 labs).  Especially if you run a LTSP thin client server, your
3731 administration costs tend towards zero.</p>
3732
3733 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3734 Edu?</strong></p>
3735
3736 <p>While Debian's stability has loads of advantages for servers, this
3737 might be different in some cases for clients: Schools with unlimited
3738 budget might buy new hardware with components that are not yet
3739 supported by Debian stable, or wish to use more recent versions of
3740 office packages or desktop environments.  These schools have the
3741 option to run Debian testing or other distributions - if they have the
3742 capacity to do so.  Another issue is that Debian release cycles
3743 include a wide range of changes; therefor a high percentage of human
3744 power seems to be absorbed by just keeping the features of Skolelinux
3745 within the new setting of the version to come. During this process,
3746 the cogs of Debian Edu are getting more and more professional,
3747 i.e. harder to understand for novices.</p>
3748
3749 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
3750
3751 <p>LibreOffice, Wikipedia, Openstreetmap, Iceweasel (Mozilla Firefox),
3752 KMail, Gimp, Inkscape - and of course the Linux Kernel (not only on
3753 PC, Laptop, Mobile, but also our SAT receiver)</p>
3754
3755 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
3756 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
3757
3758 <p><ol>
3759
3760 <li>Support computer science as regular subject in schools to make
3761 people really "own" their hardware, to make them understand the
3762 difference between proprietary software products, and free software
3763 developing.</li>
3764
3765 <li>Make budget baskets corresponding: In Germany's public schools
3766 there are more or less fixed budgets for IT equipment (including
3767 licenses), so schools won't benefit from any savings here. This
3768 privilege is left to private schools which have consequently a large
3769 share among German Skolelinux schools.</li>
3770
3771 <li>Get free software in the seminars where would-be teachers are
3772 trained. In many cases, teachers' software customs are respected by
3773 decision makers rather than the expertise of any IT experts.</li>
3774
3775 <li>Don't limit ourself to free software run natively. Everybody uses
3776 free software or free licenses (for instance Wikipedia), and this
3777 general concept should get expanded to free educational content to be
3778 shared world wide (school books e.g.).</li>
3779
3780 <li>Make clear where ever you can that the market share of free (libre)
3781 office suites is much above 20 p.c. today, and that you pupils don't
3782 need to know the "ribbon menu" in order to get employed.</li>
3783
3784 <li>Talk about the difference between freeware and free software.</li>
3785
3786 <li>Spread free software, or even collections of portable free apps
3787 for USB pen drives. Endorse students to get a legal copy of
3788 Libreoffice rather than accepting them to use illegal serials.  And
3789 keep sending documents in ODF formats.</li>
3790
3791 </ol></p>
3792
3793       </div>
3794       <div class="tags">
3795
3796
3797         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
3798
3799
3800       </div>
3801     </div>
3802     <div class="padding"></div>
3803
3804     <div class="entry">
3805       <div class="title">
3806         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html">The cost of ODF and OOXML</a>
3807       </div>
3808       <div class="date">
3809         26th May 2012
3810       </div>
3811       <div class="body">
3812         <p>I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
3813 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
3814 government.  I just sent him an email to let him know that his
3815 assumption are most likely wrong.  Sharing it here in case some of my
3816 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.</p>
3817
3818 <p><blockquote> <p>Hi.  I just noted your
3819 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm">http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm</a>
3820 comment:</p>
3821
3822 <p><blockquote>"They're all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
3823 with the help of Google Translate I can't find any figures about the
3824 savings of "moving to a flexible two standard" as claimed by the
3825 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let's take
3826 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust."
3827 </blockquote></p>
3828
3829 <p>I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated.  I believe it is
3830 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
3831 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
3832 at the content.  In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
3833 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
3834 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
3835 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
3836 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
3837 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver.  In
3838 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
3839 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
3840 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
3841 of wasted effort.</p>
3842
3843 <p>Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
3844 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
3845 minutes converting to ODF. :)</p>
3846
3847 <p>See
3848 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php</a>
3849 and
3850 <a href="http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php">http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php</a>
3851 for background information.  Norwegian only, sorry. :)</p>
3852 </blockquote></p>
3853
3854       </div>
3855       <div class="tags">
3856
3857
3858         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
3859
3860
3861       </div>
3862     </div>
3863     <div class="padding"></div>
3864
3865     <div class="entry">
3866       <div class="title">
3867         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ColorHug___USB_and_free_software_based_screen_color_calibration.html">ColorHug - USB and free software based screen color calibration</a>
3868       </div>
3869       <div class="date">
3870         18th May 2012
3871       </div>
3872       <div class="body">
3873         <p>In january, I
3874 <a href="http://blog.cihar.com/archives/2012/01/17/colorhug-has-arrived/">discovered
3875 the ColorHug</a>, a USB dongle from
3876 <a href="http://www.hughski.com/index.html">Hughski</a> to calibrate
3877 the color on a computer screen.  The software required is
3878 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/c/colorhug-client.html">included
3879 in Debian</a>, and I decided back then to preorder from the next
3880 batch.  Yesterday I finally heard back from them, and got the
3881 opportunity to order.  Today I ordered mine, and eagerly await the
3882 delivery.  I hope it arrive next week, as I got a confirmation that it
3883 should go in the mail on monday. :)</p>
3884
3885 <p>If you want to ensure the colors on the screen match the intended
3886 colors, I suggest you check out this cheap tool with free software
3887 drivers. :)</p>
3888
3889       </div>
3890       <div class="tags">
3891
3892
3893         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
3894
3895
3896       </div>
3897     </div>
3898     <div class="padding"></div>
3899
3900     <div class="entry">
3901       <div class="title">
3902         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__J_rgen_Leibner.html">Debian Edu interview: Jürgen Leibner</a>
3903       </div>
3904       <div class="date">
3905         13th May 2012
3906       </div>
3907       <div class="body">
3908         <p>It has been a few busy weeks for me, but I am finally back to
3909 publish another interview with the people behind
3910 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>.
3911 This time it is one of our German developers, who have helped out over the
3912 years to make sure both a lot of major but also a lot of the minor
3913 details get right before release.
3914
3915 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
3916
3917 <p>My name is Jürgen Leibner, I'm 49 years old and living in
3918 Bielefeld, a town in northern Germany.  I worked nearly 20 years as
3919 certified engineer in the department for plant design and layout of an
3920 international company for machinery and equipment.  Since 2011 I'm a
3921 certified technical writer (tekom e.V.) and doing technical
3922 documentations for a steam turbine manufacturer.  From April this year
3923 I will manage the department of technical documentation at a
3924 manufacturer of automation and assembly line engineering.</p>
3925
3926 <p>My first contact with linux was around 1993. Since that time I used
3927 it at work and at home repeatedly but not exclusively as I do now at
3928 home since 2006.</p>
3929
3930 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
3931 project?</strong></p>
3932
3933 <p>Once a day in the early year of 2001 when I wanted to fetch my
3934 daughter from primary school, there was a teacher sitting in the
3935 middle of 20 old computers trying to boot them and he failed. I helped
3936 him to get them booting. That was seen by the school director and she
3937 asked me if I would like to manage that the school gets all that old
3938 computers in use. I answered: "Yes".</p>
3939
3940 <p>Some weeks later every of the 10 classrooms had one computer
3941 running Windows98. I began to collect old computers and equipment as
3942 gifts and installed the first computer room with a peer-to-peer
3943 network. I did my work at school without being payed in my spare time
3944 and with a lot of fun.  About one year later the school was connected
3945 to Internet and a local area network was installed in the school
3946 building.  That was the time to have a server and I knew it must be a
3947 Linux server to be able to fulfil all the wishes of the teachers and
3948 being able to do this in a transparent and economic way, without extra
3949 costs for things like licence and software.  So I searched for a
3950 school server system running under Linux and I found a couple of
3951 people nearby who founded 'skolelinux.de'. It was the Skolelinux
3952 prerelease 32 I first tried out for being used at the school.  I
3953 managed the IT of that school until the municipal authority took over
3954 the IT management and centralised the services for all schools in
3955 Bielefeld in December of 2006.</p>
3956
3957 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
3958 Edu?</strong></p>
3959
3960 <p>When I'm looking back to the beginning, there were other advantages
3961 for me as today.</p>
3962
3963 <p>In the past there were advantages like:</p>
3964
3965 <p><ul>
3966
3967 <li>I don't need to buy it so it generates no costs to the school as
3968 they had little money to spent for computers and software.</li>
3969
3970 <li>It has a licence which grands all rights to use it without
3971 cost.</li>
3972
3973 <li>It was more able to fit all requirements of a server system for
3974 schools than a Microsoft server system, even if there are only Windows
3975 clients because of it's preconfigured overall concept of being a
3976 infrastructure solution and community for schools, not only a
3977 server</li>
3978
3979 <li>I was able to configure the server to the needs of the
3980 school.</li>
3981
3982 </ul></p>
3983
3984 <p>Today some of the advantages has been lost, changed or new ones
3985 came up in this way:</p>
3986
3987 <p><ul>
3988
3989 <li>Most schools here do have money to buy hardware and software
3990 now.</li>
3991
3992 <li>They are today mostly managed from central IT departments which
3993 have own concepts which often do not fit to Debian Edu concepts
3994 because they are to close to Microsoft ideology.</li>
3995
3996 <li>With the Squeeze version of Debian Edu which now uses GOsa² for
3997 management I feel more able to manage the daily tasks than with the
3998 interfaces used in the past.</li>
3999
4000 <li>It is more modular than in the past and fits even better to the
4001 different needs.</li>
4002
4003 <li>The documentation is usable and gets better every day.</li>
4004
4005 <li>More people than ever before are using Debian Edu all over the
4006 world and so the community, which is an very important part I think,
4007 is sharing knowledge and minds.</li>
4008
4009 <li>Most, maybe all, of the technical requirements for schools are
4010 solved today by Debian Edu. </li>
4011
4012 </ul></p>
4013
4014 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4015 Edu?</strong></p>
4016
4017 <p><ul>
4018
4019 <li>There are too few IT companies able to integrate Debian Edu into
4020 their product portfolio for serving schools with concepts or even
4021 whole municipality areas.</li>
4022
4023 <li>Debian Edu has beside other free and open software projects not
4024 enough lobbyists which promote free and open software to
4025 politicians.</li>
4026
4027 <li>Technically there are no disadvantages I'm aware of.</li>
4028
4029 </ul></p>
4030
4031 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4032
4033 <p>I use Debian stable on my home server and on my little desktop
4034 computer. On my laptop I use Debian testing/sid. The applications I
4035 use on my laptop and my desktop are Open/Libre-office, Iceweasel,
4036 KMail, DigiKam, Amarok, Dolphin, okular and all the other programs I
4037 need from the KDE environment.  On console I use newsbeuter, mutt,
4038 screen, irssi and all the other famous and useful tools.</p>
4039
4040 <p>My home server provides mail services with exim, dovecot, roundcube
4041 and mutt over ssh on the console, file services with samba, NFS,
4042 rsync, web services with apache, moinmoin-wiki, multimedia services
4043 with gallery2 and mediatomb and database services with MySQL for me
4044 and the whole family.  I probably forgot something.</p>
4045
4046 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4047 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4048
4049 <p>I believe, we should provide concepts for IT companies to integrate
4050 Debian Edu into their product portfolio with use cases for different
4051 countries and areas all over the world.</p>
4052
4053       </div>
4054       <div class="tags">
4055
4056
4057         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4058
4059
4060       </div>
4061     </div>
4062     <div class="padding"></div>
4063
4064     <div class="entry">
4065       <div class="title">
4066         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Cutting_it_short___and_picking_the_right_tool_for_the_job.html">Cutting it short - and picking the right tool for the job</a>
4067       </div>
4068       <div class="date">
4069         30th April 2012
4070       </div>
4071       <div class="body">
4072         <p><!-- IMG_5869.JPG -->
4073 <img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/panasonic-er-1611.jpeg"></p>
4074
4075 <p>I normally cut my hair short, and my tool of choice has been a
4076 common hair/beard cutter, bought in a electrical shop here in Norway.
4077 But the last ones have not really been up to the task.  My last
4078 cutter, some model from Braun, could only cut a few of my hairs at the
4079 time, and cutting my head took forever.  And the one before that did
4080 not work very well either.  We have looked for something better for a
4081 while, but it was not until I ended up visiting a hairdresser that we
4082 discovered that there are indeed better tools available.  But these
4083 are not marketed and sold to "regular consumers".  The hair saloons
4084 can get them through their suppliers, but their suppliers only sell
4085 companies.  The models they sell, are very different from the ones
4086 available from Elkjøp and Lefdal.  The main difference is their
4087 efficiency.  It would cut my hair in 5 minutes, instead of the 30-40
4088 minutes required by my impotent Braun.  The hairdresser I visited had
4089 a Panasonic ER160, which unfortunately is no longer available from the
4090 producer.  But I found it had a successor, the Panasonic ER1611.</p>
4091
4092 <p>The next step was to find somewhere to buy it.  This was not
4093 straight forward.  The list of suppliers I got from the hairdresser
4094 did not want to sell anything to me.  But searching for the model on
4095 the web we found a supplier in Norway willing to sell it to us for
4096 around NOK 4000,-.  This was a bit much.  We kept searching and
4097 finally found a Danish supplier
4098 <a href="http://nicehair.dk/panasonic-er-1611-professionel-hartrimmer.html">selling
4099 it for around NOK 1800,-</a>.  We ordered one, and it arrived a few
4100 days ago.</p>
4101
4102 <p>The instructions said it had to charge for 8 hours when we started
4103 to use it, so we left it charging over night.  Normally it will only
4104 need one hour to charge.  The following evening we successfully tested
4105 it, and I can warmly recommend it to anyone looking for a real hair
4106 cutter.  The ones we have used until now have been hair cutter
4107 toys.</p>
4108
4109       </div>
4110       <div class="tags">
4111
4112
4113         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4114
4115
4116       </div>
4117     </div>
4118     <div class="padding"></div>
4119
4120     <div class="entry">
4121       <div class="title">
4122         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html">HTC One X - Your video?  What do you mean?</a>
4123       </div>
4124       <div class="date">
4125         26th April 2012
4126       </div>
4127       <div class="body">
4128         <p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
4129 article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
4130 <a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
4131 that the video editor application included with
4132 <a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
4133 X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use.  The article is mostly
4134 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
4135
4136 <p><blockquote>
4137 "<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
4138 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
4139 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.</a>"
4140 </blockquote></p>
4141
4142 <p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
4143
4144 <p><blockquote>
4145 "Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
4146 commercially.  Although I can ONLY use them privately."
4147 </blockquote></p>
4148
4149 <p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
4150 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
4151 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
4152 with my Canon IXUS 130</a>.  The HTC One X specification specifies that
4153 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
4154 video.  AMR is
4155 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
4156 Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
4157 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
4158 <a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>.  MP4 is
4159 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
4160 H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
4161 with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
4162
4163 <p>I know why I prefer
4164 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
4165 standards</a> also for video.</p>
4166
4167       </div>
4168       <div class="tags">
4169
4170
4171         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
4172
4173
4174       </div>
4175     </div>
4176     <div class="padding"></div>
4177
4178     <div class="entry">
4179       <div class="title">
4180         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html">RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</a>
4181       </div>
4182       <div class="date">
4183         19th April 2012
4184       </div>
4185       <div class="body">
4186         <p>Here in Norway, the
4187 <a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
4188 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
4189 a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
4190 standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
4191 government.  When the directory was created, the people behind it made
4192 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
4193 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
4194 to the government.  Free software and non-free software could compete
4195 on the same level.</p>
4196
4197 <p>But recently, some standards with RAND
4198 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
4199 And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
4200 directory.  And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
4201 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
4202 implementing them.  The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
4203 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
4204 willing to pay will get a license.  Both sound great in theory.  In
4205 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
4206 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user.  By
4207 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
4208 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
4209 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
4210 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
4211 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
4212 to implement a standard when the income available is zero.  The result
4213 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
4214 implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
4215
4216 <p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
4217 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
4218 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory.  Because free
4219 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
4220 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
4221 in Norway.  The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
4222 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
4223 attention to these issues in the future.</p>
4224
4225 <p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
4226 from Simon Phipps
4227 (<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
4228 Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
4229
4230 <p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
4231 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
4232 post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
4233 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government.  I
4234 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
4235 <a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
4236 hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
4237 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
4238 specifications with RAND terms.</p>
4239
4240       </div>
4241       <div class="tags">
4242
4243
4244         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
4245
4246
4247       </div>
4248     </div>
4249     <div class="padding"></div>
4250
4251     <div class="entry">
4252       <div class="title">
4253         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html">Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</a>
4254       </div>
4255       <div class="date">
4256         15th April 2012
4257       </div>
4258       <div class="body">
4259         <p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
4260 Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
4261 setting together all the pieces.  This time I present to you Andreas
4262 Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
4263 years.  He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
4264 up in the recently released
4265 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
4266 Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
4267
4268 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4269
4270 <p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany.  After
4271 studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
4272 Quantum Optics.  After that I worked some years in an optics company.
4273 Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
4274 teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school.  I teach math, physics,
4275 information technology and science/technology.</p>
4276
4277 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4278 project?</strong></p>
4279
4280 <p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
4281 project because of my interest in education and Debian.  Within the
4282 qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
4283 contributing.</p>
4284
4285 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4286 Edu?</strong></p>
4287
4288 <p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
4289 out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
4290 Debian Project!</p>
4291
4292 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4293 Edu?</strong></p>
4294
4295 <p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
4296 downside, too.  In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
4297 setup, if you need or want that.  Further more, it is not easily
4298 possible to upgrade the system to a new release.  It takes much too
4299 long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
4300 because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
4301 rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
4302
4303 <p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
4304 project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
4305
4306 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4307
4308 <p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
4309 on all my machines.  For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
4310 mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing.  At school I
4311 have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
4312
4313 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4314 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4315
4316 <p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
4317 Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
4318 politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader".  The school
4319 administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
4320 Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats.  Even
4321 free browsers do not work for the school administration.  Publishers
4322 of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
4323
4324 <p>To change this, political work is very important.  Parts of the
4325 political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
4326 However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
4327 the system.  There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
4328 "Free/Open Standards".  I am not sure if all the involved parties have
4329 a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
4330 fraction takes them seriously.  However it might slowly make free
4331 software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
4332
4333       </div>
4334       <div class="tags">
4335
4336
4337         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4338
4339
4340       </div>
4341     </div>
4342     <div class="padding"></div>
4343
4344     <div class="entry">
4345       <div class="title">
4346         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html">Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</a>
4347       </div>
4348       <div class="date">
4349          8th April 2012
4350       </div>
4351       <div class="body">
4352         <p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
4353 like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
4354 and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
4355 contributor to the
4356 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
4357 Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
4358
4359 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4360
4361 <p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
4362 occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
4363
4364 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4365 project?</strong></p>
4366
4367 <p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user!  The only
4368 reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
4369 around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
4370 they'd like a native English speaker to proofread...  So I did a sweep
4371 through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
4372 "localisation".</p>
4373
4374 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4375 Edu?</strong></p>
4376
4377 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4378 Edu?</strong></p>
4379
4380 <p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it!  In fact I
4381 had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
4382 education system.</p>
4383
4384 <p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
4385 as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
4386 everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
4387 money on the latest hardware.</p>
4388
4389 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4390
4391 <p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
4392 software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
4393 words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
4394
4395 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4396 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4397
4398 <p>Well, I don't know.  I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
4399 with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
4400 you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
4401
4402       </div>
4403       <div class="tags">
4404
4405
4406         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4407
4408
4409       </div>
4410     </div>
4411     <div class="padding"></div>
4412
4413     <div class="entry">
4414       <div class="title">
4415         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html">Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</a>
4416       </div>
4417       <div class="date">
4418          6th April 2012
4419       </div>
4420       <div class="body">
4421         <p>Recently I have spent time with
4422 <a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
4423 up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4424 Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
4425 process I discovered something very surprising.  The reason the KDE
4426 menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
4427 due to the way KDE find application icons.  I discovered that showing
4428 the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
4429 passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server.  Most of these were
4430
4431 NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response.  Because the
4432 ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
4433 ms, the menus would be very slow.  Looking at the strace of kicker in
4434 Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
4435 the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
4436 non-existing files.  KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
4437 one icon file.  In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
4438 around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
4439
4440 <p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
4441 directories, and the list of possible directories is large.  In
4442 (almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
4443 and .xpm.  The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
4444 mounted.  Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
4445 requests.  I am not the first one to discover this.  I found a
4446 <a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
4447 from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
4448
4449 <p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
4450 kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
4451 used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
4452 for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
4453 icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/.  Finally, I add symlinks to
4454 these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
4455 for them.  This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
4456 one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
4457 almost instantaneous.  I'm not quite sure where to make the package
4458 publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
4459
4460 <p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
4461 and icon handling, but also the login process.  Not quite sure how to
4462 speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
4463 that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
4464
4465 <p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
4466 (at) lists.debian.org.</p>
4467
4468       </div>
4469       <div class="tags">
4470
4471
4472         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4473
4474
4475       </div>
4476     </div>
4477     <div class="padding"></div>
4478
4479     <div class="entry">
4480       <div class="title">
4481         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html">Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</a>
4482       </div>
4483       <div class="date">
4484          5th April 2012
4485       </div>
4486       <div class="body">
4487         <p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
4488 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
4489 Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News.  The result was made public for
4490 non-subscribers today.  I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
4491 for schools.  Check out his article
4492 <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
4493 distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
4494
4495       </div>
4496       <div class="tags">
4497
4498
4499         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4500
4501
4502       </div>
4503     </div>
4504     <div class="padding"></div>
4505
4506     <div class="entry">
4507       <div class="title">
4508         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html">Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</a>
4509       </div>
4510       <div class="date">
4511          1st April 2012
4512       </div>
4513       <div class="body">
4514         <p>Germany is a core area for the
4515 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
4516 user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
4517 Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
4518
4519 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4520
4521 <p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
4522 Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
4523 "<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
4524 Dortmund</a>", a second chance school.  Here, young adults is given
4525 the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
4526 examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
4527 second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
4528 or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
4529
4530 <p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
4531 blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
4532 information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
4533 teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
4534 school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
4535 the end of April this year.</p>
4536
4537 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4538 project?</strong></p>
4539
4540 <p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
4541 attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
4542 Project).  At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
4543 using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
4544 2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
4545 clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
4546 reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
4547 Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
4548 two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
4549 known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
4550 Skolelinux.</p>
4551
4552 <p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
4553 better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
4554 clients.  The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
4555 was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
4556 and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
4557 the admin teachers.</p>
4558
4559 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4560 Edu?</strong></p>
4561
4562 <p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
4563 Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
4564 So it was a perfect choice.</p>
4565
4566 <p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
4567 possible to point teachers and students to programs like
4568 OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp.  It's of
4569 high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
4570 a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
4571
4572 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4573 Edu?</strong></p>
4574
4575 <p>Nothing yet.</p>
4576
4577 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4578
4579 <p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
4580 Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
4581 Annotator).  At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
4582 LibreOffice.</p>
4583
4584 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4585 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4586
4587 <p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
4588 that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
4589 interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
4590
4591       </div>
4592       <div class="tags">
4593
4594
4595         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4596
4597
4598       </div>
4599     </div>
4600     <div class="padding"></div>
4601
4602     <div class="entry">
4603       <div class="title">
4604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Checking_email_with_kmail_using_Kerberos_authentication.html">Debian Edu screencast: Checking email with kmail using Kerberos authentication</a>
4605       </div>
4606       <div class="date">
4607         25th March 2012
4608       </div>
4609       <div class="body">
4610         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
4611
4612 <p>The same Debian Edu developer that did the last screen cast I
4613 published, Wolfgang Schweer, has created a new screen cast showing how
4614 to set up Kmail in Debian Edu Squeze to authenticate using Kerberos,
4615 allowing users to check their local email account without providing
4616 any password. The video is embedded here in quarter size,
4617 and also available from <a href="https://vimeo.com/38601767">vimeo</a>
4618 and download as a
4619 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg
4620 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
4621
4622 <p><video id="kmail-kerberos-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
4623   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
4624     <p>Download video as
4625       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-03-14-Debian-Edu_Configure_Kmail_for_internal_usage.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
4626 </video></p>
4627
4628       </div>
4629       <div class="tags">
4630
4631
4632         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4633
4634
4635       </div>
4636     </div>
4637     <div class="padding"></div>
4638
4639     <div class="entry">
4640       <div class="title">
4641         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__John_Ingleby.html">Debian Edu interview: John Ingleby</a>
4642       </div>
4643       <div class="date">
4644         19th March 2012
4645       </div>
4646       <div class="body">
4647         <p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
4648 users are spread all across the globe.  The second inteview after
4649 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">the
4650 Squeeze release</a> was publised is with John Ingleby, a teacher and
4651 long time Linux user in United Kingdom.</p>
4652
4653 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4654
4655 <p>I teach ICT part time at the Rudolf Steiner School in Kings
4656 Langley, near London, UK. Previously I worked as a technical
4657 author/trainer while my children attended the school, and I also
4658 contributed to the Schoolforge UK community with the aim of
4659 encouraging UK schools to adopt free/open source software. Five or six
4660 years ago we had about 50 schools interested in some way, but we
4661 weren't able to convert many of them into sustainable
4662 installations.</p>
4663
4664 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4665 project?</strong></p>
4666
4667 <p>Skolelinux had two representatives at an early Edubuntu meeting in
4668 London which I attended. However at that time our school network had
4669 just been installed using CentOS, LTSP 4 and GNOME. When LTSP 5 came
4670 along we switched to Edubuntu thin client servers so now we have a
4671 mixed environment which includes Windows PCs and student laptops, as
4672 well as their MacBooks and iPads. However, the proprietary systems
4673 have always been rather problematic, and we never built a GUI for the
4674 LDAP server, so when I discovered Skolelinux is configured for all
4675 these things we decided to try it.</p>
4676
4677 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4678 Edu?</strong></p>
4679
4680 <p>By far the biggest advantage is the Debian Edu community. Apart
4681 from that I have always believed in the same "sustainable computing"
4682 goals that Skolelinux is built on: installing Linux on computers which
4683 would otherwise be thrown away, to provide a reliable, secure and
4684 low-cost IT environment for schools. From my own experience I know
4685 that a part-time person can teach and manage a network of about 25
4686 Linux computers, but it would take much more of my time if we had
4687 proprietary software everywhere.</p>
4688
4689 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4690 Edu?</strong></p>
4691
4692 <p>As a newcomer I'm just finding out who's who in the community and
4693 how you're organised, and what your procedures are for dealing with
4694 various things such as editing manual pages and so-on. The only
4695 English language mailing list seems to be for developers as well as
4696 users, so my inbox needs heavy pruning each day!</p>
4697
4698 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4699
4700 <p>Besides the software already mentioned at school we use Samba,
4701 OpenLDAP, CUPS, Nagios and Dansguardian for the network, and on the
4702 desktops we have LibreOffice, Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape. At home I
4703 use Ubuntu and an Android 4 eePad Transformer (but I'm not sure if
4704 that counts...)</p>
4705
4706 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4707 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4708
4709 <p>That's a tough question! For very many years UK schools installed
4710 and taught only proprietary software, so that at the highest levels
4711 the notion of "computer" means simply "proprietary office
4712 applications".  However, schools today are experiencing budget
4713 constraints, and many are having to think hard about upgrading Windows
4714 XP.  At the same time, we have students showing teachers how to use
4715 iPads, MacBooks and Android, so the choice of operating system is no
4716 longer quite so automatic. What is more, our government at last
4717 realised that we need people with programming skills, so they're
4718 putting coding back in the curriculum! And it's encouraging that the
4719 first 10,000 Raspberry Pi units sold out in 2 hours.</p>
4720
4721 <p>I don't really know what strategy is going to get UK schools to use
4722 free software, but building an active community of Skolelinux/Debian
4723 Edu users in this country has to be part of it.</p>
4724
4725       </div>
4726       <div class="tags">
4727
4728
4729         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4730
4731
4732       </div>
4733     </div>
4734     <div class="padding"></div>
4735
4736     <div class="entry">
4737       <div class="title">
4738         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Writing_and_translating_documentation_in_Debian_Edu.html">Writing and translating documentation in Debian Edu</a>
4739       </div>
4740       <div class="date">
4741         16th March 2012
4742       </div>
4743       <div class="body">
4744         <p>Documentation in Debian Edu is provided in several languages, and
4745 it is important to make it both easy to contribute and to keep the
4746 translated versions in sync.  To do this we have come up with what we
4747 believe is a very efficient work flow.</p>
4748
4749 <ol>
4750
4751 <li>The documentation is written in a
4752 <a href="http://moinmo.in">moinmoin wiki</a> (see for example
4753 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">the
4754 Squeeze release manual</a>) with support for exporting the content as
4755 docbook XML.</li>
4756
4757 <li>This docbook document is given to po4a to extract a gettext style
4758 .pot file with the content, which in turn is used to create .po files
4759 with the translated text.</li>
4760
4761 <li>The .po files are given to translators, and they can always tell
4762 which part of the original wiki document is new or changed.  They can
4763 use their normal translation tools like lokalize or poedit to write
4764 the translation.  There is even a system in place to handle translated
4765 images.</li>
4766
4767 <li>The translated .po files are combined with the original docbook
4768 XML document using po4a to create a translated docbook document.</li>
4769
4770 <li>The final step is to use all the generated docbook files and
4771 create PDF and HTML version of the original and translated documents.</li>
4772
4773 </ol>
4774
4775 <p>This setup work very well, but have a few issues.  The biggest
4776 issue is that <a href="http://moinmo.in/DocBook">the docbook support
4777 we use in moinmoin</a> is not actively maintained.  The docbook
4778 support is also buggy, and our build system contain workarounds to
4779 make sure the generated docbook is usable despite these bugs.</p>
4780
4781 <p>If you want to have a look at our setup, it is all there in the
4782 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/debian-edu-doc">debian-edu-doc
4783 package</a>.</p>
4784
4785       </div>
4786       <div class="tags">
4787
4788
4789         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4790
4791
4792       </div>
4793     </div>
4794     <div class="padding"></div>
4795
4796     <div class="entry">
4797       <div class="title">
4798         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Skolelinux___Debian_Edu_Squeeze_is_out_.html">Skolelinux / Debian Edu Squeeze is out!</a>
4799       </div>
4800       <div class="date">
4801         11th March 2012
4802       </div>
4803       <div class="body">
4804         <p>This weekend we finally published the first stable release of
4805 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux / Debian Edu</a> based
4806 on Debian/Squeeze.  The full announcement is
4807 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00001.html">available</a>
4808 from the project announcement list.  Now is a good time to test if it
4809 you have not done so already.</p>
4810
4811 <p>I plan to present the new version at
4812 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20120313-skolelinux/">a NUUG
4813 meeting</a> on tuesday.  I look forward to seeing you there if you are
4814 in Oslo, Norway.</p>
4815
4816       </div>
4817       <div class="tags">
4818
4819
4820         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4821
4822
4823       </div>
4824     </div>
4825     <div class="padding"></div>
4826
4827     <div class="entry">
4828       <div class="title">
4829         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Nigel_Barker.html">Debian Edu interview: Nigel Barker</a>
4830       </div>
4831       <div class="date">
4832          9th March 2012
4833       </div>
4834       <div class="body">
4835         <p>Inspired by <a href="http://raphaelhertzog.com/tag/interview/">the
4836 interview series</a> conducted by Raphael, I started a Norwegian
4837 interview series with people involved in the Debian Edu / Skolelinux
4838 community.  This was so popular that I believe it is time to move to a
4839 more international audience.</p>
4840
4841 <p>While <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
4842 Skolelinux</a> originated in France and Norway, and have most users in
4843 Europe, there are users all around the globe.  One of those far away
4844 from me is Nigel Barker, a long time Debian Edu system administrator
4845 and contributor.  It is thanks to him that Debian Edu is adjusted to
4846 work out of the box in Japan.  I got him to answer a few questions,
4847 and am happy to share the response with you. :)
4848
4849
4850 <p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
4851
4852 <p>My name is Nigel Barker, and I am British. I am married to Yumiko,
4853 and we have three lovely children, aged 15, 14 and 4(!) I am the IT
4854 Coordinator at Hiroshima International School, Japan. I am also a
4855 teacher, and in fact I spend most of my day teaching Mathematics,
4856 Science, IT, and Chemistry. I was originally a Chemistry teacher, but
4857 I have always had an interest in computers. Another teacher teaches
4858 primary school IT, but apart from that I am the only computer person,
4859 so that means I am the network manager, technician and webmaster,
4860 also, and I help people with their computer problems. I teach python
4861 to beginners in an after-school club. I am way too busy, so I really
4862 appreciate the simplicity of Skolelinux.</p>
4863
4864 <p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
4865 project?</strong></p>
4866
4867 <p>In around 2004 or 5 I discovered the ltsp project, and set up a
4868 server in the IT lab. I wanted some way to connect it to our central
4869 samba server, which I was also quite poor at configuring. I discovered
4870 Edubuntu when it came out, but it didn't really improve my setup. I
4871 did various desperate searches for things like "school Linux server"
4872 and ended up in a document called "Drift" something or other. Reading
4873 there it became clear that Skolelinux was going to solve all my
4874 problems in one go. I was very excited, but apprehensive, because my
4875 previous attempts to install Debian had ended in failure (I used
4876 Mandrake for everything - ltsp, samba, apache, mail, ns...). I
4877 downloaded a beta version, had some problems, so subscribed to the
4878 Debian Edu list for help. I have remained subscribed ever since, and
4879 my school has run a Skolelinux network since Sarge.</p>
4880
4881 <p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4882 Edu?</strong></p>
4883
4884 <p>For me the integrated setup. This is not just the server, or the
4885 workstation, or the ltsp. Its all of them, and its all configured
4886 ready to go. I read somewhere in the early documentation that it is
4887 designed to be setup and managed by the Maths or Science teacher, who
4888 doesn't necessarily know much about computers, in a small Norwegian
4889 school. That describes me perfectly if you replace Norway with
4890 Japan.</p>
4891
4892 <p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
4893 Edu?</strong></p>
4894
4895 <p>The desktop is fairly plain. If you compare it with Edubuntu, who
4896 have fun themes for children, or with distributions such as Mint, who
4897 make the desktop beautiful. They create a good impression on people
4898 who don't need to understand how to use any of it, but who might be
4899 important to the school. School administrators or directors, for
4900 instance, or parents. Even kids. Debian itself usually has ugly
4901 default theme settings. It was my dream a few years back that some
4902 kind of integration would allow Edubuntu to do the desktop stuff and
4903 Debian Edu the servers, but now I realise how impossible that is.  A
4904 second disadvantage is that if something goes wrong, or you need to
4905 customise something, then suddenly the level of expertise required
4906 multiplies. For example, backup wasn't working properly in Lenny. It
4907 took me ages to learn how to set up my own server to do rsync backups.
4908 I am afraid of anything to do with ldap, but perhaps Gosa will
4909 help.</p>
4910
4911 <p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
4912
4913 <p>Nowadays I only use Debian on my personal computers. I have one for
4914 studio work (I play guitar and write songs), running AV Linux
4915 (customised Debian) a netbook running Squeeze, and a bigger laptop
4916 still running Skolelinux Lenny workstation. I have a Tjener in my
4917 house, that's very useful for the family photos and music.  At school
4918 the students only use Skolelinux. (Some teachers and the office still
4919 have windows). So that means we only use free software all day every
4920 day. Open office, The GIMP, Firefox/Iceweasel, VLC and Audacity are
4921 installed on every computer in school, irrespective of OS.  We also
4922 have Koha on Debian for the library, and Apache, Moodle, b2evolution
4923 and Etomite on Debian for the www. The firewall is Untangle.</p>
4924
4925 <p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
4926 get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
4927
4928 <p>Current trends are in our favour. Open source is big in industry,
4929 and ordinary people have heard of it. The spread of Android and the
4930 popularity of Apple have helped to weaken the impression that you have
4931 to have Microsoft on everything. People complain to me much less about
4932 file formats and Word than they did 5 years ago.  The Edu aspect is
4933 also a selling point. This is all customised for schools. Where is the
4934 Windows-edu, or the Mac-edu?  But of course the main attraction is
4935 budget.The trick is to convince people that the quality is not
4936 compromised when you stop paying and use free software instead. That
4937 is one reason why I say the desktop experience is a weakness. People
4938 are not impressed when their USB drive doesn't work, or their browser
4939 doesn't play flash, for example.</p>
4940
4941       </div>
4942       <div class="tags">
4943
4944
4945         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
4946
4947
4948       </div>
4949     </div>
4950     <div class="padding"></div>
4951
4952     <div class="entry">
4953       <div class="title">
4954         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_screencast__Mass_creation_of_user_accounts_in_Squeeze.html">Debian Edu screencast: Mass creation of user accounts in Squeeze</a>
4955       </div>
4956       <div class="date">
4957          7th March 2012
4958       </div>
4959       <div class="body">
4960         <!-- Video HTML based on http://www.diveintohtml5.net/video.html -->
4961
4962 <p>One of the Debian Edu developers, Wolfgang Schweer, just created a
4963 screen cast documenting how to create a lot of new users in LDAP on
4964 Debian Edu Squeeze.  The video is embedded here in quarter size, and
4965 also available from <a href="http://vimeo.com/37675399">vimeo</a> and
4966 download as a
4967 <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg
4968 Theora</a> file.  Check it out below.</p>
4969
4970 <p><video id="gosa-mass-user-create-movie" width="256" height="184" preload controls>
4971   <source src="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv" type='video/ogg; codecs="theora, vorbis"' />
4972     <p>Download video as
4973       <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux/press/screencasts/2012-02-29-debian_edu_mass_create_user_accounts.ogv">Ogg</a>.</p>
4974 </video></p>
4975
4976       </div>
4977       <div class="tags">
4978
4979
4980         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
4981
4982
4983       </div>
4984     </div>
4985     <div class="padding"></div>
4986
4987     <div class="entry">
4988       <div class="title">
4989         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
4990       </div>
4991       <div class="date">
4992          4th March 2012
4993       </div>
4994       <div class="body">
4995         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the third release
4996 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
4997 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
4998 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/03/msg00000.html">available</a>
4999 from the project announcement list.  Check it out if you
5000 need a software solution for your school.</p>
5001
5002       </div>
5003       <div class="tags">
5004
5005
5006         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5007
5008
5009       </div>
5010     </div>
5011     <div class="padding"></div>
5012
5013     <div class="entry">
5014       <div class="title">
5015         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Stopmotion_for_making_stop_motion_animations_on_Linux___reloaded.html">Stopmotion for making stop motion animations on Linux - reloaded</a>
5016       </div>
5017       <div class="date">
5018          3rd March 2012
5019       </div>
5020       <div class="body">
5021         <p>Many years ago, the <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux
5022 / Debian Edu project</a> initiated a student project to create a tool
5023 for making stop motion movies.  The proposal came from a teacher
5024 needing such tool on Skolelinux.  The project, called "stopmotion",
5025 was manned by two extraordinary students and won a school award and a
5026 national aware with this great project.  The project was initiated and
5027 mentored by Herman Robak, and manned by the students Bjørn Erik Nilsen
5028 and Fredrik Berg Kjølstad.  They got in touch with people at Aardman
5029 Animation studio and received feedback on how professionals would like
5030 such stopmotion tool to work, and the end result was and is used by
5031 animators around the globe.  But as is usual after studying, both got
5032 jobs and went elsewhere, and did not have time to properly tend to the
5033 project, and it has been lingering for a few years now.  Until last
5034 year...</p>
5035
5036 <p>Last year some of the users got together with Herman, and moved the
5037 project to Sourceforge and in effect restarted the project under a new
5038 name,
5039 <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxstopmotion/">linuxstopmotion</a>.
5040 The name change was done to make it possible to find the project using
5041 Internet search engines (try to search for 'stopmotion' to see what I
5042 mean). I've been following
5043 <a href="https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linuxstopmotion-community">the
5044 mailing list</a> and the improvement already in place and planned for
5045 the future is encouraging.  If you want to make stop motion movies.
5046 Check it out. :)</p>
5047
5048       </div>
5049       <div class="tags">
5050
5051
5052         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
5053
5054
5055       </div>
5056     </div>
5057     <div class="padding"></div>
5058
5059     <div class="entry">
5060       <div class="title">
5061         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
5062       </div>
5063       <div class="date">
5064         27th February 2012
5065       </div>
5066       <div class="body">
5067         <p>This weekend we wrapped up and published the second release
5068 candidate for <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
5069 Skolelinux</a> based on Squeeze.  The full announcement did for some
5070 reason not make it the project announcement list, but is
5071 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2012/02/msg00015.html">available</a>
5072 from the Debian development announcement list.  Check it out if you
5073 need a software solution for your school.</p>
5074
5075       </div>
5076       <div class="tags">
5077
5078
5079         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5080
5081
5082       </div>
5083     </div>
5084     <div class="padding"></div>
5085
5086     <div class="entry">
5087       <div class="title">
5088         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_release_candidate_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">First release candidate of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
5089       </div>
5090       <div class="date">
5091         19th February 2012
5092       </div>
5093       <div class="body">
5094         <p>One week delayed due to DVD build problems, we managed today to
5095 wrap up and publish the first release candidate for
5096 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
5097 on Squeeze.  The full announcement is
5098 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00001.html">available</a>
5099 on the project announcement list.  Check it out if you need a software
5100 solution for your school.</p>
5101
5102       </div>
5103       <div class="tags">
5104
5105
5106         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5107
5108
5109       </div>
5110     </div>
5111     <div class="padding"></div>
5112
5113     <div class="entry">
5114       <div class="title">
5115         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_figure_out_which_RAID_disk_to_replace_when_it_fail.html">How to figure out which RAID disk to replace when it fail</a>
5116       </div>
5117       <div class="date">
5118         14th February 2012
5119       </div>
5120       <div class="body">
5121         <p>Once in a while my home server have disk problems.  Thanks to Linux
5122 Software RAID, I have not lost data yet (but
5123 <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/34532">I was
5124 close</a> this summer :).  But once a disk is starting to behave
5125 funny, a practical problem present itself.  How to get from the Linux
5126 device name (like /dev/sdd) to something that can be used to identify
5127 the disk when the computer is turned off?  In my case I have SATA
5128 disks with a unique ID printed on the label.  All I need is a way to
5129 figure out how to query the disk to get the ID out.</p>
5130
5131 <p>After fumbling a bit, I
5132 <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-getting-scsi-ide-harddisk-information/">found
5133 that hdparm -I</a> will report the disk serial number, which is
5134 printed on the disk label.  The following (almost) one-liner can be
5135 used to look up the ID of all the failed disks:</p>
5136
5137 <blockquote><pre>
5138 for d in $(cat /proc/mdstat |grep '(F)'|tr ' ' "\n"|grep '(F)'|cut -d\[ -f1|sort -u);
5139 do
5140     printf "Failed disk $d: "
5141     hdparm -I /dev/$d |grep 'Serial Num'
5142 done
5143 </blockquote></pre>
5144
5145 <p>Putting it here to make sure I do not have to search for it the
5146 next time, and in case other find it useful.</p>
5147
5148 <p>At the moment I have two failing disk. :(</p>
5149
5150 <blockquote><pre>
5151 Failed disk sdd1:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5152 Failed disk sdd2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1860823
5153 Failed disk sde2:       Serial Number:      WD-WCASJ1840589
5154 </blockquote></pre>
5155
5156 <p>The last time I had failing disks, I added the serial number on
5157 labels I printed and stuck on the short sides of each disk, to be able
5158 to figure out which disk to take out of the box without having to
5159 remove each disk to look at the physical vendor label.  The vendor
5160 label is at the top of the disk, which is hidden when the disks are
5161 mounted inside my box.</p>
5162
5163 <p>I really wish the check_linux_raid Nagios plugin for checking Linux
5164 Software RAID in the
5165 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nagios-plugins.html">nagios-plugins-standard</a>
5166 debian package would look up this value automatically, as it would
5167 make the plugin a lot more useful when my disks fail.  At the moment
5168 it only report a failure when there are no more spares left (it really
5169 should warn as soon as a disk is failing), and it do not tell me which
5170 disk(s) is failing when the RAID is running short on disks.</p>
5171
5172       </div>
5173       <div class="tags">
5174
5175
5176         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid</a>.
5177
5178
5179       </div>
5180     </div>
5181     <div class="padding"></div>
5182
5183     <div class="entry">
5184       <div class="title">
5185         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_proxy_configuration_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux.html">Automatic proxy configuration with Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
5186       </div>
5187       <div class="date">
5188         13th February 2012
5189       </div>
5190       <div class="body">
5191         <p>New in the Squeeze version of
5192 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> is the
5193 ability for clients to automatically configure their proxy settings
5194 based on their environment.  We want all systems on the client to use
5195 the WPAD based proxy definition fetched from <tt>http://wpad/wpad.dat</tt>, to
5196 allow sites to control the proxy setting from a central place and make
5197 sure clients do not have hard coded proxy settings.  The schools can
5198 change the global proxy setting by editing
5199 <tt>tjener:/etc/debian-edu/www/wpad.dat</tt> and the change propagate
5200 to all Debian Edu clients in the network.</p>
5201
5202 <p>The problem is that some systems do not understand the WPAD system.
5203 In other words, how do one get from a WPAD file like this (this is a
5204 simple one, they can run arbitrary code):</p>
5205
5206 <blockquote><pre>
5207 function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
5208 {
5209    if (!isResolvable(host) ||
5210        isPlainHostName(host) ||
5211        dnsDomainIs(host, ".intern"))
5212       return "DIRECT";
5213    else
5214       return "PROXY webcache:3128; DIRECT";
5215 }
5216 </pre></blockquote>
5217
5218 <p>to a proxy setting in the process environment looking like this:</p>
5219
5220 <blockquote><pre>
5221 http_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
5222 ftp_proxy=http://webcache:3128/
5223 </pre></blockquote>
5224
5225 <p>To do this conversion I developed a perl script that will execute
5226 the javascript fragment in the WPAD file and return the proxy that
5227 would be used for
5228 <tt><a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a></tt>,
5229 and insert this extracted proxy URL in <tt>/etc/environment</tt> and
5230 <tt>/etc/apt/apt.conf</tt>.  The perl script wpad-extract work just
5231 fine in Squeeze, but in Wheezy the library it need to run the
5232 javascript code is <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/631045">no longer
5233 able to build</a> because the C library it depended on is now a C++
5234 library.  I hope someone find a solution to that problem before Wheezy
5235 is frozen.  An alternative would be for us to rewrite wpad-extract to
5236 use some other javascript library currently working in Wheezy, but no
5237 known alternative is known at the moment.</p>
5238
5239 <p>This automatic proxy system allow the roaming workstation (aka
5240 laptop) setup in Debian Edu/Squeeze to use the proxy when the laptop
5241 is connected to the backbone network in a Debian Edu setup, and to
5242 automatically use any proxy present and announced using the WPAD
5243 feature when it is connected to other networks.  And if no proxy is
5244 announced, direct connections will be used instead.</p>
5245
5246 <p>Silently using a proxy announced on the network might be a privacy
5247 or security problem.  But those controlling DHCP and DNS on a network
5248 could just as easily set up a transparent proxy, and force all HTTP
5249 and FTP connections to use a proxy anyway, so I consider that
5250 distinction to be academic.  If you are afraid of using the wrong
5251 proxy, you should avoid connecting to the network in question in the
5252 first place.  In Debian Edu, the proxy setup is updated using dhcp and
5253 ifupdown hooks, to make sure the configuration is updated every time
5254 the network setup changes.</p>
5255
5256 <p>The WPAD system is documented in a
5257 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-wrec-wpad-01">IETF
5258 draft</a> and a
5259 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol">Wikipedia
5260 page</a> for those that want to learn more.</p>
5261
5262       </div>
5263       <div class="tags">
5264
5265
5266         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5267
5268
5269       </div>
5270     </div>
5271     <div class="padding"></div>
5272
5273     <div class="entry">
5274       <div class="title">
5275         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Saving_power_with_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_using_shutdown_at_night.html">Saving power with Debian Edu / Skolelinux using shutdown-at-night</a>
5276       </div>
5277       <div class="date">
5278          5th February 2012
5279       </div>
5280       <div class="body">
5281         <p>Since the Lenny version of
5282 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, a
5283 feature to save power have been included.  It is as simple as it is
5284 practical: Shut down unused clients at night, and turn them on again
5285 in the morning.  This is done using the
5286 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/shutdown-at-night.html">shutdown-at-night</a> Debian package.</p>
5287
5288 <p>To enable this feature on a client, the machine need to be added to
5289 the netgroup shutdown-at-night-hosts.  For Debian Edu, this is done in
5290 LDAP, and once this is in place, the machine in question will check
5291 every hour from 16:00 until 06:00 to see if the machine is unused, and
5292 shut it down if it is.  If the hardware in question is supported by
5293 the
5294 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/n/nvram-wakeup.html">nvram-wakeup</a>
5295 package, the BIOS is told to turn the machine back on around 07:00 +-
5296 10 minutes.  If this isn't working, one can configure wake-on-lan to
5297 try to turn on the client.  The wake-on-lan option is only documented
5298 and not enabled by default in Debian Edu.</p>
5299
5300 <p>It is important to not turn all machines on at once, as this can
5301 blow a fuse if several computers are connected to the same fuse like
5302 the common setup for a classroom.  The nvram-wakeup method only work
5303 for machines with a functioning hardware/BIOS clock.  I've seen old
5304 machines where the BIOS battery were dead and the hardware clock were
5305 starting from 0 (or was it 1990?) every boot.  If you have one of
5306 those, you have to turn on the computer manually.</p>
5307
5308 <p>The shutdown-at-night package is completely self contained, and can
5309 also be used outside the Debian Edu environment.  For those without a
5310 central LDAP server with netgroups, one can instead touch the file
5311 <tt>/etc/shutdown-at-night/shutdown-at-night</tt> to enable it.
5312 Perhaps you too can use it to save some power?</p>
5313
5314       </div>
5315       <div class="tags">
5316
5317
5318         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5319
5320
5321       </div>
5322     </div>
5323     <div class="padding"></div>
5324
5325     <div class="entry">
5326       <div class="title">
5327         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Third_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Third beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
5328       </div>
5329       <div class="date">
5330          4th February 2012
5331       </div>
5332       <div class="body">
5333         <p>I am happy to announce that finally we managed today to wrap up and
5334 publish the third beta version of
5335 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
5336 on Squeeze.  If you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with
5337 out of the box PXE configuration for running diskless machines and
5338 installing new machines, check it out.  If you need a software
5339 solution for your school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
5340 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/02/msg00000.html">available</a>
5341 on the project announcement list.</p>
5342
5343 <p>I am very happy to report these changes and improvements since
5344 beta2 (there are more, see announcement for full list):</p>
5345
5346 <ul>
5347
5348 <li>It is now possible to change the pre-configured IP subnet from
5349   10.0.0.0/8 to something else by using the subnet-change tool after
5350   the installation.</li>
5351
5352 <li>Too full partitions are now automatically extended on the Main
5353   Server, based on the rules specified in /etc/fsautoresizetab.</li>
5354
5355 <li>The CUPS queues are now automatically flushed every night, and all
5356   disabled queues are restarted every hour.  This should cut down on
5357   the amount of manual administration needed for printers.</li>
5358
5359 <li>The set of initial users have been changed.  Now a personal user
5360   for the local system administrator is created during installation
5361   instead of the previously created localadmin and super-admin users,
5362   and this user is granted administrative privileges using group
5363   membership.  This reduces the number of passwords one need to keep
5364   up to date on the system.</li>
5365
5366 </ul>
5367
5368 <p>The new main server seem to work so well that I am testing it as my
5369 private DNS/LDAP/Kerberos/PXE/LTSP server at home.  I will use it look
5370 for issues we could fix to polish Debian Edu even further before the
5371 final Squeeze release is published.</p>
5372
5373 <p>Next weekend the project organise a
5374 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00001.html">developer
5375 gathering</a> in Oslo.  We will continue the work on the Squeeze
5376 version, and start initial planning for the Wheezy version.  Perhaps I
5377 will see you there?</p>
5378
5379       </div>
5380       <div class="tags">
5381
5382
5383         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5384
5385
5386       </div>
5387     </div>
5388     <div class="padding"></div>
5389
5390     <div class="entry">
5391       <div class="title">
5392         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Handling_non_free_firmware_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Handling non-free firmware in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
5393       </div>
5394       <div class="date">
5395         27th January 2012
5396       </div>
5397       <div class="body">
5398         <p>With some computer hardware, one need non-free firmware blobs.
5399 This is the sad fact of todays computers.  In the next version of
5400 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> based
5401 on Squeeze, we provide several scripts and modifications to make
5402 firmware blobs easier to handle.  The common use case I run into is a
5403 laptop with a wireless network card requiring non-free firmware to
5404 work, but there are other use cases as well.</p>
5405
5406 <p>First and foremost, Debian Edu provide ISO images for DVD and CD
5407 with all firmware packages in the Debian sections main and non-free
5408 included, to ensure debian-installer find and can install all of them
5409 during installation.  This take care firmware for network devices used
5410 by the installer when installing from from local media.  But for
5411 example multimedia devices are not activated in the installer and are
5412 not taken care of by this.</p>
5413
5414 <p>For non-network devices, we provide the script
5415 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/auto-addfirmware</tt> which
5416 search through the <tt>dmesg</tt> output for drivers requesting extra
5417 firmware.  The firmware file name is looked up in the Contents-ARCH.gz
5418 file available in the package repository, and the packages providing
5419 the requested firmware file(s) is installed.  I have proposed to do
5420 something similar in debian-installer (BTS report
5421 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/655507">#655507</a>), to allow PXE
5422 installs of Debian to handle firmware installation better.  Run the
5423 script as root from the command line to fetch and install the needed
5424 firmware packages.</p>
5425
5426 <p>Debian Edu provide PXE installation of Debian out of the box, and
5427 because some machines need firmware to get their network cards
5428 working, the installation initrd some times need extra firmware
5429 included to be able to install at all.  To fill the PXE installation
5430 initrd with extra firmware, the
5431 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/pxe-addfirmware</tt> script is
5432 provided.  Again, just run it as root on the command line to fill the
5433 PXE initrd with firmware packages.</p>
5434
5435 <p>Last, some LTSP clients might also need firmware to get their
5436 network cards working.  For this,
5437 <tt>/usr/share/debian-edu-config/tools/ltsp-addfirmware</tt> is
5438 provided to update the LTSP initrd with firmware blobs.  It is used
5439 the same way as the other firmware related tools.</p>
5440
5441 <p>At the moment, we do not run any of these during installation.  We
5442 do not know if this is acceptable for the local administrator to use
5443 non-free software, and it is their choice.</p>
5444
5445 <p>We plan to release beta3 this weekend.  You might want to give it a
5446 try.</p>
5447
5448       </div>
5449       <div class="tags">
5450
5451
5452         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5453
5454
5455       </div>
5456     </div>
5457     <div class="padding"></div>
5458
5459     <div class="entry">
5460       <div class="title">
5461         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
5462       </div>
5463       <div class="date">
5464         25th January 2012
5465       </div>
5466       <div class="body">
5467         <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
5468 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
5469 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
5470 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
5471 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
5472
5473 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
5474 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
5475 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
5476 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
5477 this is done, log on to the central server and run
5478 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
5479 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
5480 will look similar to this:</p>
5481
5482 <p><blockquote><pre>
5483 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
5484 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
5485 info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
5486
5487 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
5488
5489 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
5490 enter password: *******
5491 %
5492 </pre></blockquote></p>
5493
5494 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
5495 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
5496 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
5497 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
5498 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
5499 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
5500 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
5501 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
5502 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
5503 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
5504 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
5505 automatically.</p>
5506
5507 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
5508 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
5509
5510 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
5511 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
5512 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>
5513
5514       </div>
5515       <div class="tags">
5516
5517
5518         Tags: <a href="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>.
5519
5520
5521       </div>
5522     </div>
5523     <div class="padding"></div>
5524
5525     <div class="entry">
5526       <div class="title">
5527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Changing_the_default_Iceweasel_start_page_in_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Changing the default Iceweasel start page in Debian Edu/Squeeze</a>
5528       </div>
5529       <div class="date">
5530         10th January 2012
5531       </div>
5532       <div class="body">
5533         <p>In the Squeeze version of
5534 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> soon
5535 to be released, users of the system will get their default browser
5536 start page set from LDAP, allowing the system administrator to point
5537 all users to the school web page by updating one setting in LDAP.  In
5538 addition to setting the default start page when a machine boots, users
5539 are shown the same page as a welcome page when they log in for the
5540 first time.</p>
5541
5542 <p>The LDAP object dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no have an attribute
5543 labeledURI with "http://www/ LDAP for Debian Edu/Skolelinux" as the
5544 default content.  By changing this value to another URL, all users get
5545 to see the page behind this new URL.</p>
5546
5547 <p>An easy way to update it is by using the ldapvi tool.  It can be
5548 called as "<tt>ldapvi -ZD '(cn=admin)'</tt>' to update LDAP with the
5549 new setting.</p>
5550
5551 <p>We have written the code to adjust the default start page and show
5552 the welcome page, and I wonder if there is an easier way to do this
5553 from within Iceweasel instead.</p>
5554
5555       </div>
5556       <div class="tags">
5557
5558
5559         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
5560
5561
5562       </div>
5563     </div>
5564     <div class="padding"></div>
5565
5566     <div class="entry">
5567       <div class="title">
5568         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Second_beta_version_of_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Squeeze.html">Second beta version of Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Squeeze</a>
5569       </div>
5570       <div class="date">
5571          7th January 2012
5572       </div>
5573       <div class="body">
5574         <p>I am happy to announce that today we managed to wrap up and publish
5575 the second beta version of
5576 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>.  If
5577 you want to test a LDAP backed Kerberos server with out of the box PXE
5578 configuration for running diskless machines and installing new
5579 machines, check it out.  If you need a software solution for your
5580 school, check it out too.  The full announcement is
5581 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2012/01/msg00000.html">available</a>
5582 on the project announcement list.</p>
5583
5584       </div>
5585       <div class="tags">
5586
5587
5588         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5589
5590
5591       </div>
5592     </div>
5593     <div class="padding"></div>
5594
5595     <div class="entry">
5596       <div class="title">
5597         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fixing_an_hanging_debian_installer_for_Debian_Edu.html">Fixing an hanging debian installer for Debian Edu</a>
5598       </div>
5599       <div class="date">
5600          3rd January 2012
5601       </div>
5602       <div class="body">
5603         <p>During christmas, I have been working getting the next version of
5604 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a> ready
5605 for release.  The initial problem I looked at was particularly
5606 interesting.</p>
5607
5608 <P>The installer would hang at the end when it was doing it
5609 post-installation configuration, and whatevery I did to try to find
5610 the cause and fix it always worked while I tested it, but never when I
5611 integrated it into the installer and ran the installation from
5612 scratch.  I would try to restart processes, close file descriptors,
5613 remove or create files, and the installer would always unblock and
5614 wrap up its tasks.</p>
5615
5616 <p>Eventually the cause was found.  The kernel was simply running out
5617 of entropy, causing the Kerberos setup to hang waiting for more.
5618 Pressing keys was adding entropy to the kernel, and thus all my tries
5619 to fix the problem worked not because what I was typing to fix it, but
5620 because I was typing.</P>
5621
5622 <p>The fix I implemented was to add a background process looking at
5623 the level of entropy in the kernel (by checking
5624 /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail), and if it was too small, the
5625 installer will flush the kernel file buffers and do 'find /' to
5626 generate some disk IO.  Disk IO generate entropy in the kernel, and is
5627 one of the few things that can be initated from within the system to
5628 generate entropy.</p>
5629
5630 <p>The fix is in
5631 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze/Installation">beta1
5632 of the Debian Edu/Squeeze</a> version, and we
5633 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu">welcome more testers and
5634 developers</a>.  We plan to release beta2 this weekend.</p>
5635
5636       </div>
5637       <div class="tags">
5638
5639
5640         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5641
5642
5643       </div>
5644     </div>
5645     <div class="padding"></div>
5646
5647     <div class="entry">
5648       <div class="title">
5649         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html">Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</a>
5650       </div>
5651       <div class="date">
5652         21st November 2011
5653       </div>
5654       <div class="body">
5655         <p>At work we have heaps of servers.  I believe the total count is
5656 around 1000 at the moment.  To be able to get help from the vendors
5657 when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
5658 up to date.  If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
5659 vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
5660 firmware is upgraded.  So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
5661 firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
5662 university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
5663 For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
5664 the tools to do so.</p>
5665
5666 <p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
5667 fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got.  Most of
5668 our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
5669 so far.  This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
5670
5671 <p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
5672 <a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
5673 with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
5674 which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
5675 site I can find it.  Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
5676 download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
5677 within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
5678 be activated on the first reboot.</p>
5679
5680 <p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
5681 Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
5682 servers at a site?  Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
5683
5684 <p><pre>
5685 #!/usr/bin/perl
5686 use strict;
5687 use warnings;
5688 use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
5689 BEGIN {
5690     # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
5691     my %rhelmodules = (
5692         'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
5693         );
5694     for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
5695         eval "use $module;";
5696         if ($@) {
5697             my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
5698             system("yum install -y $pkg");
5699             eval "use $module;";
5700         }
5701     }
5702 }
5703 my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
5704
5705 upgrade_dell();
5706
5707 exit 0;
5708
5709 sub run_firmware_script {
5710     my ($opts, $script) = @_;
5711     unless ($script) {
5712         print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
5713         exit 1
5714     }
5715     print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
5716
5717     if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
5718         print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
5719     } else {
5720         print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
5721     }
5722 }
5723
5724 sub run_firmware_scripts {
5725     my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
5726     # Run firmware packages
5727     for my $dir (@dirs) {
5728         print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
5729         opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
5730         while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
5731             next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
5732             run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
5733         }
5734         closedir $dh;
5735     }
5736 }
5737
5738 sub download {
5739     my $url = shift;
5740     print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
5741     system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
5742 }
5743
5744 sub upgrade_dell {
5745     my @dirs;
5746     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5747     chomp $product;
5748
5749     if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
5750
5751         # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
5752         system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
5753
5754         my $tmpdir = tempdir(
5755             CLEANUP => 1
5756             );
5757         chdir($tmpdir);
5758         fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
5759         system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
5760         my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
5761         # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
5762         my $fwopts = "-q";
5763         if (@paths) {
5764             for my $url (@paths) {
5765                 fetch_dell_fw($url);
5766             }
5767             run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
5768         } else {
5769             print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5770             print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5771         }
5772         chdir('/');
5773     } else {
5774         print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
5775         print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
5776     }
5777 }
5778
5779 sub fetch_dell_fw {
5780     my $path = shift;
5781     my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
5782     download($url);
5783 }
5784
5785 # Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
5786 # firmware packages to download from Dell.  Only work for Linux
5787 # machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
5788 sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
5789     my $filename = shift;
5790
5791     my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
5792     chomp $product;
5793     my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
5794
5795     print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
5796
5797     my $xml = XMLin($filename);
5798     my @paths;
5799     for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
5800         my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
5801         my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
5802         my $oscode;
5803         if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
5804             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
5805         } else {
5806             $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
5807         }
5808         if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
5809         {
5810             @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
5811         }
5812     }
5813     for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
5814         my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
5815
5816         # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
5817         next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
5818
5819         my $cpath = $component->{path};
5820         for my $path (@paths) {
5821             if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
5822                 push(@paths, $cpath);
5823             }
5824         }
5825     }
5826     return @paths;
5827 }
5828 </pre>
5829
5830 <p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
5831 it could work on other platforms with some tweaking.  Anyone know a
5832 index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers?  At the
5833 moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
5834 outdated.</p>
5835
5836       </div>
5837       <div class="tags">
5838
5839
5840         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
5841
5842
5843       </div>
5844     </div>
5845     <div class="padding"></div>
5846
5847     <div class="entry">
5848       <div class="title">
5849         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_e_book_kiosk_for_the_public_libraries_.html">Free e-book kiosk for the public libraries?</a>
5850       </div>
5851       <div class="date">
5852          7th October 2011
5853       </div>
5854       <div class="body">
5855         <p>Here in Norway the public libraries are debating with the
5856 publishing houses how to handle electronic books.  Surprisingly, the
5857 libraries seem to be willing to accept digital restriction mechanisms
5858 (DRM) on books and renting e-books with artificial scarcity from the
5859 publishing houses.  Time limited renting (2-3 years) is one proposed
5860 model, and only allowing X borrowers for each book is another.
5861 Personally I find it amazing that libraries are even considering such
5862 models.</p>
5863
5864 <p>Anyway, while reading <a href="http://boklaben.no/?p=220">part of
5865 this debate</a>, it occurred to me that someone should present a more
5866 sensible approach to the libraries, to allow its borrowers to get used
5867 to a better model.  The idea is simple:</p>
5868
5869 <p>Create a computer system for the libraries, either in the form of a
5870 Live DVD or a installable distribution, that provide a simple kiosk
5871 solution to hand out free e-books.  As a start, the books distributed
5872 by <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a> (about
5873 36,000 books), <a href="http://runeberg.org/">Project Runenberg</a>
5874 (1149 books) and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/texts">The
5875 Internet Archive</a> (3,033,748 books) could be included, but any book
5876 where the copyright has expired or with a free licence could be
5877 distributed.</p>
5878
5879 <p>The computer system would make it easy to:</p>
5880
5881 <ul>
5882
5883 <li>Copy e-books into a USB stick, reading tablets, cell phones and
5884   other relevant equipment.</li>
5885
5886 <li>Show the books for reading on the the screen in the library.</li>
5887
5888 </ul>
5889
5890 <p>In addition to such kiosk solution, there should probably be a web
5891 site as well to allow people easy access to these books without
5892 visiting the library.  The site would be the distribution point for
5893 the kiosk systems, which would connect regularly to fetch any new
5894 books available.</p>
5895
5896 <p>Are there anyone working on a system like this?  I guess it would
5897 fit any library in the world, and not just the Norwegian public
5898 libraries. :)</p>
5899
5900       </div>
5901       <div class="tags">
5902
5903
5904         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
5905
5906
5907       </div>
5908     </div>
5909     <div class="padding"></div>
5910
5911     <div class="entry">
5912       <div class="title">
5913         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ripping_problematic_DVDs_using_dvdbackup_and_genisoimage.html">Ripping problematic DVDs using dvdbackup and genisoimage</a>
5914       </div>
5915       <div class="date">
5916         17th September 2011
5917       </div>
5918       <div class="body">
5919         <p>For convenience, I want to store copies of all my DVDs on my file
5920 server.  It allow me to save shelf space flat while still having my
5921 movie collection easily available.  It also make it possible to let
5922 the kids see their favourite DVDs without wearing the physical copies
5923 down.  I prefer to store the DVDs as ISOs to keep the DVD menu and
5924 subtitle options intact.  It also ensure that the entire film is one
5925 file on the disk.  As this is for personal use, the ripping is
5926 perfectly legal here in Norway.</p>
5927
5928 <p>Normally I rip the DVDs using dd like this:</p>
5929
5930 <blockquote><pre>
5931 #!/bin/sh
5932 # apt-get install lsdvd
5933 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
5934 dd if=/dev/dvd of=/storage/dvds/$title.iso bs=1M
5935 </pre></blockquote>
5936
5937 <p>But some DVDs give a input/output error when I read it, and I have
5938 been looking for a better alternative.  I have no idea why this I/O
5939 error occur, but suspect my DVD drive, the Linux kernel driver or
5940 something fishy with the DVDs in question.  Or perhaps all three.</p>
5941
5942 <p>Anyway, I believe I found a solution today using dvdbackup and
5943 genisoimage.  This script gave me a working ISO for a problematic
5944 movie by first extracting the DVD file system and then re-packing it
5945 back as an ISO.
5946
5947 <blockquote><pre>
5948 #!/bin/sh
5949 # apt-get install lsdvd dvdbackup genisoimage
5950 set -e
5951 tmpdir=/storage/dvds/
5952 title=$(lsdvd 2>/dev/null|awk '/Disc Title: / {print $3}')
5953 dvdbackup -i /dev/dvd -M -o $tmpdir -n$title
5954 genisoimage -dvd-video -o $tmpdir/$title.iso $tmpdir/$title
5955 rm -rf $tmpdir/$title
5956 </pre></blockquote>
5957
5958 <p>Anyone know of a better way available in Debian/Squeeze?</p>
5959
5960 <p>Update 2011-09-18: I got a tip from Konstantin Khomoutov about the
5961 readom program from the wodim package.  It is specially written to
5962 read optical media, and is called like this: <tt>readom dev=/dev/dvd
5963 f=image.iso</tt>.  It got 6 GB along with the problematic Cars DVD
5964 before it failed, and failed right away with a Timmy Time DVD.</p>
5965
5966 <p>Next, I got a tip from Bastian Blank about
5967 <a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">his
5968 program python-dvdvideo</a>, which seem to be just what I am looking
5969 for.  Tested it with my problematic Timmy Time DVD, and it succeeded
5970 creating a ISO image.  The git source built and installed just fine in
5971 Squeeze, so I guess this will be my tool of choice in the future.</p>
5972
5973       </div>
5974       <div class="tags">
5975
5976
5977         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
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/How_is_booting_into_runlevel_1_different_from_single_user_boots_.html">How is booting into runlevel 1 different from single user boots?</a>
5987       </div>
5988       <div class="date">
5989          4th August 2011
5990       </div>
5991       <div class="body">
5992         <p>Wouter Verhelst have some
5993 <a href="http://grep.be/blog/en/retorts/pere_kubuntu_boot">interesting
5994 comments and opinions</a> on my blog post on
5995 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_should_start_from__etc_rcS_d__in_Debian____almost_nothing.html">the
5996 need to clean up /etc/rcS.d/ in Debian</a> and my blog post about
5997 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">the
5998 default KDE desktop in Debian</a>.  I only have time to address one
5999 small piece of his comment now, and though it best to address the
6000 misunderstanding he bring forward:</p>
6001
6002 <p><blockquote>
6003 Currently, a system admin has four options: [...] boot to a
6004 single-user system (by adding 'single' to the kernel command line;
6005 this runs rcS and rc1 scripts)
6006 </blockquote></p>
6007
6008 <p>This make me believe Wouter believe booting into single user mode
6009 and booting into runlevel 1 is the same.  I am not surprised he
6010 believe this, because it would make sense and is a quite sensible
6011 thing to believe.  But because the boot in Debian is slightly broken,
6012 runlevel 1 do not work properly and it isn't the same as single user
6013 mode.  I'll try to explain what is actually happing, but it is a bit
6014 hard to explain.</p>
6015
6016 <p>Single user mode is defined like this in /etc/inittab:
6017 "<tt>~~:S:wait:/sbin/sulogin</tt>".  This means the only thing that is
6018 executed in single user mode is sulogin.  Single user mode is a boot
6019 state "between" the runlevels, and when booting into single user mode,
6020 only the scripts in /etc/rcS.d/ are executed before the init process
6021 enters the single user state.  When switching to runlevel 1, the state
6022 is in fact not ending in runlevel 1, but it passes through runlevel 1
6023 and end up in the single user mode (see /etc/rc1.d/S03single, which
6024 runs "init -t1 S" to switch to single user mode at the end of runlevel
6025 1.  It is confusing that the 'S' (single user) init mode is not the
6026 mode enabled by /etc/rcS.d/ (which is more like the initial boot
6027 mode).</p>
6028
6029 <p>This summary might make it clearer.  When booting for the first
6030 time into single user mode, the following commands are executed:
6031 "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc S; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  When booting into
6032 runlevel 1, the following commands are executed: "<tt>/etc/init.d/rc
6033 S; /etc/init.d/rc 1; /sbin/sulogin</tt>".  A problem show up when
6034 trying to continue after visiting single user mode.  Not all services
6035 are started again as they should, causing the machine to end up in an
6036 unpredicatble state.  This is why Debian admins recommend rebooting
6037 after visiting single user mode.</p>
6038
6039 <p>A similar problem with runlevel 1 is caused by the amount of
6040 scripts executed from /etc/rcS.d/.  When switching from say runlevel 2
6041 to runlevel 1, the services started from /etc/rcS.d/ are not properly
6042 stopped when passing through the scripts in /etc/rc1.d/, and not
6043 started again when switching away from runlevel 1 to the runlevels
6044 2-5.  I believe the problem is best fixed by moving all the scripts
6045 out of /etc/rcS.d/ that are not <strong>required</strong> to get a
6046 functioning single user mode during boot.</p>
6047
6048 <p>I have spent several years investigating the Debian boot system,
6049 and discovered this problem a few years ago.  I suspect it originates
6050 from when sysvinit was introduced into Debian, a long time ago.</p>
6051
6052       </div>
6053       <div class="tags">
6054
6055
6056         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>.
6057
6058
6059       </div>
6060     </div>
6061     <div class="padding"></div>
6062
6063     <div class="entry">
6064       <div class="title">
6065         <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>
6066       </div>
6067       <div class="date">
6068         30th July 2011
6069       </div>
6070       <div class="body">
6071         <p>In the Debian boot system, several packages include scripts that
6072 are started from /etc/rcS.d/.  In fact, there is a bite more of them
6073 than make sense, and this causes a few problems.  What kind of
6074 problems, you might ask.  There are at least two problems.  The first
6075 is that it is not possible to recover a machine after switching to
6076 runlevel 1.  One need to actually reboot to get the machine back to
6077 the expected state.  The other is that single user boot will sometimes
6078 run into problems because some of the subsystems are activated before
6079 the root login is presented, causing problems when trying to recover a
6080 machine from a problem in that subsystem.  A minor additional point is
6081 that moving more scripts out of rcS.d/ and into the other rc#.d/
6082 directories will increase the amount of scripts that can run in
6083 parallel during boot, and thus decrease the boot time.</p>
6084
6085 <p>So, which scripts should start from rcS.d/.  In short, only the
6086 scripts that _have_ to execute before the root login prompt is
6087 presented during a single user boot should go there.  Everything else
6088 should go into the numeric runlevels.  This means things like
6089 lm-sensors, fuse and x11-common should not run from rcS.d, but from
6090 the numeric runlevels.  Today in Debian, there are around 115 init.d
6091 scripts that are started from rcS.d/, and most of them should be moved
6092 out.  Do your package have one of them?  Please help us make single
6093 user and runlevel 1 better by moving it.</p>
6094
6095 <p>Scripts setting up the screen, keyboard, system partitions
6096 etc. should still be started from rcS.d/, but there is for example no
6097 need to have the network enabled before the single user login prompt
6098 is presented.</p>
6099
6100 <p>As always, things are not so easy to fix as they sound.  To keep
6101 Debian systems working while scripts migrate and during upgrades, the
6102 scripts need to be moved from rcS.d/ to rc2.d/ in reverse dependency
6103 order, ie the scripts that nothing in rcS.d/ depend on can be moved,
6104 and the next ones can only be moved when their dependencies have been
6105 moved first.  This migration must be done sequentially while we ensure
6106 that the package system upgrade packages in the right order to keep
6107 the system state correct.  This will require some coordination when it
6108 comes to network related packages, but most of the packages with
6109 scripts that should migrate do not have anything in rcS.d/ depending
6110 on them.  Some packages have already been updated, like the sudo
6111 package, while others are still left to do.  I wish I had time to work
6112 on this myself, but real live constrains make it unlikely that I will
6113 find time to push this forward.</p>
6114
6115       </div>
6116       <div class="tags">
6117
6118
6119         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>.
6120
6121
6122       </div>
6123     </div>
6124     <div class="padding"></div>
6125
6126     <div class="entry">
6127       <div class="title">
6128         <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>
6129       </div>
6130       <div class="date">
6131         29th July 2011
6132       </div>
6133       <div class="body">
6134         <p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
6135 mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
6136 desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
6137 parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
6138 issues.</p>
6139
6140 <p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
6141 implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
6142 do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
6143
6144 <ol>
6145
6146 <li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
6147 are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
6148 indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
6149 tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
6150 through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
6151 this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
6152 time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
6153 Debian.</li>
6154
6155 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
6156 plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
6157 currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
6158 should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
6159 and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
6160 advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
6161 Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
6162 it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
6163 type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
6164 license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
6165 more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
6166 make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
6167 not the browser for any missing features.</li>
6168
6169 <li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
6170 handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
6171 it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
6172 should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
6173 happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
6174 and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
6175 plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
6176 gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
6177 the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
6178 explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
6179
6180 <li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
6181 displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
6182 start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
6183 in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
6184 know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
6185 latter behaviour.</li>
6186
6187 </ol>
6188
6189 <p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
6190 upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
6191 it do not matter much.</p>
6192
6193 <p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
6194 Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
6195 maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
6196
6197       </div>
6198       <div class="tags">
6199
6200
6201         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6202
6203
6204       </div>
6205     </div>
6206     <div class="padding"></div>
6207
6208     <div class="entry">
6209       <div class="title">
6210         <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>
6211       </div>
6212       <div class="date">
6213         26th July 2011
6214       </div>
6215       <div class="body">
6216         <p>The Norwegian <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</A>
6217 site is build on Debian/Squeeze, and this platform was chosen because
6218 I am most familiar with Debian (being a Debian Developer for around 10
6219 years) because it is the latest stable Debian release which should get
6220 security support for a few years.</p>
6221
6222 <p>The web service is written in Perl, and depend on some perl modules
6223 that are missing in Debian at the moment.  It would be great if these
6224 modules were added to the Debian archive, allowing anyone to set up
6225 their own <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com">FixMyStreet</a> clone
6226 in their own country using only Debian packages.  The list of modules
6227 missing in Debian/Squeeze isn't very long, and I hope the perl group
6228 will find time to package the 12 modules Catalyst::Plugin::SmartURI,
6229 Catalyst::Plugin::Unicode::Encoding, Catalyst::View::TT, Devel::Hide,
6230 Sort::Key, Statistics::Distributions, Template::Plugin::Comma,
6231 Template::Plugin::DateTime::Format, Term::Size::Any, Term::Size::Perl,
6232 URI::SmartURI and Web::Scraper to make the maintenance of FixMyStreet
6233 easier in the future.</p>
6234
6235 <p>Thanks to the great tools in Debian, getting the missing modules
6236 installed on my server was a simple call to 'cpan2deb Module::Name'
6237 and 'dpkg -i' to install the resulting package.  But this leave me
6238 with the responsibility of tracking security problems, which I really
6239 do not have time for.</p>
6240
6241       </div>
6242       <div class="tags">
6243
6244
6245         Tags: <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>.
6246
6247
6248       </div>
6249     </div>
6250     <div class="padding"></div>
6251
6252     <div class="entry">
6253       <div class="title">
6254         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Software_vs__proprietary_softare___.html">Free Software vs. proprietary softare...</a>
6255       </div>
6256       <div class="date">
6257         20th June 2011
6258       </div>
6259       <div class="body">
6260         <p>Reading
6261 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2011/06/20/open-source-vs-closed-source-eulas/">the
6262 thingiverse blog</a>, I came across two highlights of interesting
6263 parts of the
6264 <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Autodesk_EULA">Autodesk</a>
6265 and
6266 <a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/06/things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.html">Microsoft
6267 Kinect</a> End User License Agreements (EULAs), which illustrates
6268 quite well why I stay away from software with EULAs.  Whenever I take
6269 the time to read their content, the terms are simply unacceptable.</p>
6270
6271       </div>
6272       <div class="tags">
6273
6274
6275         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>.
6276
6277
6278       </div>
6279     </div>
6280     <div class="padding"></div>
6281
6282     <div class="entry">
6283       <div class="title">
6284         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Experimental_Open311_API_for_the_mySociety_fixmystreet_system.html">Experimental Open311 API for the mySociety fixmystreet system</a>
6285       </div>
6286       <div class="date">
6287         30th April 2011
6288       </div>
6289       <div class="body">
6290         <p>Today, the first draft implementation of an
6291 <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> for the Norwegian
6292 service <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> started to
6293 work.  It is only available on the developer server for now, and I
6294 have not tested it using any existing Open311 client (I lack the
6295 platforms needed to run the clients I have found so far), but it is
6296 able to query the database and extract a list of open and closed
6297 requests within a given category and reported to a given municipality.
6298 I believe that is a good start to create a useful service for those
6299 that want to do data mining on the requests submitted so far.</p>
6300
6301 <p>Where is it?  Visit
6302 <a href="http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/">http://fiksgatami-dev.nuug.no/open311.cgi/v2/</a>
6303 to have a look.  Please send feedback to the
6304 <a href="http://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/fiksgatami">fiksgatami
6305 (at) nuug.no</a> mailing list.</p>
6306
6307       </div>
6308       <div class="tags">
6309
6310
6311         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
6312
6313
6314       </div>
6315     </div>
6316     <div class="padding"></div>
6317
6318     <div class="entry">
6319       <div class="title">
6320         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Initial_notes_on_adding_Open311_server_API_on_FixMyStreet.html">Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet</a>
6321       </div>
6322       <div class="date">
6323         29th April 2011
6324       </div>
6325       <div class="body">
6326         <p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
6327 the <a href="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
6328 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
6329 Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
6330 reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
6331 <a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
6332 FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
6333 me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
6334 municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
6335 Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
6336 FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
6337 to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
6338 issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
6339
6340 <p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
6341 handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
6342 reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
6343 receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
6344 able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
6345 it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
6346 I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
6347 of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
6348 submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
6349 Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
6350 methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
6351 know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
6352 some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
6353
6354 <p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
6355 which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
6356 run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
6357 each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
6358 should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
6359 here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
6360 category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
6361 as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
6362 it.</p>
6363
6364 <p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
6365 differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
6366 while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
6367 quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
6368 report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
6369 open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
6370 should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
6371
6372 <p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
6373 near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
6374 use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
6375 should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
6376 and range= options.</p>
6377
6378 <p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
6379 several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
6380 to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
6381 report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
6382 available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
6383 to best handle this.  I've noticed
6384 <a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
6385 latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
6386 solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
6387 Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
6388
6389 <p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
6390 up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
6391 list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
6392 discussions instead of only
6393 <a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
6394 well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
6395 also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
6396 seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
6397 fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
6398 work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>
6399
6400       </div>
6401       <div class="tags">
6402
6403
6404         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311</a>.
6405
6406
6407       </div>
6408     </div>
6409     <div class="padding"></div>
6410
6411     <div class="entry">
6412       <div class="title">
6413         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_enteres_Google_Summer_of_Code_2011.html">Gnash enteres Google Summer of Code 2011</a>
6414       </div>
6415       <div class="date">
6416          6th April 2011
6417       </div>
6418       <div class="body">
6419         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is still
6420 the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation.
6421 A few days ago the project
6422 <a href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2011-04/msg00011.html">announced</a>
6423 that it will participate in Google Summer of Code.  I hope many
6424 students apply, and that some of them succeed in getting AVM2 support
6425 into Gnash.</p>
6426
6427       </div>
6428       <div class="tags">
6429
6430
6431         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
6432
6433
6434       </div>
6435     </div>
6436     <div class="padding"></div>
6437
6438     <div class="entry">
6439       <div class="title">
6440         <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>
6441       </div>
6442       <div class="date">
6443          3rd April 2011
6444       </div>
6445       <div class="body">
6446         <p>Here is a small update for my English readers.  Most of my blog
6447 posts have been in Norwegian the last few weeks, so here is a short
6448 update in English.</p>
6449
6450 <p>The kids still keep me too busy to get much free software work
6451 done, but I did manage to organise a project to get a Norwegian port
6452 of the British service
6453 <a href="http://www.fixmystreet.com/">FixMyStreet</a> up and running,
6454 and it has been running for a month now.  The entire project has been
6455 organised by me and two others.  Around Christmas we gathered sponsors
6456 to fund the development work.  In January I drafted a contract with
6457 <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> on what to develop,
6458 and in February the development took place.  Most of it involved
6459 converting the source to use GPS coordinates instead of British
6460 easting/northing, and the resulting code should be a lot easier to get
6461 running in any country by now.  The Norwegian
6462 <a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">FiksGataMi</a> is using
6463 <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetmap</a> as the map
6464 source and the source for administrative borders in Norway, and
6465 support for this had to be added/fixed.</p>
6466
6467 <p>The Norwegian version went live March 3th, and we spent the weekend
6468 polishing the system before we announced it March 7th.  The system is
6469 running on a KVM instance of Debian/Squeeze, and has seen almost 3000
6470 problem reports in a few weeks.  Soon we hope to announce the Android
6471 and iPhone versions making it even easier to report problems with the
6472 public infrastructure.</p>
6473
6474 <p>Perhaps something to consider for those of you in countries without
6475 such service?</p>
6476
6477       </div>
6478       <div class="tags">
6479
6480
6481         Tags: <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>.
6482
6483
6484       </div>
6485     </div>
6486     <div class="padding"></div>
6487
6488     <div class="entry">
6489       <div class="title">
6490         <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>
6491       </div>
6492       <div class="date">
6493         28th January 2011
6494       </div>
6495       <div class="body">
6496         <p>The last few days I have looked at ways to track open security
6497 issues here at my work with the University of Oslo.  My idea is that
6498 it should be possible to use the information about security issues
6499 available on the Internet, and check our locally
6500 maintained/distributed software against this information.  It should
6501 allow us to verify that no known security issues are forgotten.  The
6502 CVE database listing vulnerabilities seem like a great central point,
6503 and by using the package lists from Debian mapped to CVEs provided by
6504 the testing security team, I believed it should be possible to figure
6505 out which security holes were present in our free software
6506 collection.</p>
6507
6508 <p>After reading up on the topic, it became obvious that the first
6509 building block is to be able to name software packages in a unique and
6510 consistent way across data sources.  I considered several ways to do
6511 this, for example coming up with my own naming scheme like using URLs
6512 to project home pages or URLs to the Freshmeat entries, or using some
6513 existing naming scheme.  And it seem like I am not the first one to
6514 come across this problem, as MITRE already proposed and implemented a
6515 solution.  Enter the <a href="http://cpe.mitre.org/index.html">Common
6516 Platform Enumeration</a> dictionary, a vocabulary for referring to
6517 software, hardware and other platform components.  The CPE ids are
6518 mapped to CVEs in the <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/">National
6519 Vulnerability Database</a>, allowing me to look up know security
6520 issues for any CPE name.  With this in place, all I need to do is to
6521 locate the CPE id for the software packages we use at the university.
6522 This is fairly trivial (I google for 'cve cpe $package' and check the
6523 NVD entry if a CVE for the package exist).</p>
6524
6525 <p>To give you an example.  The GNU gzip source package have the CPE
6526 name cpe:/a:gnu:gzip.  If the old version 1.3.3 was the package to
6527 check out, one could look up
6528 <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
6529 in NVD</a> and get a list of 6 security holes with public CVE entries.
6530 The most recent one is
6531 <a href="http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-0001">CVE-2010-0001</a>,
6532 and at the bottom of the NVD page for this vulnerability the complete
6533 list of affected versions is provided.</p>
6534
6535 <p>The NVD database of CVEs is also available as a XML dump, allowing
6536 for offline processing of issues.  Using this dump, I've written a
6537 small script taking a list of CPEs as input and list all CVEs
6538 affecting the packages represented by these CPEs.  One give it CPEs
6539 with version numbers as specified above and get a list of open
6540 security issues out.</p>
6541
6542 <p>Of course for this approach to be useful, the quality of the NVD
6543 information need to be high.  For that to happen, I believe as many as
6544 possible need to use and contribute to the NVD database.  I notice
6545 RHEL is providing
6546 <a href="https://www.redhat.com/security/data/metrics/rhsamapcpe.txt">a
6547 map from CVE to CPE</a>, indicating that they are using the CPE
6548 information.  I'm not aware of Debian and Ubuntu doing the same.</p>
6549
6550 <p>To get an idea about the quality for free software, I spent some
6551 time making it possible to compare the CVE database from Debian with
6552 the CVE database in NVD.  The result look fairly good, but there are
6553 some inconsistencies in NVD (same software package having several
6554 CPEs), and some inaccuracies (NVD not mentioning buggy packages that
6555 Debian believe are affected by a CVE).  Hope to find time to improve
6556 the quality of NVD, but that require being able to get in touch with
6557 someone maintaining it.  So far my three emails with questions and
6558 corrections have not seen any reply, but I hope contact can be
6559 established soon.</p>
6560
6561 <p>An interesting application for CPEs is cross platform package
6562 mapping.  It would be useful to know which packages in for example
6563 RHEL, OpenSuSe and Mandriva are missing from Debian and Ubuntu, and
6564 this would be trivial if all linux distributions provided CPE entries
6565 for their packages.</p>
6566
6567       </div>
6568       <div class="tags">
6569
6570
6571         Tags: <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>.
6572
6573
6574       </div>
6575     </div>
6576     <div class="padding"></div>
6577
6578     <div class="entry">
6579       <div class="title">
6580         <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>
6581       </div>
6582       <div class="date">
6583         23rd January 2011
6584       </div>
6585       <div class="body">
6586         <p>In the
6587 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/discover-data">discover-data</a>
6588 package in Debian, there is a script to report useful information
6589 about the running hardware for use when people report missing
6590 information.  One part of this script that I find very useful when
6591 debugging hardware problems, is the part mapping loaded kernel module
6592 to the PCI device it claims.  It allow me to quickly see if the kernel
6593 module I expect is driving the hardware I am struggling with.  To see
6594 the output, make sure discover-data is installed and run
6595 <tt>/usr/share/bug/discover-data 3>&1</tt>.  The relevant output on
6596 one of my machines like this:</p>
6597
6598 <pre>
6599 loaded modules:
6600 10de:03eb i2c_nforce2
6601 10de:03f1 ohci_hcd
6602 10de:03f2 ehci_hcd
6603 10de:03f0 snd_hda_intel
6604 10de:03ec pata_amd
6605 10de:03f6 sata_nv
6606 1022:1103 k8temp
6607 109e:036e bttv
6608 109e:0878 snd_bt87x
6609 11ab:4364 sky2
6610 </pre>
6611
6612 <p>The code in question look like this, slightly modified for
6613 readability and to drop the output to file descriptor 3:</p>
6614
6615 <pre>
6616 if [ -d /sys/bus/pci/devices/ ] ; then
6617     echo loaded pci modules:
6618     (
6619         cd /sys/bus/pci/devices/
6620         for address in * ; do
6621             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6622                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6623                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6624                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6625                     id=`lspci -n -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $3}'`
6626                     echo "$id $module"
6627                 fi
6628             fi
6629         done
6630     )
6631     echo
6632 fi
6633 </pre>
6634
6635 <p>Similar code could be used to extract USB device module
6636 mappings:</p>
6637
6638 <pre>
6639 if [ -d /sys/bus/usb/devices/ ] ; then
6640     echo loaded usb modules:
6641     (
6642         cd /sys/bus/usb/devices/
6643         for address in * ; do
6644             if [ -d "$address/driver/module" ] ; then
6645                 module=`cd $address/driver/module ; pwd -P | xargs basename`
6646                 if grep -q "^$module " /proc/modules ; then
6647                     address=$(echo $address |sed s/0000://)
6648                     id=$(lsusb -s $address | tail -n 1 | awk '{print $6}')
6649                     if [ "$id" ] ; then
6650                         echo "$id $module"
6651                     fi
6652                 fi
6653             fi
6654         done
6655     )
6656     echo
6657 fi
6658 </pre>
6659
6660 <p>This might perhaps be something to include in other tools as
6661 well.</p>
6662
6663       </div>
6664       <div class="tags">
6665
6666
6667         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
6668
6669
6670       </div>
6671     </div>
6672     <div class="padding"></div>
6673
6674     <div class="entry">
6675       <div class="title">
6676         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html">The video format most supported in web browsers?</a>
6677       </div>
6678       <div class="date">
6679         16th January 2011
6680       </div>
6681       <div class="body">
6682         <p>The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
6683 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM.  Most video sites
6684 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora.  Interestingly enough,
6685 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
6686 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
6687 the Wikipedia article on
6688 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">HTML5 video</a>,
6689 this is not true.  Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
6690 different browsers there.  The format supported by most browsers is
6691 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
6692 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
6693 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
6694 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
6695 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
6696 Firefox.  H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
6697 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
6698 Explorer.  Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
6699 Safari can install plugins to get it.</p>
6700
6701 <p>To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
6702 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
6703 HTML5 video tag.   Of course to reach all those without a browser
6704 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms.  In
6705 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">NUUG</a>, we provide first fallback to a
6706 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
6707 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
6708 Theora.  This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an <a
6709 href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/">example
6710 from last week</a>.</p>
6711
6712 <p>The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
6713 the least supported is simple.  Implementing and using H.264
6714 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
6715 are incompatible with free software licensing.  If you believed H.264
6716 was without royalties and license terms, check out
6717 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
6718 Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps.</p>
6719
6720 <p>A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
6721 available from
6722 <a href="http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos">the
6723 Xiph.org wiki</a>, if you want to have a look.  I'm not aware of a
6724 similar list for WebM nor H.264.</p>
6725
6726 <p>Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
6727 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
6728 &lt;video&gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
6729 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.</p>
6730
6731       </div>
6732       <div class="tags">
6733
6734
6735         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6736
6737
6738       </div>
6739     </div>
6740     <div class="padding"></div>
6741
6742     <div class="entry">
6743       <div class="title">
6744         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html">Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;</a>
6745       </div>
6746       <div class="date">
6747         12th January 2011
6748       </div>
6749       <div class="body">
6750         <p>Today I discovered
6751 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
6752 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
6753 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
6754 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
6755 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
6756 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
6757 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
6758 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
6759 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
6760 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
6761 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
6762 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
6763 on the Google announcement is available from
6764 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
6765 A good read. :)</p>
6766
6767 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
6768 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
6769 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
6770 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
6771 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
6772 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
6773 browsers support H.264, and others support
6774 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
6775 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
6776 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
6777 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
6778 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
6779 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
6780 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
6781 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
6782
6783 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
6784 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
6785 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
6786 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
6787 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
6788 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
6789 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
6790
6791 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
6792 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
6793 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
6794 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
6795 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
6796 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
6797 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
6798
6799 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
6800 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
6801 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
6802 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
6803 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
6804 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
6805 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
6806
6807 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
6808 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
6809 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
6810 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
6811 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
6812 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
6813 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
6814 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
6815 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
6816 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
6817 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
6818 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
6819 I guess time will tell.</p>
6820
6821 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
6822 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
6823 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>
6824
6825       </div>
6826       <div class="tags">
6827
6828
6829         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
6830
6831
6832       </div>
6833     </div>
6834     <div class="padding"></div>
6835
6836     <div class="entry">
6837       <div class="title">
6838         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html">What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</a>
6839       </div>
6840       <div class="date">
6841         30th December 2010
6842       </div>
6843       <div class="body">
6844         <p>After trying to
6845 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">compare
6846 Ogg Theora</a> to
6847 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the Digistan
6848 definition</a> of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
6849 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
6850 this.  As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
6851 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
6852 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others.  But to be able to complete this in a
6853 reasonable time frame, I will need help.</p>
6854
6855 <p>If you want to help out with this work, please visit
6856 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse">the
6857 wiki pages I have set up for this</a>, and let me know that you want
6858 to help out.  The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
6859 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
6860 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
6861 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).</p>
6862
6863 <p>The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do.  Do not be
6864 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)</p>
6865
6866       </div>
6867       <div class="tags">
6868
6869
6870         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
6871
6872
6873       </div>
6874     </div>
6875     <div class="padding"></div>
6876
6877     <div class="entry">
6878       <div class="title">
6879         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html">The many definitions of a open standard</a>
6880       </div>
6881       <div class="date">
6882         27th December 2010
6883       </div>
6884       <div class="body">
6885         <p>One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
6886 "<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">Free and
6887 Open Standard</a>" is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
6888 the term has been decided by Digistan.  The term "Open Standard" has
6889 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
6890 about standards.  One end up discussing which definition is the best
6891 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
6892 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.</p>
6893
6894 <p>But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
6895 standards, here are a few that I know about.  This list is not
6896 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
6897 complete survey.  More definitions are available on the
6898 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard">wikipedia
6899 page</a>.</p>
6900
6901 <p>First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
6902 Interoperability Framework version 1.0.  Really sad to notice that BSA
6903 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
6904 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
6905 their own people.  Anyway, the definition is still available and it
6906 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
6907 specification on equal terms.</p>
6908
6909 <blockquote>
6910
6911 <p>The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
6912 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
6913 open standard:</p>
6914
6915 <ul>
6916
6917 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
6918 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
6919 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
6920 (consensus or majority decision etc.).</li>
6921
6922 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
6923 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
6924 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
6925 nominal fee.</li>
6926
6927 <li>The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
6928 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
6929 free basis.</li>
6930
6931 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
6932
6933 </ul>
6934 </blockquote>
6935
6936 <p>Another one originates from my friends over at
6937 <a href="http://www.dkuug.dk/">DKUUG</a>, who coined and gathered
6938 support for <a href="http://www.aaben-standard.dk/">this
6939 definition</a> in 2004.  It even made it into the Danish parlament as
6940 <a href="http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm">their
6941 definition of a open standard</a>.  Another from a different part of
6942 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.</p>
6943
6944 <blockquote>
6945
6946 <p>En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:</p>
6947
6948 <ol>
6949
6950 <li>Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
6951 tilgængelig.</li>
6952
6953 <li>Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
6954 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.</li>
6955
6956 <li>Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
6957 "standardiseringsorganisation") via en åben proces.</li>
6958
6959 </ol>
6960
6961 </blockquote>
6962
6963 <p>Then there is <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html">the
6964 definition</a> from Free Software Foundation Europe.</p>
6965
6966 <blockquote>
6967
6968 <p>An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is</p>
6969
6970 <ol>
6971
6972 <li>subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
6973 manner equally available to all parties;</li>
6974
6975 <li>without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
6976 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
6977 Standard themselves;</li>
6978
6979 <li>free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
6980 any party or in any business model;</li>
6981
6982 <li>managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
6983 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
6984 parties;</li>
6985
6986 <li>available in multiple complete implementations by competing
6987 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
6988 parties.</li>
6989
6990 </ol>
6991
6992 </blockquote>
6993
6994 <p>A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
6995 its
6996 <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf">Open
6997 Standards Checklist</a> with a fairly detailed description.</p>
6998
6999 <blockquote>
7000 <p>Creation and Management of an Open Standard
7001
7002 <ul>
7003
7004 <li>Its development and management process must be collaborative and
7005   democratic:
7006
7007          <ul>
7008
7009          <li>Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
7010             participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
7011             imposed by the organization under which it is developed
7012             and managed.</li>
7013
7014          <li>The processes must be documented and, through a known
7015             method, can be changed through input from all
7016             participants.</li>
7017
7018          <li>The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
7019             the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.</li>
7020
7021          <li>Development and management should strive for consensus,
7022             and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.</li>
7023
7024          <li>The standard specification must be open to extensive
7025             public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
7026             comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.</li>
7027
7028          </ul>
7029
7030 </li>
7031
7032 </ul>
7033
7034 <p>Use and Licensing of an Open Standard</p>
7035 <ul>
7036
7037 <li>The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
7038   and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
7039   implementations to the interface described in the standard without
7040   undue or restrictive constraints.  Interfaces include APIs,
7041   protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.</li>
7042
7043 <li> The standard must not contain any proprietary "hooks" that create
7044   a technical or economic barriers</li>
7045
7046 <li>Faithful implementations of the standard must
7047   interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
7048   program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
7049   programs and mutually to use the information which has been
7050   exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
7051   file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
7052   conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
7053   computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
7054   intended to function.</li>
7055
7056 <li>It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
7057   standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
7058   must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.</li>
7059
7060 <li>It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
7061   fees; also known as "royalty free"), worldwide, non-exclusive and
7062   perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
7063   sell products based on the standard.  The only exceptions are
7064   terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
7065   outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
7066   patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
7067   only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
7068
7069       <ul>
7070
7071       <li> May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
7072         licensees' patent claims essential to practice that standard
7073         (also known as a reciprocity clause)</li>
7074
7075       <li> May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
7076         or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
7077         essential to practice that standard (also known as a
7078         "defensive suspension" clause)</li>
7079
7080       <li> The same licensing terms are available to every potential
7081         licensor</li>
7082
7083       </ul>
7084 </li>
7085
7086 <li>The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
7087   implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
7088   or restricted licensing terms</li>
7089
7090 </ul>
7091
7092 </blockquote>
7093
7094 <p>It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
7095 there are so many of them.  As you can see, the same holds true for
7096 open standard definitions.  Most of the definitions have a lot in
7097 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
7098 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
7099 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
7100 competition to downplay the significance of open standards.  I hope we
7101 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
7102 Standards.</p>
7103
7104       </div>
7105       <div class="tags">
7106
7107
7108         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7109
7110
7111       </div>
7112     </div>
7113     <div class="padding"></div>
7114
7115     <div class="entry">
7116       <div class="title">
7117         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html">Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</a>
7118       </div>
7119       <div class="date">
7120         25th December 2010
7121       </div>
7122       <div class="body">
7123         <p><a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">The
7124 Digistan definition</a> of a free and open standard reads like this:</p>
7125
7126 <blockquote>
7127
7128 <p>The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
7129 as follows:</p>
7130
7131 <ol>
7132
7133 <li>A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
7134 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
7135 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.</li>
7136
7137 <li>The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
7138 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
7139 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
7140 parties.</li>
7141
7142 <li>The standard has been published and the standard specification
7143 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
7144 distribute, and use it freely.</li>
7145
7146 <li>The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
7147 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.</li>
7148
7149 <li>There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.</li>
7150
7151 </ol>
7152
7153 <p>The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
7154 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
7155 products based on the standard.</p>
7156 </blockquote>
7157
7158 <p>For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
7159 and open standard according to this definition.  Here is a short
7160 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far.  I brought up the
7161 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
7162 <a href="http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html">in
7163 July 2009</a>, for those that want to see some background information.
7164 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
7165 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.</p>
7166
7167 <p><strong>Free from vendor capture?</strong></p>
7168
7169 <p>As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
7170 Ogg Theora specification.  It can be argued that the
7171 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/">Xiph foundation</A> is such vendor, but
7172 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
7173 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
7174 obvious that this is a real risk.  One issue with the Xiph
7175 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
7176 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web.  I've
7177 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
7178 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
7179 where is is spent in the foundation.  It is thus not obvious for an
7180 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
7181 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
7182 specification.  But it seem unlikely.</p>
7183
7184 <p><strong>Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?</strong></p>
7185
7186 <p>Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
7187 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled.  If Xiph foundation is
7188 controlled by a single vendor, it isn't, but I have not found any
7189 documentation indicating this.</p>
7190
7191 <p>According to
7192 <a href="http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf">a report</a>
7193 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
7194 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
7195 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
7196 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
7197 report is correct.</p>
7198
7199 <p><strong>Specification freely available?</strong></p>
7200
7201 <p>The specification for the <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/">Ogg
7202 container format</a> and both the
7203 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/">Vorbis</a> and
7204 <a href="http://theora.org/doc/">Theora</a> codeces are available on
7205 the web.  This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
7206
7207 <blockquote>
7208
7209 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
7210 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
7211 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
7212 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
7213 specification compliance.
7214
7215 </blockquote>
7216
7217 <p>The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
7218 <a href="http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt">RFC 3533</a>, and
7219 this is the term:<p>
7220
7221 <blockquote>
7222
7223 <p>This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
7224 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
7225 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
7226 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
7227 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
7228 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
7229 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
7230 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
7231 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
7232 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
7233 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
7234 translate it into languages other than English.</p>
7235
7236 <p>The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
7237 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.</p>
7238 </blockquote>
7239
7240 <p>All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
7241 this term seem to be fulfilled.  There might be a problem with the
7242 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
7243 thus reuse it in other specifications.  Not quite sure if that is a
7244 requirement for the Digistan definition.</p>
7245
7246 <p><strong>Royalty-free?</strong></p>
7247
7248 <p>There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
7249 Theora format.
7250 <a href="http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782">MPEG-LA</a>
7251 and
7252 <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit">Steve
7253 Jobs</a> in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
7254 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
7255 them.  Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
7256 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
7257 without paying any royalties.  For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
7258 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
7259 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.</p>
7260
7261 <p><strong>No constraints on re-use?</strong></p>
7262
7263 <p>I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.</p>
7264
7265 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
7266
7267 <p>3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
7268 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation.  Given the
7269 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
7270 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
7271 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
7272 this.</p>
7273
7274 <p>It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
7275 see if they are free and open standards.</p>
7276
7277       </div>
7278       <div class="tags">
7279
7280
7281         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
7282
7283
7284       </div>
7285     </div>
7286     <div class="padding"></div>
7287
7288     <div class="entry">
7289       <div class="title">
7290         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html">The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</a>
7291       </div>
7292       <div class="date">
7293         25th December 2010
7294       </div>
7295       <div class="body">
7296         <p>A few days ago
7297 <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece">an
7298 article</a> in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
7299 2.0 of
7300 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework">European
7301 Interoperability Framework</a> has been successfully lobbied by the
7302 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
7303 Nothing very surprising there, given
7304 <a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe">earlier
7305 reports</a> on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
7306 this work.  But I find this very sad.   The definition of
7307 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt">an
7308 open standard from version 1</a> was very good, and something I
7309 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
7310 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">the
7311 definition from Digistan</A>.  Version 2 have removed the open
7312 standard definition from its content.</p>
7313
7314 <p>Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
7315 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
7316 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
7317 in the public sector in Peru.  As the text was not available from a
7318 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
7319 <a href="http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html">my
7320 source</a> to ensure it is available also in the future.  Some
7321 background information about that story is available in
7322 <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099">an article</a> from
7323 Linux Journal in 2002.</p>
7324
7325 <blockquote>
7326 <p>Lima, 8th of April, 2002<br>
7327 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ<br>
7328 General Manager of Microsoft Perú</p>
7329
7330 <p>Dear Sir:</p>
7331
7332 <p>First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.</p>
7333
7334 <p>While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.</p>
7335
7336 <p>With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call "open source software" is what the Bill defines as "free software", since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call "commercial software" is what the Bill defines as "proprietary" or "unfree", given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.</p>
7337
7338 <p>It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:</p>
7339
7340 <p>
7341 <ul>
7342 <li>Free access to public information by the citizen. </li>
7343 <li>Permanence of public data. </li>
7344 <li>Security of the State and citizens.</li>
7345 </ul>
7346 </p>
7347
7348 <p>To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.</p>
7349
7350 <p>To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.</p>
7351
7352 <p>To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. </p>
7353
7354 <p>In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.</p>
7355
7356 <p>In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.</p>
7357
7358
7359 <p>From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:<br>
7360 <li>the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software</li>
7361 <li>the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software</li>
7362 <li>the law does not specify which concrete software to use</li>
7363 <li>the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought</li>
7364 <li>the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.</li>
7365
7366 </p>
7367
7368 <p>What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.</p>
7369
7370 <p>We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.</p>
7371
7372 <p>As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:</p>
7373
7374 <p>Firstly, you point out that: "1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution."</p>
7375
7376 <p>This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.</p>
7377
7378 <p>The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).</p>
7379
7380 <p>The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.</p>
7381
7382 <p>It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.</p>
7383
7384 <p>By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office "suite", under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.</p>
7385
7386 <p>To continue; you note that:" 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies..."</p>
7387
7388 <p>This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding "non-competitive ... practices."</p>
7389
7390 <p>Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them "a priori", but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.</p>
7391
7392 <p>Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.</p>
7393
7394 <p>On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms' expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.</p>
7395
7396 <p>It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: "update your software to the new version" (at the user's expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider's judgment alone, are "old"; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays "trapped" in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).</p>
7397
7398 <p>You add: "3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector."</p>
7399
7400 <p>I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.</p>
7401
7402 <p>On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.</p>
7403
7404 <p>In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.</p>
7405
7406 <p>In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.</p>
7407
7408 <p>It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of "ad hoc" software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.</p>
7409
7410 <p>With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.</p>
7411
7412 <p>Your letter continues: "4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties."</p>
7413
7414 <p>Alluding in an abstract way to "the dangers this can bring", without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.</p>
7415
7416 <p>On security:</p>
7417
7418 <p>National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or "bugs" (in programmers' slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.</p>
7419
7420 <p>What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.</p>
7421
7422 <p>It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.</p>
7423
7424 <p>In respect of the guarantee:</p>
7425
7426 <p>As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the "End User License Agreement" of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS'', that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.</p>
7427
7428 <p>On Intellectual Property:</p>
7429
7430 <p>Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).</p>
7431
7432 <p>You go on to say that: "The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position."</p>
7433
7434 <p>This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).</p>
7435
7436 <p>Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.</p>
7437
7438 <p>If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.</p>
7439
7440 <p>You continue: "6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time."</p>
7441
7442 <p>This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.</p>
7443
7444 <p>In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software ("blue screens of death", malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.</p>
7445
7446 <p>You further state that: "7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries."</p>
7447
7448 <p>I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.</p>
7449
7450 <p>On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.</p>
7451
7452 <p>You continue: "8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market."</p>
7453
7454 <p>Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.</p>
7455
7456 <p>The second argument refers to "problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector" This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.</p>
7457
7458 <p>You then say that: "9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place."</p>
7459
7460 <p>This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.</p>
7461
7462 <p>On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.</p>
7463
7464 <p>You continue by observing that: "10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment."</p>
7465
7466 <p>It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.</p>
7467
7468 <p>What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.</p>
7469
7470 <p>You go on to say that: "11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry."</p>
7471
7472 <p>This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.</p>
7473
7474 <p>You then state that: "12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools."</p>
7475
7476 <p>In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn't have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That's exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.</p>
7477
7478 <p>You end with a rhetorical question: "13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn't it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?"</p>
7479
7480 <p>We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.</p>
7481
7482 <p>The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.</p>
7483
7484 <p>In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.</p>
7485
7486 <p>I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.</p>
7487
7488 <p>Cordially,<br>
7489 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ<br>
7490 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.</p>
7491 </blockquote>
7492
7493       </div>
7494       <div class="tags">
7495
7496
7497         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7498
7499
7500       </div>
7501     </div>
7502     <div class="padding"></div>
7503
7504     <div class="entry">
7505       <div class="title">
7506         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html">Officeshots still going strong</a>
7507       </div>
7508       <div class="date">
7509         25th December 2010
7510       </div>
7511       <div class="body">
7512         <p>Half a year ago I
7513 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">wrote
7514 a bit</a> about <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>,
7515 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
7516 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.</p>
7517
7518 <p>I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
7519 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
7520 different Office implementations handle different ODF features.  Sad
7521 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
7522 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
7523 for OfficeShots users yet).  I am glad to see that the ODF community
7524 got such a great test tool available.</p>
7525
7526       </div>
7527       <div class="tags">
7528
7529
7530         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
7531
7532
7533       </div>
7534     </div>
7535     <div class="padding"></div>
7536
7537     <div class="entry">
7538       <div class="title">
7539         <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>
7540       </div>
7541       <div class="date">
7542         22nd December 2010
7543       </div>
7544       <div class="body">
7545         <p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
7546 href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> testing if the new
7547 batch of computers will work with Linux.  Every year for the last few
7548 years the university have organised shared bid of a few thousand
7549 computers, and this year HP won the bid.  Two different desktops and
7550 five different laptops are on the list this year.  We in the UNIX
7551 group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
7552 and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
7553 university.</p>
7554
7555 <p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
7556 perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well.  To test, I PXE
7557 install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
7558 a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware.  When
7559 something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
7560 on.  If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
7561 vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
7562 have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
7563
7564 <p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post.  Here is the simple tests
7565 I perform on a new model.</p>
7566
7567 <ul>
7568
7569 <li>Is PXE installation working?  I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
7570 and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment.  If I feel like it, I also test with
7571 RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
7572
7573 <li>Is X.org working?  If the graphical login screen show up after
7574 installation, X.org is working.</li>
7575
7576 <li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working?  Running glxgears (in
7577 package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
7578 reported by the program.</li>
7579
7580 <li>Is sound working?  With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
7581 logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful.  If there
7582 are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
7583 the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound.  I
7584 normally test this by playing
7585 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
7586 video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
7587
7588 <li>Is the USB subsystem working?  I test this by plugging in a USB
7589 memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
7590
7591 <li>Is the CD/DVD player working?  I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
7592 I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
7593
7594 <li>Is any built in camera working?  Test using cheese, and see if a
7595 picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
7596
7597 <li>Is bluetooth working?  Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
7598 any bluetooth devices are discovered.  In my office, I normally see a
7599 few.</li>
7600
7601 <li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working.  I have
7602 memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
7603 notice this.</li>
7604
7605 <li>For laptops, is suspend/hibernate working?  I'm testing if the
7606 special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
7607 resume.</li>
7608
7609 <li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
7610 adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
7611 switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc?  The set of buttons differ from
7612 laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
7613 not.</li>
7614
7615 <li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
7616 acceleration sensors etc.  I rarely test these, as I do not know how
7617 to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
7618 existence.</li>
7619
7620 </ul>
7621
7622 <p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
7623 for the HP machines I am testing.  I'm not done yet, so I will report
7624 the test results later.  For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
7625 fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
7626 and audio fail on RHEL6.  Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p.  As you
7627 can see, I have most machines left to test.  One interesting
7628 observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the frame rate than
7629 RHEL6 with glxgears.  No idea why.</p>
7630
7631       </div>
7632       <div class="tags">
7633
7634
7635         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>.
7636
7637
7638       </div>
7639     </div>
7640     <div class="padding"></div>
7641
7642     <div class="entry">
7643       <div class="title">
7644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html">Some thoughts on BitCoins</a>
7645       </div>
7646       <div class="date">
7647         11th December 2010
7648       </div>
7649       <div class="body">
7650         <p>As I continue to explore
7651 <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
7652 what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
7653 and regulations here in Norway.  Here are some random notes.</p>
7654
7655 <p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
7656 verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
7657 is known to everyone.  This means that if a BitCoin address has been
7658 published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
7659 possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
7660 that address.  There is even a web service to look at the details for
7661 all transactions.  There I can see that my address
7662 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
7663 have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
7664 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
7665 address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
7666 <a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
7667 of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far.  Thank you to each and
7668 every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
7669 fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
7670 address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
7671 generate and hand out a new address for each transaction.  I'm told
7672 there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
7673 organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
7674 themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
7675
7676 <p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
7677 regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
7678 without declaring it.  There are money laundering, tax and accounting
7679 laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
7680 If the Skolelinux foundation
7681 (<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
7682 Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
7683 normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
7684 Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or
7685 not, should everything or nothing be declared?  What exchange rate
7686 should be used when calculating taxes?  Would receivers have to pay
7687 income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
7688 BitCoin?  I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
7689
7690 <p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
7691 accepted by a lot of users.  It must be possible to get easy access to
7692 the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
7693 easy to spend it.  At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
7694 access to, but there are very few places to spend it.  I am not really
7695 a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
7696 so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins.  I
7697 would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
7698 and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
7699 if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
7700 to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular.  I'm sure they
7701 will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
7702 probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
7703 believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
7704 currencies.</p>
7705
7706 <p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
7707 CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
7708 competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
7709 to see which one get the next lump of cash).  The "winner" get 50
7710 BitCoin when this happen.  Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
7711 join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
7712 by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
7713 and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
7714 BitCoins.  Check out
7715 <a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
7716 if this sounds interesting.  I have not had time to try to set up a
7717 machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
7718 own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
7719 yet.</p>
7720
7721 <p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
7722 href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
7723 criticism</a> of bitcoin.  Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
7724 it was interesting to read.  The arguments presented seem to be
7725 equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
7726
7727       </div>
7728       <div class="tags">
7729
7730
7731         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>.
7732
7733
7734       </div>
7735     </div>
7736     <div class="padding"></div>
7737
7738     <div class="entry">
7739       <div class="title">
7740         <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>
7741       </div>
7742       <div class="date">
7743         10th December 2010
7744       </div>
7745       <div class="body">
7746         <p>With this weeks lawless
7747 <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
7748 attacks</a> on Wikileak and
7749 <a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
7750 speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
7751 not be trusted to handle money transactions.
7752 A blog post from
7753 <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
7754 Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
7755 mine mentioned earlier.  I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
7756 involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>.  I got
7757 some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
7758 some bitcoins to get started.  I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
7759 for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
7760
7761 <p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder?  It is a digital
7762 crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
7763 networks.  It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
7764 control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
7765 and companies alike to block donations and other transactions.  The
7766 source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
7767 for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
7768 line client builds just fine.  Hopefully Jonas
7769 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
7770 Debian</a> soon.</p>
7771
7772 <p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
7773 There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
7774 bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
7775 currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided.  There
7776 are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising.  If you
7777 want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
7778 you can even get
7779 <a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
7780 bitcoin at the time of writing).  Use
7781 <a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
7782 on the current exchange rates.</p>
7783
7784 <p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
7785 machines.  If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
7786 donations to the address
7787 <b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>.  Thank you!</p>
7788
7789       </div>
7790       <div class="tags">
7791
7792
7793         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>.
7794
7795
7796       </div>
7797     </div>
7798     <div class="padding"></div>
7799
7800     <div class="entry">
7801       <div class="title">
7802         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Student_group_continue_the_work_on_my_Reprap_3D_printer.html">Student group continue the work on my Reprap 3D printer</a>
7803       </div>
7804       <div class="date">
7805          9th December 2010
7806       </div>
7807       <div class="body">
7808         <p>A few days ago, I was introduces to some students in the robot
7809 student assosiation <a href="http://www.robotica.no/">Robotica
7810 Osloensis</a> at the University of Oslo where I work, who planned to
7811 get their own 3D printer.  They wanted to learn from me based on my
7812 work in the area.  After having a short lunch meeting with them, I
7813 offered them to borrow my reprap kit, as I never had time to complete
7814 the build and this seem unlike to change any time soon.  I look
7815 forward to see how this goes.  This monday their volunteer driver
7816 picked up my kit and drove it to their lab, and tomorrow I am told the
7817 last exam is over so they can start work on getting the 3D printer
7818 operational.</p>
7819
7820 <p>The robotic group have already build several robots on their own,
7821 and seem capable of getting the reprap operational.  I really look
7822 forward to being able to print all the cool 3D designs published on
7823 <a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/">Thingiverse</a>.  I even got
7824 some 3D scans I got made during Dagen@IFI when one of the groups at
7825 the computer science department at the university demonstrated their
7826 very cool 3D scanner.</p>
7827
7828       </div>
7829       <div class="tags">
7830
7831
7832         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap</a>.
7833
7834
7835       </div>
7836     </div>
7837     <div class="padding"></div>
7838
7839     <div class="entry">
7840       <div class="title">
7841         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_development_gathering_and_General_Assembly_for_FRiSK.html">Debian Edu development gathering and General Assembly for FRiSK</a>
7842       </div>
7843       <div class="date">
7844         29th November 2010
7845       </div>
7846       <div class="body">
7847         <p>On friday, the first Debian Edu / Skolelinux
7848 <a href="http://www.friprogramvareiskolen.no/Gathering/2010-12-03-05-Oslo">development
7849 gathering</a> in a long time take place here in Oslo, Norway.  I
7850 really look forward to seeing all the good people working on the
7851 Squeeze release.  The gathering is open for everyone interested in
7852 learning more about Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
7853
7854 <p>On Saturday, the Norwegian member organization taking care of
7855 organizing these development gatherings, Fri Programvare i Skolen,
7856 will hold its
7857 <a href="http://friprogramvareiskolen.no/Genfors/2010">General Assembly
7858 for 2010</a>.  Membership is open for all, and currently there are 388
7859 people registered as members.  Last year 32 members cast their vote in
7860 the memberdb based election system.  I hope more people find time to
7861 vote this year.</p>
7862
7863       </div>
7864       <div class="tags">
7865
7866
7867         Tags: <a href="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>.
7868
7869
7870       </div>
7871     </div>
7872     <div class="padding"></div>
7873
7874     <div class="entry">
7875       <div class="title">
7876         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_isn_t_Debian_Edu_using_VLC_.html">Why isn't Debian Edu using VLC?</a>
7877       </div>
7878       <div class="date">
7879         27th November 2010
7880       </div>
7881       <div class="body">
7882         <p>In the latest issue of Linux Journal, the readers choices were
7883 presented, and the winner among the multimedia player were VLC.
7884 Personally, I like VLC, and it is my player of choice when I first try
7885 to play a video file or stream.  Only if VLC fail will I drag out
7886 gmplayer to see if it can do better.  The reason is mostly the failure
7887 model and trust.  When VLC fail, it normally pop up a error message
7888 reporting the problem.  When mplayer fail, it normally segfault or
7889 just hangs.  The latter failure mode drain my trust in the program.<p>
7890
7891 <p>But even if VLC is my player of choice, we have choosen to use
7892 mplayer in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
7893 Edu/Skolelinux</a>.  The reason is simple.  We need a good browser
7894 plugin to play web videos seamlessly, and the VLC browser plugin is
7895 not very good.  For example, it lack in-line control buttons, so there
7896 is no way for the user to pause the video.  Also, when I
7897 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">last
7898 tested the browser plugins</a> available in Debian, the VLC plugin
7899 failed on several video pages where mplayer based plugins worked.  If
7900 the browser plugin for VLC was as good as the gecko-mediaplayer
7901 package (which uses mplayer), we would switch.</P>
7902
7903 <p>While VLC is a good player, its user interface is slightly
7904 annoying.  The most annoying feature is its inconsistent use of
7905 keyboard shortcuts.  When the player is in full screen mode, its
7906 shortcuts are different from when it is playing the video in a window.
7907 For example, space only work as pause when in full screen mode.  I
7908 wish it had consisten shortcuts and that space also would work when in
7909 window mode.  Another nice shortcut in gmplayer is [enter] to restart
7910 the current video.  It is very nice when playing short videos from the
7911 web and want to restart it when new people arrive to have a look at
7912 what is going on.</p>
7913
7914       </div>
7915       <div class="tags">
7916
7917
7918         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>.
7919
7920
7921       </div>
7922     </div>
7923     <div class="padding"></div>
7924
7925     <div class="entry">
7926       <div class="title">
7927         <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>
7928       </div>
7929       <div class="date">
7930         22nd November 2010
7931       </div>
7932       <div class="body">
7933         <p>Michael Biebl suggested to me on IRC, that I changed my automated
7934 upgrade testing of the
7935 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
7936 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a> to do <tt>apt-get autoremove</tt> when using apt-get.
7937 This seem like a very good idea, so I adjusted by test scripts and
7938 can now present the updated result from today:</p>
7939
7940 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
7941
7942 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
7943
7944 <blockquote><p>
7945   apache2.2-bin
7946   aptdaemon
7947   baobab
7948   binfmt-support
7949   browser-plugin-gnash
7950   cheese-common
7951   cli-common
7952   cups-pk-helper
7953   dmz-cursor-theme
7954   empathy
7955   empathy-common
7956   freedesktop-sound-theme
7957   freeglut3
7958   gconf-defaults-service
7959   gdm-themes
7960   gedit-plugins
7961   geoclue
7962   geoclue-hostip
7963   geoclue-localnet
7964   geoclue-manual
7965   geoclue-yahoo
7966   gnash
7967   gnash-common
7968   gnome
7969   gnome-backgrounds
7970   gnome-cards-data
7971   gnome-codec-install
7972   gnome-core
7973   gnome-desktop-environment
7974   gnome-disk-utility
7975   gnome-screenshot
7976   gnome-search-tool
7977   gnome-session-canberra
7978   gnome-system-log
7979   gnome-themes-extras
7980   gnome-themes-more
7981   gnome-user-share
7982   gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
7983   gstreamer0.10-tools
7984   gtk2-engines
7985   gtk2-engines-pixbuf
7986   gtk2-engines-smooth
7987   hamster-applet
7988   libapache2-mod-dnssd
7989   libapr1
7990   libaprutil1
7991   libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3
7992   libaprutil1-ldap
7993   libart2.0-cil
7994   libboost-date-time1.42.0
7995   libboost-python1.42.0
7996   libboost-thread1.42.0
7997   libchamplain-0.4-0
7998   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0
7999   libcheese-gtk18
8000   libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8001   libcryptui0
8002   libdiscid0
8003   libelf1
8004   libepc-1.0-2
8005   libepc-common
8006   libepc-ui-1.0-2
8007   libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8008   libfreerdp0
8009   libgconf2.0-cil
8010   libgdata-common
8011   libgdata7
8012   libgdu-gtk0
8013   libgee2
8014   libgeoclue0
8015   libgexiv2-0
8016   libgif4
8017   libglade2.0-cil
8018   libglib2.0-cil
8019   libgmime2.4-cil
8020   libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8021   libgnome2.24-cil
8022   libgnomepanel2.24-cil
8023   libgpod-common
8024   libgpod4
8025   libgtk2.0-cil
8026   libgtkglext1
8027   libgtksourceview2.0-common
8028   libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8029   libmono-addins0.2-cil
8030   libmono-cairo2.0-cil
8031   libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8032   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil
8033   libmono-posix2.0-cil
8034   libmono-security2.0-cil
8035   libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8036   libmono-system2.0-cil
8037   libmtp8
8038   libmusicbrainz3-6
8039   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil
8040   libndesk-dbus1.0-cil
8041   libopal3.6.8
8042   libpolkit-gtk-1-0
8043   libpt2.6.7
8044   libpython2.6
8045   librpm1
8046   librpmio1
8047   libsdl1.2debian
8048   libsrtp0
8049   libssh-4
8050   libtelepathy-farsight0
8051   libtelepathy-glib0
8052   libtidy-0.99-0
8053   media-player-info
8054   mesa-utils
8055   mono-2.0-gac
8056   mono-gac
8057   mono-runtime
8058   nautilus-sendto
8059   nautilus-sendto-empathy
8060   p7zip-full
8061   pkg-config
8062   python-aptdaemon
8063   python-aptdaemon-gtk
8064   python-axiom
8065   python-beautifulsoup
8066   python-bugbuddy
8067   python-clientform
8068   python-coherence
8069   python-configobj
8070   python-crypto
8071   python-cupshelpers
8072   python-elementtree
8073   python-epsilon
8074   python-evolution
8075   python-feedparser
8076   python-gdata
8077   python-gdbm
8078   python-gst0.10
8079   python-gtkglext1
8080   python-gtksourceview2
8081   python-httplib2
8082   python-louie
8083   python-mako
8084   python-markupsafe
8085   python-mechanize
8086   python-nevow
8087   python-notify
8088   python-opengl
8089   python-openssl
8090   python-pam
8091   python-pkg-resources
8092   python-pyasn1
8093   python-pysqlite2
8094   python-rdflib
8095   python-serial
8096   python-tagpy
8097   python-twisted-bin
8098   python-twisted-conch
8099   python-twisted-core
8100   python-twisted-web
8101   python-utidylib
8102   python-webkit
8103   python-xdg
8104   python-zope.interface
8105   remmina
8106   remmina-plugin-data
8107   remmina-plugin-rdp
8108   remmina-plugin-vnc
8109   rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8110   rhythmbox-plugins
8111   rpm-common
8112   rpm2cpio
8113   seahorse-plugins
8114   shotwell
8115   software-center
8116   system-config-printer-udev
8117   telepathy-gabble
8118   telepathy-mission-control-5
8119   telepathy-salut
8120   tomboy
8121   totem
8122   totem-coherence
8123   totem-mozilla
8124   totem-plugins
8125   transmission-common
8126   xdg-user-dirs
8127   xdg-user-dirs-gtk
8128   xserver-xephyr
8129 </p></blockquote>
8130
8131 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8132
8133 <blockquote><p>
8134   cheese
8135   ekiga
8136   eog
8137   epiphany-extensions
8138   evolution-exchange
8139   fast-user-switch-applet
8140   file-roller
8141   gcalctool
8142   gconf-editor
8143   gdm
8144   gedit
8145   gedit-common
8146   gnome-games
8147   gnome-games-data
8148   gnome-nettool
8149   gnome-system-tools
8150   gnome-themes
8151   gnuchess
8152   gucharmap
8153   guile-1.8-libs
8154   libavahi-ui0
8155   libdmx1
8156   libgalago3
8157   libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8158   libgtksourceview2.0-0
8159   liblircclient0
8160   libsdl1.2debian-alsa
8161   libspeexdsp1
8162   libsvga1
8163   rhythmbox
8164   seahorse
8165   sound-juicer
8166   system-config-printer
8167   totem-common
8168   transmission-gtk
8169   vinagre
8170   vino
8171 </p></blockquote>
8172
8173 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8174
8175 <blockquote><p>
8176   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8177 </p></blockquote>
8178
8179 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8180
8181 <blockquote><p>
8182 [nothing]
8183 </p></blockquote>
8184
8185 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
8186
8187 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8188
8189 <blockquote><p>
8190   ksmserver
8191 </p></blockquote>
8192
8193 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8194
8195 <blockquote><p>
8196   kwin
8197   network-manager-kde
8198 </p></blockquote>
8199
8200 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8201
8202 <blockquote><p>
8203   arts
8204   dolphin
8205   freespacenotifier
8206   google-gadgets-gst
8207   google-gadgets-xul
8208   kappfinder
8209   kcalc
8210   kcharselect
8211   kde-core
8212   kde-plasma-desktop
8213   kde-standard
8214   kde-window-manager
8215   kdeartwork
8216   kdeartwork-emoticons
8217   kdeartwork-style
8218   kdeartwork-theme-icon
8219   kdebase
8220   kdebase-apps
8221   kdebase-workspace
8222   kdebase-workspace-bin
8223   kdebase-workspace-data
8224   kdeeject
8225   kdelibs
8226   kdeplasma-addons
8227   kdeutils
8228   kdewallpapers
8229   kdf
8230   kfloppy
8231   kgpg
8232   khelpcenter4
8233   kinfocenter
8234   konq-plugins-l10n
8235   konqueror-nsplugins
8236   kscreensaver
8237   kscreensaver-xsavers
8238   ktimer
8239   kwrite
8240   libgle3
8241   libkde4-ruby1.8
8242   libkonq5
8243   libkonq5-templates
8244   libnetpbm10
8245   libplasma-ruby
8246   libplasma-ruby1.8
8247   libqt4-ruby1.8
8248   marble-data
8249   marble-plugins
8250   netpbm
8251   nuvola-icon-theme
8252   plasma-dataengines-workspace
8253   plasma-desktop
8254   plasma-desktopthemes-artwork
8255   plasma-runners-addons
8256   plasma-scriptengine-googlegadgets
8257   plasma-scriptengine-python
8258   plasma-scriptengine-qedje
8259   plasma-scriptengine-ruby
8260   plasma-scriptengine-webkit
8261   plasma-scriptengines
8262   plasma-wallpapers-addons
8263   plasma-widget-folderview
8264   plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8265   ruby
8266   sweeper
8267   update-notifier-kde
8268   xscreensaver-data-extra
8269   xscreensaver-gl
8270   xscreensaver-gl-extra
8271   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8272 </p></blockquote>
8273
8274 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8275
8276 <blockquote><p>
8277   ark
8278   google-gadgets-common
8279   google-gadgets-qt
8280   htdig
8281   kate
8282   kdebase-bin
8283   kdebase-data
8284   kdepasswd
8285   kfind
8286   klipper
8287   konq-plugins
8288   konqueror
8289   ksysguard
8290   ksysguardd
8291   libarchive1
8292   libcln6
8293   libeet1
8294   libeina-svn-06
8295   libggadget-1.0-0b
8296   libggadget-qt-1.0-0b
8297   libgps19
8298   libkdecorations4
8299   libkephal4
8300   libkonq4
8301   libkonqsidebarplugin4a
8302   libkscreensaver5
8303   libksgrd4
8304   libksignalplotter4
8305   libkunitconversion4
8306   libkwineffects1a
8307   libmarblewidget4
8308   libntrack-qt4-1
8309   libntrack0
8310   libplasma-geolocation-interface4
8311   libplasmaclock4a
8312   libplasmagenericshell4
8313   libprocesscore4a
8314   libprocessui4a
8315   libqalculate5
8316   libqedje0a
8317   libqtruby4shared2
8318   libqzion0a
8319   libruby1.8
8320   libscim8c2a
8321   libsmokekdecore4-3
8322   libsmokekdeui4-3
8323   libsmokekfile3
8324   libsmokekhtml3
8325   libsmokekio3
8326   libsmokeknewstuff2-3
8327   libsmokeknewstuff3-3
8328   libsmokekparts3
8329   libsmokektexteditor3
8330   libsmokekutils3
8331   libsmokenepomuk3
8332   libsmokephonon3
8333   libsmokeplasma3
8334   libsmokeqtcore4-3
8335   libsmokeqtdbus4-3
8336   libsmokeqtgui4-3
8337   libsmokeqtnetwork4-3
8338   libsmokeqtopengl4-3
8339   libsmokeqtscript4-3
8340   libsmokeqtsql4-3
8341   libsmokeqtsvg4-3
8342   libsmokeqttest4-3
8343   libsmokeqtuitools4-3
8344   libsmokeqtwebkit4-3
8345   libsmokeqtxml4-3
8346   libsmokesolid3
8347   libsmokesoprano3
8348   libtaskmanager4a
8349   libtidy-0.99-0
8350   libweather-ion4a
8351   libxklavier16
8352   libxxf86misc1
8353   okteta
8354   oxygencursors
8355   plasma-dataengines-addons
8356   plasma-scriptengine-superkaramba
8357   plasma-widget-lancelot
8358   plasma-widgets-addons
8359   plasma-widgets-workspace
8360   polkit-kde-1
8361   ruby1.8
8362   systemsettings
8363   update-notifier-common
8364 </p></blockquote>
8365
8366 <p>Running apt-get autoremove made the results using apt-get and
8367 aptitude a bit more similar, but there are still quite a lott of
8368 differences.  I have no idea what packages should be installed after
8369 the upgrade, but hope those that do can have a look.</p>
8370
8371       </div>
8372       <div class="tags">
8373
8374
8375         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>.
8376
8377
8378       </div>
8379     </div>
8380     <div class="padding"></div>
8381
8382     <div class="entry">
8383       <div class="title">
8384         <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>
8385       </div>
8386       <div class="date">
8387         22nd November 2010
8388       </div>
8389       <div class="body">
8390         <p>Most of the computers in use by the
8391 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux project</a>
8392 are virtual machines.  And they have been Xen machines running on a
8393 fairly old IBM eserver xseries 345 machine, and we wanted to migrate
8394 them to KVM on a newer Dell PowerEdge 2950 host machine.  This was a
8395 bit harder that it could have been, because we set up the Xen virtual
8396 machines to get the virtual partitions from LVM, which as far as I
8397 know is not supported by KVM.  So to migrate, we had to convert
8398 several LVM logical volumes to partitions on a virtual disk file.</p>
8399
8400 <p>I found
8401 <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM">a
8402 nice recipe</a> to do this, and wrote the following script to do the
8403 migration.  It uses qemu-img from the qemu package to make the disk
8404 image, parted to partition it, losetup and kpartx to present the disk
8405 image partions as devices, and dd to copy the data.  I NFS mounted the
8406 new servers storage area on the old server to do the migration.</p>
8407
8408 <pre>
8409 #!/bin/sh
8410
8411 # Based on
8412 # http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/articles/35011-Six-steps-for-migrating-Xen-virtual-machines-to-KVM
8413
8414 set -e
8415 set -x
8416
8417 if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
8418     echo "Usage: $0 &lt;hostname&gt;"
8419     exit 1
8420 else
8421     host="$1"
8422 fi
8423
8424 if [ ! -e /dev/vg_data/$host-disk ] ; then
8425     echo "error: unable to find LVM volume for $host"
8426     exit 1
8427 fi
8428
8429 # Partitions need to be a bit bigger than the LVM LVs.  not sure why.
8430 disksize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-disk | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
8431 swapsize=$( lvs --units m | grep $host-swap | awk '{sum = sum + $4} END { print int(sum * 1.05) }')
8432 totalsize=$(( ( $disksize + $swapsize ) ))
8433
8434 img=$host.img
8435 #dd if=/dev/zero of=$img bs=1M count=$(( $disksize + $swapsize ))
8436 qemu-img create $img ${totalsize}MMaking room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD
8437
8438 parted $img mklabel msdos
8439 parted $img mkpart primary linux-swap 0 $disksize
8440 parted $img mkpart primary ext2 $disksize $totalsize
8441 parted $img set 1 boot on
8442
8443 modprobe dm-mod
8444 losetup /dev/loop0 $img
8445 kpartx -a /dev/loop0
8446
8447 dd if=/dev/vg_data/$host-disk of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=1M
8448 fsck.ext3 -f /dev/mapper/loop0p1 || true
8449 mkswap /dev/mapper/loop0p2
8450
8451 kpartx -d /dev/loop0
8452 losetup -d /dev/loop0
8453 </pre>
8454
8455 <p>The script is perhaps so simple that it is not copyrightable, but
8456 if it is, it is licenced using GPL v2 or later at your discretion.</p>
8457
8458 <p>After doing this, I booted a Debian CD in rescue mode in KVM with
8459 the new disk image attached, installed grub-pc and linux-image-686 and
8460 set up grub to boot from the disk image.  After this, the KVM machines
8461 seem to work just fine.</p>
8462
8463       </div>
8464       <div class="tags">
8465
8466
8467         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>.
8468
8469
8470       </div>
8471     </div>
8472     <div class="padding"></div>
8473
8474     <div class="entry">
8475       <div class="title">
8476         <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>
8477       </div>
8478       <div class="date">
8479         20th November 2010
8480       </div>
8481       <div class="body">
8482         <p>I'm still running upgrade testing of the
8483 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">Lenny
8484 Gnome and KDE Desktop</a>, but have not had time to spend on reporting the
8485 status.  Here is a short update based on a test I ran 20101118.</p>
8486
8487 <p>I still do not know what a correct migration should look like, so I
8488 report any differences between apt and aptitude and hope someone else
8489 can see if anything should be changed.</p>
8490
8491 <p>This is for Gnome:</p>
8492
8493 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8494
8495 <blockquote><p>
8496   apache2.2-bin aptdaemon at-spi baobab binfmt-support
8497   browser-plugin-gnash cheese-common cli-common cpp-4.3 cups-pk-helper
8498   dmz-cursor-theme empathy empathy-common finger
8499   freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3 gconf-defaults-service gdm-themes
8500   gedit-plugins geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual
8501   geoclue-yahoo gnash gnash-common gnome gnome-backgrounds
8502   gnome-cards-data gnome-codec-install gnome-core
8503   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-disk-utility gnome-screenshot
8504   gnome-search-tool gnome-session-canberra gnome-spell
8505   gnome-system-log gnome-themes-extras gnome-themes-more
8506   gnome-user-share gs-common gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
8507   gstreamer0.10-tools gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
8508   gtk2-engines-smooth hal-info hamster-applet libapache2-mod-dnssd
8509   libapr1 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
8510   libart2.0-cil libatspi1.0-0 libboost-date-time1.42.0
8511   libboost-python1.42.0 libboost-thread1.42.0 libchamplain-0.4-0
8512   libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 libcheese-gtk18 libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
8513   libcryptui0 libcupsys2 libdiscid0 libeel2-data libelf1 libepc-1.0-2
8514   libepc-common libepc-ui-1.0-2 libfreerdp-plugins-standard
8515   libfreerdp0 libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata7
8516   libgdl-1-common libgdu-gtk0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4
8517   libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil
8518   libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgnomeprint2.2-data
8519   libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod-common libgpod4
8520   libgtk2.0-cil libgtkglext1 libgtksourceview-common
8521   libgtksourceview2.0-common libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil
8522   libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil
8523   libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil
8524   libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil
8525   libmono-system2.0-cil libmtp8 libmusicbrainz3-6
8526   libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libopal3.6.8
8527   libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
8528   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libpt2.6.7 libpython2.6 librpm1 librpmio1
8529   libsdl1.2debian libservlet2.4-java libsrtp0 libssh-4
8530   libtelepathy-farsight0 libtelepathy-glib0 libtidy-0.99-0
8531   libxalan2-java libxerces2-java media-player-info mesa-utils
8532   mono-2.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime nautilus-sendto
8533   nautilus-sendto-empathy openoffice.org-writer2latex
8534   openssl-blacklist p7zip p7zip-full pkg-config python-4suite-xml
8535   python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon-gtk python-axiom
8536   python-beautifulsoup python-bugbuddy python-clientform
8537   python-coherence python-configobj python-crypto python-cupshelpers
8538   python-cupsutils python-eggtrayicon python-elementtree
8539   python-epsilon python-evolution python-feedparser python-gdata
8540   python-gdbm python-gst0.10 python-gtkglext1 python-gtkmozembed
8541   python-gtksourceview2 python-httplib2 python-louie python-mako
8542   python-markupsafe python-mechanize python-nevow python-notify
8543   python-opengl python-openssl python-pam python-pkg-resources
8544   python-pyasn1 python-pysqlite2 python-rdflib python-serial
8545   python-tagpy python-twisted-bin python-twisted-conch
8546   python-twisted-core python-twisted-web python-utidylib python-webkit
8547   python-xdg python-zope.interface remmina remmina-plugin-data
8548   remmina-plugin-rdp remmina-plugin-vnc rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder
8549   rhythmbox-plugins rpm-common rpm2cpio seahorse-plugins shotwell
8550   software-center svgalibg1 system-config-printer-udev
8551   telepathy-gabble telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut tomboy
8552   totem totem-coherence totem-mozilla totem-plugins
8553   transmission-common xdg-user-dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk xserver-xephyr
8554   zip
8555 </p></blockquote>
8556
8557 Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude
8558
8559 <blockquote><p>
8560   arj bluez-utils cheese dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop ekiga eog
8561   epiphany-extensions epiphany-gecko evolution-exchange
8562   fast-user-switch-applet file-roller gcalctool gconf-editor gdm gedit
8563   gedit-common gnome-app-install gnome-games gnome-games-data
8564   gnome-nettool gnome-system-tools gnome-themes gnome-utils
8565   gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager gnuchess gucharmap
8566   guile-1.8-libs hal libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5
8567   libavahi-ui0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7
8568   libcucul0 libcurl3 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdmx1 libdvdread3
8569   libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1
8570   libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3 libfaad0 libgadu3
8571   libgalago3 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
8572   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
8573   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
8574   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtk-vnc-1.0-0
8575   libgtkhtml2-0 libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-0
8576   libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8577   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libkpathsea4 liblircclient0 libltdl3 liblwres50
8578   libmagick++10 libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmozjs1d libmpfr1ldbl libmtp7
8579   libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0
8580   libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpisock9
8581   libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8
8582   libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsensors3 libsexy2 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
8583   libspeexdsp1 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libsvga1
8584   libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0
8585   libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12
8586   libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common rhythmbox seahorse
8587   sound-juicer swfdec-gnome system-config-printer totem-common
8588   totem-gstreamer transmission-gtk vinagre vino w3c-dtd-xhtml wodim
8589 </p></blockquote>
8590
8591 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8592
8593 <blockquote><p>
8594   gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
8595 </p></blockquote>
8596
8597 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8598
8599 <blockquote><p>
8600 [nothing]
8601 </p></blockquote>
8602
8603 <p>This is for KDE:</p>
8604
8605 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
8606
8607 <blockquote><p>
8608   autopoint bomber bovo cantor cantor-backend-kalgebra cpp-4.3 dcoprss
8609   edict espeak espeak-data eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
8610   ghostscript-x git gnome-audio gnugo granatier gs-common
8611   gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio indi kaddressbook-plugins kalgebra
8612   kalzium-data kanjidic kapman kate-plugins kblocks kbreakout kbstate
8613   kde-icons-mono kdeaccessibility kdeaddons-kfile-plugins
8614   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
8615   kdeedu kdeedu-data kdeedu-kvtml-data kdegames kdegames-card-data
8616   kdegames-mahjongg-data kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc
8617   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
8618   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdessh kdetoys kdewebdev
8619   kdiamond kdnssd kfilereplace kfourinline kgeography-data kigo
8620   killbots kiriki klettres-data kmoon kmrml knewsticker-scripts
8621   kollision kpf krosspython ksirk ksmserver ksquares kstars-data
8622   ksudoku kubrick kweather libasound2-plugins libboost-python1.42.0
8623   libcfitsio3 libconvert-binhex-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libdb4.6++
8624   libdjvulibre-text libdotconf1.0 liberror-perl libespeak1
8625   libfinance-quote-perl libgail-common libgsl0ldbl libhtml-parser-perl
8626   libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl
8627   libio-stringy-perl libkdeedu4 libkdegames5 libkiten4 libkpathsea5
8628   libkrossui4 libmailtools-perl libmime-tools-perl
8629   libnews-nntpclient-perl libopenbabel3 libportaudio2 libpulse-browse0
8630   libservlet2.4-java libspeechd2 libtiff-tools libtimedate-perl
8631   libunistring0 liburi-perl libwww-perl libxalan2-java libxerces2-java
8632   lirc luatex marble networkstatus noatun-plugins
8633   openoffice.org-writer2latex palapeli palapeli-data parley
8634   parley-data poster psutils pulseaudio pulseaudio-esound-compat
8635   pulseaudio-module-x11 pulseaudio-utils quanta-data rocs rsync
8636   speech-dispatcher step svgalibg1 texlive-binaries texlive-luatex
8637   ttf-sazanami-gothic
8638 </p></blockquote>
8639
8640 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
8641
8642 <blockquote><p>
8643   amor artsbuilder atlantik atlantikdesigner blinken bluez-utils cvs
8644   dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop imlib-base imlib11 kalzium kanagram kandy
8645   kasteroids katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kbruch
8646   kcron kdat kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data kdeprint kdict kdvi kedit
8647   keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs kgeography kghostview
8648   kgoldrunner khangman khexedit kiconedit kig kimagemapeditor
8649   kitchensync kiten kjumpingcube klatin klettres klickety klines
8650   klinkstatus kmag kmahjongg kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmines
8651   kmousetool kmouth kmplot knetwalk kodo kolf kommander konquest kooka
8652   kpager kpat kpdf kpercentage kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler krec
8653   kregexpeditor kreversi ksame ksayit kshisen ksig ksim ksirc ksirtet
8654   ksmiletris ksnake ksokoban kspaceduel kstars ksvg ksysv kteatime
8655   ktip ktnef ktouch ktron kttsd ktuberling kturtle ktux kuickshow
8656   kverbos kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kwordquiz
8657   kworldclock kxsldbg libakode2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
8658   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
8659   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libbind9-50 libbluetooth2
8660   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0
8661   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
8662   libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0 libicu38
8663   libiec61883-0 libindex0 libisccc50 libisccfg50 libiw29
8664   libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1 libkdeedu3
8665   libkdegames1 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
8666   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
8667   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick10
8668   libmimelib1c2a libmodplug0c2 libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libmpfr1ldbl
8669   libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9 libpoppler-glib3
8670   libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 librss1 libsensors3
8671   libsmbios2 libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90
8672   libtalloc1 libxalan2-java-gcj libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 lskat
8673   mpeglib network-manager-kde noatun pmount tex-common texlive-base
8674   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended tidy
8675   ttf-dustin ttf-kochi-gothic ttf-sjfonts
8676 </p></blockquote>
8677
8678 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
8679
8680 <blockquote><p>
8681   dolphin kde-core kde-plasma-desktop kde-standard kde-window-manager
8682   kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-apps kdebase-workspace
8683   kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdeutils kscreensaver
8684   kscreensaver-xsavers libgle3 libkonq5 libkonq5-templates libnetpbm10
8685   netpbm plasma-widget-folderview plasma-widget-networkmanagement
8686   xscreensaver-data-extra xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra
8687   xscreensaver-screensaver-bsod
8688 </p></blockquote>
8689
8690 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
8691
8692 <blockquote><p>
8693   kdebase-bin konq-plugins konqueror
8694 </p></blockquote>
8695
8696       </div>
8697       <div class="tags">
8698
8699
8700         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>.
8701
8702
8703       </div>
8704     </div>
8705     <div class="padding"></div>
8706
8707     <div class="entry">
8708       <div class="title">
8709         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gnash_buildbot_slave_and_Debian_kfreebsd.html">Gnash buildbot slave and Debian kfreebsd</a>
8710       </div>
8711       <div class="date">
8712         20th November 2010
8713       </div>
8714       <div class="body">
8715         <p>Answering
8716 <a href="http://www.listware.net/201011/gnash-dev/67431-gnash-dev-buildbot-looking-for-slaves.html">the
8717 call from the Gnash project</a> for
8718 <a href="http://www.gnashdev.org:8010">buildbot</a> slaves to test the
8719 current source, I have set up a virtual KVM machine on the Debian
8720 Edu/Skolelinux virtualization host to test the git source on
8721 Debian/Squeeze.  I hope this can help the developers in getting new
8722 releases out more often.</p>
8723
8724 <p>As the developers want less main-stream build platforms tested to,
8725 I have considered setting up a <a
8726 href="http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">Debian/kfreebsd</a>
8727 machine as well.  I have also considered using the kfreebsd
8728 architecture in Debian as a file server in NUUG to get access to the 5
8729 TB zfs volume we currently use to store DV video.  Because of this, I
8730 finally got around to do a test installation of Debian/Squeeze with
8731 kfreebsd.  Installation went fairly smooth, thought I noticed some
8732 visual glitches in the cdebconf dialogs (black cursor left on the
8733 screen at random locations).  Have not gotten very far with the
8734 testing.  Noticed cfdisk did not work, but fdisk did so it was not a
8735 fatal problem.  Have to spend some more time on it to see if it is
8736 useful as a file server for NUUG.  Will try to find time to set up a
8737 gnash buildbot slave on the Debian Edu/Skolelinux this weekend.</p>
8738
8739       </div>
8740       <div class="tags">
8741
8742
8743         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>.
8744
8745
8746       </div>
8747     </div>
8748     <div class="padding"></div>
8749
8750     <div class="entry">
8751       <div class="title">
8752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_in_3D.html">Debian in 3D</a>
8753       </div>
8754       <div class="date">
8755          9th November 2010
8756       </div>
8757       <div class="body">
8758         <p><img src="http://thingiverse-production.s3.amazonaws.com/renders/23/e0/c4/f9/2b/debswagtdose_preview_medium.jpg"></p>
8759
8760 <p>3D printing is just great.  I just came across this Debian logo in
8761 3D linked in from
8762 <a href="http://blog.thingiverse.com/2010/11/09/participatory-branding/">the
8763 thingiverse blog</a>.</p>
8764
8765       </div>
8766       <div class="tags">
8767
8768
8769         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>.
8770
8771
8772       </div>
8773     </div>
8774     <div class="padding"></div>
8775
8776     <div class="entry">
8777       <div class="title">
8778         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_room_on_the_Debian_Edu_Sqeeze_DVD.html">Making room on the Debian Edu/Sqeeze DVD</a>
8779       </div>
8780       <div class="date">
8781          7th November 2010
8782       </div>
8783       <div class="body">
8784         <p>Prioritising packages for the Debian Edu /
8785 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> DVD, which is
8786 supposed provide a school with all the services and user applications
8787 needed on the pupils computer network has always been hard.  Even
8788 schools without Internet connections should be able to get Debian Edu
8789 working using this DVD.</p>
8790
8791 <p>The job became a lot harder when apt and aptitude started
8792 installing recommended packages by default.  We want the same set of
8793 packages to be installed when using the DVD and the netinst CD, and
8794 that means all recommended packages need to be on the DVD.  I created
8795 a patch for debian-cd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/601203">BTS
8796 report #601203</a> to do this, and since this change was applied to
8797 the Debian Edu DVD build, we have been seriously short on space.</p>
8798
8799 <p>A few days ago we decided to drop blender, wxmaxima and kicad from
8800 the default installation to save space on the DVD, believing that
8801 those needing these applications are few and can get them from the
8802 Debian archive.</p>
8803
8804 <p>Yesterday, I had a look what source packages to see which packages
8805 were using most space.  A few large packages are well know;
8806 openoffice.org, openclipart and fluid-soundfont.  But I also
8807 discovered that lilypond used 106 MiB and fglrx-driver used 53 MiB.
8808 The lilypond package is pulled in as a dependency for rosegarden, and
8809 when looking a bit closer I discovered that 99 MiB of the 106 MiB were
8810 the documentation package, which is recommended by the binary package.
8811 I decided to drop this documentation package from our DVD, as most of
8812 our users will use the GUI front-ends and do not need the lilypond
8813 documentation.  Similarly, I dropped the non-free fglrx-driver package
8814 which might be installed by d-i when its hardware is detected, as the
8815 free X driver should work.</p>
8816
8817 <p>With this change, we finally got space for the LXDE and Gnome
8818 desktop packages as well as the language specific packages making the
8819 DVD more useful again.</p>
8820
8821       </div>
8822       <div class="tags">
8823
8824
8825         Tags: <a href="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>.
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/Software_updates_2010_10_24.html">Software updates 2010-10-24</a>
8835       </div>
8836       <div class="date">
8837         24th October 2010
8838       </div>
8839       <div class="body">
8840         <p>Some updates.</p>
8841
8842 <p>My <a href="http://pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">gnash pledge</a> to
8843 raise money for the project is going well.  The lower limit of 10
8844 signers was reached in 24 hours, and so far 13 people have signed it.
8845 More signers and more funding is most welcome, and I am really curious
8846 how far we can get before the time limit of December 24 is reached.
8847 :)</p>
8848
8849 <p>On the #gnash IRC channel on irc.freenode.net, I was just tipped
8850 about what appear to be a great code coverage tool capable of
8851 generating code coverage stats without any changes to the source code.
8852 It is called
8853 <a href="http://simonkagstrom.github.com/kcov/index.html">kcov</a>,
8854 and can be used using <tt>kcov &lt;directory&gt; &lt;binary&gt;</tt>.
8855 It is missing in Debian, but the git source built just fine in Squeeze
8856 after I installed libelf-dev, libdwarf-dev, pkg-config and
8857 libglib2.0-dev.  Failed to build in Lenny, but suspect that is
8858 solvable.  I hope kcov make it into Debian soon.</p>
8859
8860 <p>Finally found time to wrap up the release notes for <a
8861 href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2010/10/msg00002.html">a
8862 new alpha release of Debian Edu</a>, and just published the second
8863 alpha test release of the Squeeze based Debian Edu /
8864 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a>
8865 release.  Give it a try if you need a complete linux solution for your
8866 school, including central infrastructure server, workstations, thin
8867 client servers and diskless workstations.  A nice touch added
8868 yesterday is RDP support on the thin client servers, for windows
8869 clients to get a Linux desktop on request.</p>
8870
8871       </div>
8872       <div class="tags">
8873
8874
8875         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>.
8876
8877
8878       </div>
8879     </div>
8880     <div class="padding"></div>
8881
8882     <div class="entry">
8883       <div class="title">
8884         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pledge_for_funding_to_the_Gnash_project_to_get_AVM2_support.html">Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support</a>
8885       </div>
8886       <div class="date">
8887         19th October 2010
8888       </div>
8889       <div class="body">
8890         <p><a href="http://www.getgnash.org/">The Gnash project</a> is the
8891 most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It
8892 has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its
8893 funding has dried up.  I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the
8894 continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with
8895 AVM2 flash files.</p>
8896
8897 <p>To try to get funding for developing such support, I have started
8898 <a href="http://www.pledgebank.com/gnash-avm2">a pledge</a> with the
8899 following text:</P>
8900
8901 <p><blockquote>
8902
8903   <p>"I will pay 100$ to the Gnash project to develop AVM2 support but
8904   only if 10 other people will do the same."</p>
8905
8906   <p>- Petter Reinholdtsen, free software developer</p>
8907
8908   <p>Deadline to sign up by: 24th December 2010</p>
8909
8910   <p>The Gnash project need to get support for the new Flash file
8911   format AVM2 to work with a lot of sites using Flash on the
8912   web. Gnash already work with a lot of Flash sites using the old AVM1
8913   format, but more and more sites are using the AVM2 format these
8914   days. The project web page is available from
8915   http://www.getgnash.org/ . Gnash is a free software implementation
8916   of Adobe Flash, allowing those of us that do not accept the terms of
8917   the Adobe Flash license to get access to Flash sites.</p>
8918
8919   <p>The project need funding to get developers to put aside enough
8920   time to develop the AVM2 support, and this pledge is my way to try
8921   to get this to happen.</p>
8922
8923   <p>The project accept donations via the OpenMediaNow foundation,
8924   <a href="http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32">http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/32</a> .</p>
8925
8926 </blockquote></p>
8927
8928 <p>I hope you will support this effort too.  I hope more than 10
8929 people will participate to make this happen.  The more money the
8930 project gets, the more features it can develop using these funds.
8931 :)</p>
8932
8933       </div>
8934       <div class="tags">
8935
8936
8937         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
8938
8939
8940       </div>
8941     </div>
8942     <div class="padding"></div>
8943
8944     <div class="entry">
8945       <div class="title">
8946         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_version_of_a_Perl_library_to_control_the_Spykee_robot.html">First version of a Perl library to control the Spykee robot</a>
8947       </div>
8948       <div class="date">
8949          9th October 2010
8950       </div>
8951       <div class="body">
8952         <p>This summer I got the chance to buy cheap Spykee robots, and since
8953 then I have worked on getting Linux software in place to control them.
8954 The firmware for the robot is available from the producer, and using
8955 that source it was trivial to figure out the protocol specification.
8956 I've started on a perl library to control it, and made some demo
8957 programs using this perl library to allow one to control the
8958 robots.</p>
8959
8960 <p>The library is quite functional already, and capable of controlling
8961 the driving, fetching video, uploading MP3s and play them.  There are
8962 a few less important features too.</p>
8963
8964 <p>Since a few weeks ago, I ran out of time to spend on this project,
8965 but I never got around to releasing the current source.  I decided
8966 today that it was time to do something about it, and uploaded the
8967 source to my Debian package store at people.skolelinux.org.</p>
8968
8969 <p>Because it was simpler for me, I made a Debian package and
8970 published the source and deb.  If you got a spykee robot, grab the
8971 source or binary package:</p>
8972
8973 <p><ul>
8974 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.tar.gz</a></li>
8975 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1.dsc</a></li>
8976 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian/packages/lenny/libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb">libspykee-perl_0.0.20101009-1_all.deb</a></li>
8977 </ul></p>
8978
8979 <p>If you are interested in helping out with developing this library,
8980 please let me know.</p>
8981
8982       </div>
8983       <div class="tags">
8984
8985
8986         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
8987
8988
8989       </div>
8990     </div>
8991     <div class="padding"></div>
8992
8993     <div class="entry">
8994       <div class="title">
8995         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Links_for_2010_10_03.html">Links for 2010-10-03</a>
8996       </div>
8997       <div class="date">
8998          3rd October 2010
8999       </div>
9000       <div class="body">
9001         <p><ul>
9002
9003 <li><a href="http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/there-is-no-plan-b-why-the-ipv4-to-ipv6-transition-will-be-ugly.ars">There
9004 is no Plan B: why the IPv4-to-IPv6 transition will be ugly</a></li>
9005
9006 <li>Scanner looking under clothes
9007 <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/03/nyheter/utenriks/reise/overvakingskamera/flyplasser/13667192/">has
9008 already been misused at Heathrow</a>.</li>
9009
9010 <li><a href="http://wiki.softwarelivre.org/Landell">Landell
9011 Webcasting</a> - interesting alternative for
9012 <ahref="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">DVSwitch</a> with
9013 simple setup.
9014
9015 </ul></p>
9016
9017       </div>
9018       <div class="tags">
9019
9020
9021         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
9022
9023
9024       </div>
9025     </div>
9026     <div class="padding"></div>
9027
9028     <div class="entry">
9029       <div class="title">
9030         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</a>
9031       </div>
9032       <div class="date">
9033          9th September 2010
9034       </div>
9035       <div class="body">
9036         <p>A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
9037 camera, a Canon IXUS 130.  It was instructive and very disturbing to
9038 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
9039 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
9040 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
9041 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway.  What is the
9042 problem, you might ask?  It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
9043 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
9044 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
9045
9046 <p>On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
9047 written:</p>
9048
9049 <blockquote>
9050 <p>This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
9051 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
9052 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
9053 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
9054 AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.</p>
9055
9056 <p>No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
9057 standard.</p>
9058 </blockquote>
9059
9060 <p>In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
9061 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
9062 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
9063 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.</p>
9064
9065 <p>This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
9066 read
9067 "<a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA">Why
9068 Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
9069 MPEG-LA</a>" by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
9070 "<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/">H.264 Is Not
9071 The Sort Of Free That Matters</a>" by Simon Phipps to learn more about
9072 the issue.  The solution is to support the
9073 <a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and
9074 open standards</a> for video, like <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg
9075 Theora</a>, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.</p>
9076
9077       </div>
9078       <div class="tags">
9079
9080
9081         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
9082
9083
9084       </div>
9085     </div>
9086     <div class="padding"></div>
9087
9088     <div class="entry">
9089       <div class="title">
9090         <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>
9091       </div>
9092       <div class="date">
9093          4th September 2010
9094       </div>
9095       <div class="body">
9096         <p>In the <a href="http://popcon.debian.org/unknown/by_vote">Debian
9097 popularity-contest numbers</a>, the adobe-flashplugin package the
9098 second most popular used package that is missing in Debian.  The sixth
9099 most popular is flashplayer-mozilla.  This is a clear indication that
9100 working flash is important for Debian users.  Around 10 percent of the
9101 users submitting data to popcon.debian.org have this package
9102 installed.</p>
9103
9104 <p>In the report written by Lars Risan in August 2008
9105 («<a href="http://wiki.skolelinux.no/Dokumentasjon/Rapporter?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Skolelinux_i_bruk_rapport_1.0.pdf">Skolelinux
9106 i bruk – Rapport for Hurum kommune, Universitetet i Agder og
9107 stiftelsen SLX Debian Labs</a>»), one of the most important problems
9108 schools experienced with <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian
9109 Edu/Skolelinux</a> was the lack of working Flash.  A lot of educational
9110 web sites require Flash to work, and lacking working Flash support in
9111 the web browser and the problems with installing it was perceived as a
9112 good reason to stay with Windows.</p>
9113
9114 <p>I once saw a funny and sad comment in a web forum, where Linux was
9115 said to be the retarded cousin that did not really understand
9116 everything you told him but could work fairly well.  This was a
9117 comment regarding the problems Linux have with proprietary formats and
9118 non-standard web pages, and is sad because it exposes a fairly common
9119 understanding of whose fault it is if web pages that only work in for
9120 example Internet Explorer 6 fail to work on Firefox, and funny because
9121 it explain very well how annoying it is for users when Linux
9122 distributions do not work with the documents they receive or the web
9123 pages they want to visit.</p>
9124
9125 <p>This is part of the reason why I believe it is important for Debian
9126 and Debian Edu to have a well working Flash implementation in the
9127 distribution, to get at least popular sites as Youtube and Google
9128 Video to working out of the box.  For Squeeze, Debian have the chance
9129 to include the latest version of Gnash that will make this happen, as
9130 the new release 0.8.8 was published a few weeks ago and is resting in
9131 unstable.  The new version work with more sites that version 0.8.7.
9132 The Gnash maintainers have asked for a freeze exception, but the
9133 release team have not had time to reply to it yet.  I hope they agree
9134 with me that Flash is important for the Debian desktop users, and thus
9135 accept the new package into Squeeze.</p>
9136
9137       </div>
9138       <div class="tags">
9139
9140
9141         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>.
9142
9143
9144       </div>
9145     </div>
9146     <div class="padding"></div>
9147
9148     <div class="entry">
9149       <div class="title">
9150         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_first_perl_GUI_application___controlling_a_Spykee_robot.html">My first perl GUI application - controlling a Spykee robot</a>
9151       </div>
9152       <div class="date">
9153          1st September 2010
9154       </div>
9155       <div class="body">
9156         <p>This evening I made my first Perl GUI application.  The last few
9157 days I have worked on a Perl module for controlling my recently
9158 aquired Spykee robots, and the module is now getting complete enought
9159 that it is possible to use it to control the robot driving at least.
9160 It was now time to figure out how to use it to create some GUI to
9161 allow me to drive the robot around.  I picked PerlQt as I have had
9162 positive experiences with the Qt API before, and spent a few minutes
9163 browsing the web for examples.  Using Qt Designer seemed like a short
9164 cut, so I ended up writing the perl GUI using Qt Designer and
9165 compiling it into a perl program using the puic program from
9166 libqt-perl.  Nothing fancy yet, but it got buttons to connect and
9167 drive around.</p>
9168
9169 <p>The perl module I have written provide a object oriented API for
9170 controlling the robot.  Here is an small example on how to use it:</p>
9171
9172 <p><pre>
9173 use Spykee;
9174 Spykee::discover(sub {$robot{$_[0]} = $_[1]});
9175 my $host = (keys %robot)[0];
9176 my $spykee = Spykee->new();
9177 $spykee->contact($host, "admin", "admin");
9178 $spykee->left();
9179 sleep 2;
9180 $spykee->right();
9181 sleep 2;
9182 $spykee->forward();
9183 sleep 2;
9184 $spykee->back();
9185 sleep 2;
9186 $spykee->stop();
9187 </pre></p>
9188
9189 <p>Thanks to the release of the source of the robot firmware, I could
9190 peek into the implementation at the other end to figure out how to
9191 implement the protocol used by the robot.  I've implemented several of
9192 the commands the robot understand, but is still missing the camera
9193 support to make it possible to control the robot from remote.  First I
9194 want to implement support for uploading new firmware and configuring
9195 the wireless network, to make it possible to bootstrap a Spykee robot
9196 without the producers Windows and MacOSX software (I only have Linux,
9197 so I had to ask a friend to come over to get the robot testing
9198 going. :).</p>
9199
9200 <p>Will release the source to the public soon, but need to figure out
9201 where to make it available first.  I will add a link to
9202 <a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/robot/">the NUUG wiki</a> for
9203 those that want to check back later to find it.</p>
9204
9205       </div>
9206       <div class="tags">
9207
9208
9209         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot</a>.
9210
9211
9212       </div>
9213     </div>
9214     <div class="padding"></div>
9215
9216     <div class="entry">
9217       <div class="title">
9218         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_hard_link_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken hard link handling with sshfs</a>
9219       </div>
9220       <div class="date">
9221         30th August 2010
9222       </div>
9223       <div class="body">
9224         <p>Just got an email from Tobias Gruetzmacher as a followup on my
9225 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">previous
9226 post about sshfs</a>.  He reported another problem with sshfs.  It
9227 fail to handle hard links properly.  A simple way to spot this is to
9228 look at the . and .. entries in the directory tree.  These should have
9229 a link count >1, but on sshfs the count is 1.  I just tested to see
9230 what happen when trying to hardlink, and this fail as well:</p>
9231
9232 <pre>
9233 % ln foo bar
9234 ln: creating hard link `bar' => `foo': Function not implemented
9235 %
9236 </pre>
9237
9238 <p>I have not yet found time to implement a test for this in my file
9239 system test code, but believe having working hard links is useful to
9240 avoid surprised unix programs.  Not as useful as working file locking
9241 and symlinks, which are required to get a working desktop, but useful
9242 nevertheless. :)</p>
9243
9244 <p>The latest version of the file system test code is available via
9245 git from
9246 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a></p>
9247
9248       </div>
9249       <div class="tags">
9250
9251
9252         Tags: <a href="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>.
9253
9254
9255       </div>
9256     </div>
9257     <div class="padding"></div>
9258
9259     <div class="entry">
9260       <div class="title">
9261         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Broken_umask_handling_with_sshfs.html">Broken umask handling with sshfs</a>
9262       </div>
9263       <div class="date">
9264         26th August 2010
9265       </div>
9266       <div class="body">
9267         <p>My file system sematics program
9268 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">presented
9269 a few days ago</a> is very useful to verify that a file system can
9270 work as a unix home directory,and today I had to extend it a bit.  I'm
9271 looking into alternatives for home directory access here at the
9272 University of Oslo, and one of the options is sshfs.  My friend
9273 Finn-Arne mentioned a while back that they had used sshfs with Debian
9274 Edu, but stopped because of problems.  I asked today what the problems
9275 where, and he mentioned that sshfs failed to handle umask properly.
9276 Trying to detect the problem I wrote this addition to my fs testing
9277 script:</p>
9278
9279 <pre>
9280 mode_t touch_get_mode(const char *name, mode_t mode) {
9281   mode_t retval = 0;
9282   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, mode);
9283   if (-1 != fd) {
9284     unlink(name);
9285     struct stat statbuf;
9286     if (-1 != fstat(fd, &statbuf)) {
9287       retval = statbuf.st_mode & 0x1ff;
9288     }
9289     close(fd);
9290   }
9291   return retval;
9292 }
9293
9294 /* Try to detect problem discovered using sshfs */
9295 int test_umask(void) {
9296   printf("info: testing umask effect on file creation\n");
9297
9298   mode_t orig_umask = umask(000);
9299   mode_t newmode;
9300   if (0666 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
9301     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 000\n",
9302            newmode);
9303   }
9304   umask(007);
9305   if (0660 != (newmode = touch_get_mode("foobar", 0666))) {
9306     printf("  error: Wrong file mode %o when creating using mode 666 and umask 007\n",
9307            newmode);
9308   }
9309
9310   umask (orig_umask);
9311   return 0;
9312 }
9313
9314 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9315   [...]
9316   test_umask();
9317   return 0;
9318 }
9319 </pre>
9320
9321 <p>Sure enough.  On NFS to a netapp, I get this result:</p>
9322
9323 <pre>
9324 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9325 info: testing symlink creation
9326 info: testing subdirectory creation
9327 info: testing fcntl locking
9328   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9329   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9330   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9331   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9332   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9333   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9334 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9335 </pre>
9336
9337 <p>When mounting the same directory using sshfs, I get this
9338 result:</p>
9339
9340 <pre>
9341 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9342 info: testing symlink creation
9343 info: testing subdirectory creation
9344 info: testing fcntl locking
9345   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9346   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9347   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9348   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9349   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9350   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9351 info: testing umask effect on file creation
9352   error: Wrong file mode 644 when creating using mode 666 and umask 000
9353   error: Wrong file mode 640 when creating using mode 666 and umask 007
9354 </pre>
9355
9356 <p>So, I can conclude that sshfs is better than smb to a Netapp or a
9357 Windows server, but not good enough to be used as a home
9358 directory.</p>
9359
9360 <p>Update 2010-08-26: Reported the issue in
9361 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/594498">BTS report #594498</a></p>
9362
9363 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9364 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9365 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
9366
9367       </div>
9368       <div class="tags">
9369
9370
9371         Tags: <a href="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>.
9372
9373
9374       </div>
9375     </div>
9376     <div class="padding"></div>
9377
9378     <div class="entry">
9379       <div class="title">
9380         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Rob_Weir__How_to_Crush_Dissent.html">Rob Weir: How to Crush Dissent</a>
9381       </div>
9382       <div class="date">
9383         15th August 2010
9384       </div>
9385       <div class="body">
9386         <p>I found the notes from Rob Weir on
9387 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/VGb23-kta8c/how-to-crush-dissent.html">how
9388 to crush dissent</a> matching my own thoughts on the matter quite
9389 well.  Highly recommended for those wondering which road our society
9390 should go down.  In my view we have been heading the wrong way for a
9391 long time.</p>
9392
9393       </div>
9394       <div class="tags">
9395
9396
9397         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
9398
9399
9400       </div>
9401     </div>
9402     <div class="padding"></div>
9403
9404     <div class="entry">
9405       <div class="title">
9406         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/No_hardcoded_config_on_Debian_Edu_clients.html">No hardcoded config on Debian Edu clients</a>
9407       </div>
9408       <div class="date">
9409          9th August 2010
9410       </div>
9411       <div class="body">
9412         <p>As reported earlier, the last few days I have looked at how Debian
9413 Edu clients are configured, and tried to get rid of all hardcoded
9414 configuration settings on the clients.  I believe the work to be
9415 mostly done, and the clients seem to work just fine with dynamically
9416 generated configuration.</p>
9417
9418 <p>What is the point, you might ask?  The point is to allow a Debian
9419 Edu desktop to integrate into an existing network infrastructure
9420 without any manual configuration.</p>
9421
9422 <p>This is what happens when installing a Debian Edu client here at
9423 the University of Oslo using PXE.  With the PXE installation, I am
9424 asked for language (Norwegian Bokmål), locality (Norway) and keyboard
9425 layout (no-latin1), Debian Edu profile (Roaming Workstation), if I
9426 accept to reformat the hard drive (yes), if I want to submit info to
9427 popcon.debian.org (no) and root password (secret).  After answering
9428 these questions, the installer goes ahead and does its thing, and
9429 after around 50 minutes it is done.  I press enter to finish the
9430 installation, and the machine reboots into KDE.  When the machine is
9431 ready and kdm asks for login information, I enter my university
9432 username and password, am told by kdm that a local home directory has
9433 been created and that I must log in again, and finally log in with the
9434 same username and password to the KDE 4.4 desktop.  At no point during
9435 this process did it ask for university specific settings, and all the
9436 required configuration was dynamically detected using information
9437 fetched via DHCP and DNS.  The roaming workstation is now ready for
9438 use.</p>
9439
9440 <p>How was this done, you might wonder?  First of all, here is the
9441 list of things that need to be configured on the client to get it
9442 working properly out of the box:</p>
9443
9444 <ul>
9445 <li>IP address/netmask and DNS server.</li>
9446 <li>Web proxy URL.</li>
9447 <li>LDAP server for NSS directory information (user, group, etc).</li>
9448 <li>Kerberos server for PAM password checking.</li>
9449 <li>SMB mount point to access the network home directory. (*)</li>
9450 <li>Central syslog server to send syslog messages to. (*)</li>
9451 <li>Sitesummary collector URL to submit info to central server. (*)</li>
9452 </ul>
9453
9454 <p>(Hm, did I forget anything?  Let me knew if I did.)</p>
9455
9456 <p>The points marked (*) are not required to be able to use the
9457 machine, but needed to provide central storage and allowing system
9458 administrators to track their machines.  Since yesterday, everything
9459 but the sitesummary collector URL is dynamically discovered at boot
9460 and installation time in the svn version of Debian Edu.</p>
9461
9462 <p>The IP and DNS setup is fetched during boot using DHCP as usual.
9463 When a DHCP update arrives, the proxy setup is updated by looking for
9464 http://wpat/wpad.dat and using the content of this WPAD file to
9465 configure the http and ftp proxy in /etc/environment and
9466 /etc/apt/apt.conf.  I decided to update the proxy setup using a DHCP
9467 hook to ensure that the client stops using the Debian Edu proxy when
9468 it is moved outside the Debian Edu network, and instead uses any local
9469 proxy present on the new network when it moves around.</p>
9470
9471 <p>The DNS names of the LDAP, Kerberos and syslog server and related
9472 configuration are generated using DNS information at boot.  First the
9473 installer looks for a host named ldap in the current DNS domain.  If
9474 not found, it looks for _ldap._tcp SRV records in DNS instead.  If an
9475 LDAP server is found, its root DSE entry is requested and the
9476 attributes namingContexts and defaultNamingContext are used to
9477 determine which LDAP base to use for NSS.  If there are several
9478 namingContexts attibutes and the defaultNamingContext is present, that
9479 LDAP subtree is used as the base.  If defaultNamingContext is missing,
9480 the subtrees listed as namingContexts are searched in sequence for any
9481 object with class posixAccount or posixGroup, and the first one with
9482 such an object is used as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
9483 search is done by first looking for a host named kerberos, and then
9484 for the _kerberos._tcp SRV record.  I've been unable to find a way to
9485 look up the Kerberos realm, so for this the upper case string of the
9486 current DNS domain is used.</p>
9487
9488 <p>For the syslog server, the hosts syslog and loghost are searched
9489 for, and the _syslog._udp SRV record is consulted if no such host is
9490 found.  This algorithm works for both Debian Edu and the University of
9491 Oslo.  A similar strategy would work for locating the sitesummary
9492 server, but have not been implemented yet.  I decided to fetch and
9493 save these settings during installation, to make sure moving to a
9494 different network does not change the set of users being allowed to
9495 log in nor the passwords required to log in.  Usernames and passwords
9496 will be cached by sssd when the user logs in on the Debian Edu
9497 network, and will not change as the laptop move around.  For a
9498 non-roaming machine, there is no caching, but given that it is
9499 supposed to stay in place it should not matter much.  Perhaps we
9500 should switch those to use sssd too?</p>
9501
9502 <p>The user's SMB mount point for the network home directory is
9503 located when the user logs in for the first time.  The LDAP server is
9504 consulted to look for the user's LDAP object and the sambaHomePath
9505 attribute is used if found.  If it isn't found, the home directory
9506 path fetched from NSS is used instead.  Assuming the path is of the
9507 form /site/server/directory/username, the second part is looked up in
9508 DNS and used to generate a SMB URL of the form
9509 smb://server.domain/username.  This algorithm works for both Debian
9510 edu and the University of Oslo.  Perhaps there are better attributes
9511 to use or a better algorithm that works for more sites, but this will
9512 do for now. :)</p>
9513
9514 <p>This work should make it easier to integrate the Debian Edu clients
9515 into any LDAP/Kerberos infrastructure, and make the current setup even
9516 more flexible than before.  I suspect it will also work for thin
9517 client servers, allowing one to easily set up LTSP and hook it into a
9518 existing network infrastructure, but I have not had time to test this
9519 yet.</p>
9520
9521 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9522 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9523
9524 <p>Update 2010-08-09: Simon Farnsworth gave me a heads-up on how to
9525 detect Kerberos realm from DNS, by looking for _kerberos TXT entries
9526 before falling back to the upper case DNS domain name.  Will have to
9527 implement it for Debian Edu. :)</p>
9528
9529       </div>
9530       <div class="tags">
9531
9532
9533         Tags: <a href="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>.
9534
9535
9536       </div>
9537     </div>
9538     <div class="padding"></div>
9539
9540     <div class="entry">
9541       <div class="title">
9542         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Testing_if_a_file_system_can_be_used_for_home_directories___.html">Testing if a file system can be used for home directories...</a>
9543       </div>
9544       <div class="date">
9545          8th August 2010
9546       </div>
9547       <div class="body">
9548         <p>A few years ago, I was involved in a project planning to use
9549 Windows file servers as home directory servers for Debian
9550 Edu/Skolelinux machines.  This was thought to be no problem, as the
9551 access would be through the SMB network file system protocol, and we
9552 knew other sites used SMB with unix and samba as the file server to
9553 mount home directories without any problems.  But, after months of
9554 struggling, we had to conclude that our goal was impossible.</p>
9555
9556 <p>The reason is simply that while SMB can be used for home
9557 directories when the file server is Samba running on Unix, this only
9558 work because of Samba have some extensions and the fact that the
9559 underlying file system is a unix file system.  When using a Windows
9560 file server, the underlying file system do not have POSIX semantics,
9561 and several programs will fail if the users home directory where they
9562 want to store their configuration lack POSIX semantics.</p>
9563
9564 <p>As part of this work, I wrote a small C program I want to share
9565 with you all, to replicate a few of the problematic applications (like
9566 OpenOffice.org and GCompris) and see if the file system was working as
9567 it should.  If you find yourself in spooky file system land, it might
9568 help you find your way out again.  This is the fs-test.c source:</p>
9569
9570 <pre>
9571 /*
9572  * Some tests to check the file system sematics.  Used to verify that
9573  * CIFS from a windows server do not work properly as a linux home
9574  * directory.
9575  * License: GPL v2 or later
9576  *
9577  * needs libsqlite3-dev and build-essential installed
9578  * compile with: gcc -Wall -lsqlite3 -DTEST_SQLITE fs-test.c -o fs-test
9579 */
9580
9581 #define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
9582 #define _LARGEFILE_SOURCE 1
9583 #define _LARGEFILE64_SOURCE 1
9584
9585 #define _GNU_SOURCE /* for asprintf() */
9586
9587 #include &lt;errno.h>
9588 #include &lt;fcntl.h>
9589 #include &lt;stdio.h>
9590 #include &lt;string.h>
9591 #include &lt;stdlib.h>
9592 #include &lt;sys/file.h>
9593 #include &lt;sys/stat.h>
9594 #include &lt;sys/types.h>
9595 #include &lt;unistd.h>
9596
9597 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
9598 /*
9599  * Test sqlite open, as done by gcompris require the libsqlite3-dev
9600  * package and linking with -lsqlite3.  A more low level test is
9601  * below.
9602  * See also &lt;URL: http://www.sqlite.org./faq.html#q5 >.
9603  */
9604 #include &lt;sqlite3.h>
9605 #define CREATE_TABLE_USERS                                              \
9606   "CREATE TABLE users (user_id INT UNIQUE, login TEXT, lastname TEXT, firstname TEXT, birthdate TEXT, class_id INT ); "
9607 int test_sqlite_open(void) {
9608   char *zErrMsg;
9609   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
9610   sqlite3 *db=NULL;
9611   unlink(name);
9612   int rc = sqlite3_open(name, &db);
9613   if( rc ){
9614     printf("error: sqlite open of %s failed: %s\n", name, sqlite3_errmsg(db));
9615     sqlite3_close(db);
9616     return -1;
9617   }
9618
9619   /* create tables */
9620   rc = sqlite3_exec(db,CREATE_TABLE_USERS, NULL,  0, &zErrMsg);
9621   if( rc != SQLITE_OK ){
9622     printf("error: sqlite table create failed: %s\n", zErrMsg);
9623     sqlite3_close(db);
9624     return -1;
9625   }
9626   printf("info: sqlite worked\n");
9627   sqlite3_close(db);
9628   return 0;
9629 }
9630 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9631
9632 /*
9633  * Demonstrate locking issue found in gcompris using sqlite3.  This
9634  * work with ext3, but not with cifs server on Windows 2003.  This is
9635  * done in the sqlite3 library.
9636  * See also
9637  * &lt;URL:http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00854.html> and the
9638  * POSIX specification
9639  * &lt;URL:http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/fcntl.html>.
9640  */
9641 int test_gcompris_locking(void) {
9642   struct flock fl;
9643   char *name = "testsqlite.db";
9644   unlink(name);
9645   int fd = open(name, O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_LARGEFILE, 0644);
9646   printf("info: testing fcntl locking\n");
9647
9648   fl.l_whence = SEEK_SET;
9649   fl.l_pid    = getpid();
9650   printf("  Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
9651   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9652   fl.l_len    = 1;
9653   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
9654   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9655
9656   printf("  Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
9657   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
9658   fl.l_len    = 510;
9659   fl.l_type   = F_RDLCK;
9660   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9661
9662   printf("  Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824");
9663   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9664   fl.l_len    = 1;
9665   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
9666   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9667
9668   printf("  Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824");
9669   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9670   fl.l_len    = 1;
9671   fl.l_type   = F_WRLCK;
9672   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9673
9674   printf("  Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826");
9675   fl.l_start  = 1073741826;
9676   fl.l_len    = 510;
9677   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9678
9679   printf("  Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824");
9680   fl.l_start  = 1073741824;
9681   fl.l_len    = 2;
9682   fl.l_type   = F_UNLCK;
9683   if (0 != fcntl(fd, F_SETLK, &fl) ) printf(" - error!\n"); else printf("\n");
9684
9685   close(fd);
9686   return 0;
9687 }
9688
9689 /*
9690  * Test if permissions of freshly created directories allow entries
9691  * below them.  This was a problem with OpenOffice.org and gcompris.
9692  * Mounting with option 'sync' seem to solve this problem while
9693  * slowing down file operations.
9694  */
9695 int test_subdirectory_creation(void) {
9696 #define LEVELS 5
9697   char *path = strdup("test");
9698   char *dirs[LEVELS];
9699   int level;
9700   printf("info: testing subdirectory creation\n");
9701   for (level = 0; level &lt; LEVELS; level++) {
9702     char *newpath = NULL;
9703     if (-1 == mkdir(path, 0777)) {
9704       printf("  error: Unable to create directory '%s': %s\n",
9705              path, strerror(errno));
9706       break;
9707     }
9708     asprintf(&newpath, "%s/%s", path, "test");
9709     free(path);
9710     path = newpath;
9711   }
9712   return 0;
9713 }
9714
9715 /*
9716  * Test if symlinks can be created.  This was a problem detected with
9717  * KDE.
9718  */
9719 int test_symlinks(void) {
9720   printf("info: testing symlink creation\n");
9721   unlink("symlink");
9722   if (-1 == symlink("file", "symlink"))
9723     printf("  error: Unable to create symlink\n");
9724   return 0;
9725 }
9726
9727 int main(int argc, char **argv) {
9728   printf("Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system\n");
9729   test_symlinks();
9730   test_subdirectory_creation();
9731 #ifdef TEST_SQLITE
9732   test_sqlite_open();
9733 #endif /* TEST_SQLITE */
9734   test_gcompris_locking();
9735   return 0;
9736 }
9737 </pre>
9738
9739 <p>When everything is working, it should print something like
9740 this:</p>
9741
9742 <pre>
9743 Testing POSIX/Unix sematics on file system
9744 info: testing symlink creation
9745 info: testing subdirectory creation
9746 info: sqlite worked
9747 info: testing fcntl locking
9748   Read-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9749   Read-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9750   Unlocking 1 byte from 1073741824
9751   Write-locking 1 byte from 1073741824
9752   Write-locking 510 byte from 1073741826
9753   Unlocking 2 byte from 1073741824
9754 </pre>
9755
9756 <p>I do not remember the exact details of the problems we saw, but one
9757 of them was with locking, where if I remember correctly, POSIX allow a
9758 read-only lock to be upgraded to a read-write lock without unlocking
9759 the read-only lock (while Windows do not).  Another was a bug in the
9760 CIFS/SMB client implementation in the Linux kernel where directory
9761 meta information would be wrong for a fraction of a second, making
9762 OpenOffice.org fail to create its deep directory tree because it was
9763 not allowed to create files in its freshly created directory.</p>
9764
9765 <p>Anyway, here is a nice tool for your tool box, might you never need
9766 it. :)</p>
9767
9768 <p>Update 2010-08-27: Michael Gebetsroither report that he found the
9769 script so useful that he created a GIT repository and stored it in
9770 <a href="http://github.com/gebi/fs-test">http://github.com/gebi/fs-test</a>.</p>
9771
9772       </div>
9773       <div class="tags">
9774
9775
9776         Tags: <a href="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>.
9777
9778
9779       </div>
9780     </div>
9781     <div class="padding"></div>
9782
9783     <div class="entry">
9784       <div class="title">
9785         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Autodetecting_Client_setup_for_roaming_workstations_in_Debian_Edu.html">Autodetecting Client setup for roaming workstations in Debian Edu</a>
9786       </div>
9787       <div class="date">
9788          7th August 2010
9789       </div>
9790       <div class="body">
9791         <p>A few days ago, I
9792 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">tried
9793 to install</a> a Roaming workation profile from Debian Edu/Squeeze
9794 while on the university network here at the University of Oslo, and
9795 noticed how much had to change to get it operational using the
9796 university infrastructure.  It was fairly easy, but it occured to me
9797 that Debian Edu would improve a lot if I could get the client to
9798 connect without any changes at all, and thus let the client configure
9799 itself during installation and first boot to use the infrastructure
9800 around it.  Now I am a huge step further along that road.</p>
9801
9802 <p>With our current squeeze-test packages, I can select the roaming
9803 workstation profile and get a working laptop connecting to the
9804 university LDAP server for user and group and our active directory
9805 servers for Kerberos authentication.  All this without any
9806 configuration at all during installation.  My users home directory got
9807 a bookmark in the KDE menu to mount it via SMB, with the correct URL.
9808 In short, openldap and sssd is correctly configured.  In addition to
9809 this, the client look for http://wpad/wpad.dat to configure a web
9810 proxy, and when it fail to find it no proxy settings are stored in
9811 /etc/environment and /etc/apt/apt.conf.  Iceweasel and KDE is
9812 configured to look for the same wpad configuration and also do not use
9813 a proxy when at the university network.  If the machine is moved to a
9814 network with such wpad setup, it would automatically use it when DHCP
9815 gave it a IP address.</p>
9816
9817 <p>The LDAP server is located using DNS, by first looking for the DNS
9818 entry ldap.$domain.  If this do not exist, it look for the
9819 _ldap._tcp.$domain SRV records and use the first one as the LDAP
9820 server.  Next, it connects to the LDAP server and search all
9821 namingContexts entries for posixAccount or posixGroup objects, and
9822 pick the first one as the LDAP base.  For Kerberos, a similar
9823 algorithm is used to locate the LDAP server, and the realm is the
9824 uppercase version of $domain.</p>
9825
9826 <p>So, what is not working, you might ask.  SMB mounting my home
9827 directory do not work.  No idea why, but suspected the incorrect
9828 Kerberos settings in /etc/krb5.conf and /etc/samba/smb.conf might be
9829 the cause.  These are not properly configured during installation, and
9830 had to be hand-edited to get the correct Kerberos realm and server,
9831 but SMB mounting still do not work. :(</p>
9832
9833 <p>With this automatic configuration in place, I expect a Debian Edu
9834 roaming profile installation would be able to automatically detect and
9835 connect to any site using LDAP and Kerberos for NSS directory and PAM
9836 authentication.  It should also work out of the box in a Active
9837 Directory environment providing posixAccount and posixGroup objects
9838 with UID and GID values.</p>
9839
9840 <p>If you want to help out with implementing these things for Debian
9841 Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
9842
9843       </div>
9844       <div class="tags">
9845
9846
9847         Tags: <a href="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>.
9848
9849
9850       </div>
9851     </div>
9852     <div class="padding"></div>
9853
9854     <div class="entry">
9855       <div class="title">
9856         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_roaming_workstation___at_the_university_of_Oslo.html">Debian Edu roaming workstation - at the university of Oslo</a>
9857       </div>
9858       <div class="date">
9859          3rd August 2010
9860       </div>
9861       <div class="body">
9862         <p>The new roaming workstation profile in Debian Edu/Squeeze is fairly
9863 similar to the laptop setup am I working on using Ubuntu for the
9864 University of Oslo, and just for the heck of it, I tested today how
9865 hard it would be to integrate that profile into the university
9866 infrastructure.  In this case, it is the university LDAP server,
9867 Active Directory Kerberos server and SMB mounting from the Netapp file
9868 servers.</p>
9869
9870 <p>I was pleasantly surprised that the only three files needed to be
9871 changed (/etc/sssd/sssd.conf, /etc/ldap.conf and
9872 /etc/mklocaluser.d/20-debian-edu-config) and one file had to be added
9873 (/usr/share/perl5/Debian/Edu_Local.pm), to get the client working.
9874 Most of the changes were to get the client to use the university LDAP
9875 for NSS and Kerberos server for PAM, but one was to change a hard
9876 coded DNS domain name in the mklocaluser hook from .intern to
9877 .uio.no.</p>
9878
9879 <p>This testing was so encouraging, that I went ahead and adjusted the
9880 Debian Edu scripts and setup in subversion to centralise the roaming
9881 workstation setup a bit more and avoid the hardcoded DNS domain name,
9882 so that when I test this tomorrow, I expect to get away with modifying
9883 only /etc/sssd/sssd.conf and /etc/ldap.conf to get it to use the
9884 university servers.</p>
9885
9886 <p>My goal is to get the clients to have no hardcoded settings and
9887 fetch all their initial setup during installation and first boot, to
9888 allow them to be inserted also into environments where the default
9889 setup in Debian Edu has been changed or as with the university, where
9890 the environment is different but provides the protocols Debian Edu
9891 uses.</p>
9892
9893       </div>
9894       <div class="tags">
9895
9896
9897         Tags: <a href="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>.
9898
9899
9900       </div>
9901     </div>
9902     <div class="padding"></div>
9903
9904     <div class="entry">
9905       <div class="title">
9906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</a>
9907       </div>
9908       <div class="date">
9909         27th July 2010
9910       </div>
9911       <div class="body">
9912         <p>I discovered this while doing
9913 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
9914 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
9915 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
9916 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
9917 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
9918
9919 <p>An example is from todays
9920 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
9921 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
9922 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
9923 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
9924 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
9925 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
9926 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
9927
9928 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
9929
9930 <blockquote><pre>
9931 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
9932  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
9933   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
9934 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
9935  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
9936 </pre></blockquote>
9937
9938 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
9939 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
9940 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
9941 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
9942 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
9943 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
9944 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
9945 of dependency loops.</p>
9946
9947 <p>Thanks to
9948 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
9949 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
9950 dependencies
9951 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
9952 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
9953
9954 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
9955 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
9956 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
9957 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
9958 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
9959 it.</p>
9960
9961       </div>
9962       <div class="tags">
9963
9964
9965         Tags: <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>.
9966
9967
9968       </div>
9969     </div>
9970     <div class="padding"></div>
9971
9972     <div class="entry">
9973       <div class="title">
9974         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Debian_Edu_test_release__alpha0__based_on_Squeeze_is_released.html">First Debian Edu test release (alpha0) based on Squeeze is released</a>
9975       </div>
9976       <div class="date">
9977         27th July 2010
9978       </div>
9979       <div class="body">
9980         <p>I just posted this announcement culminating several months of work
9981 with the next Debian Edu release.  Not nearly done, but one major step
9982 completed.</p>
9983
9984 <blockquote>
9985 <p>This is the first test release based on Squeeze. The focus of this
9986 release is to test the user application selection. To have a look,
9987 install the standalone profile and let the developers know if the set
9988 of installed packages i.e. applications should be modified. If some
9989 user application is missing, or if there are some applications that no
9990 longer make sense to be included in Debian Edu, please let us know.
9991 Also, if a useful application is missing the translation for your
9992 language of choice, please let us know too.</p>
9993
9994 <p>In addition, feedback and help to polish the desktop (menus,
9995 artwork, starters, etc.) is appreciated. We would like to ship a nice
9996 and handy KDE4 desktop targeted for schools out of the box.</p>
9997
9998 <p>The other profiles should be installable, but there is a lot more
9999 work left to be done before they are ready, so do not expect to
10000 much.</p>
10001
10002 <p>Changes compared to the lenny based version</p>
10003
10004 <ul>
10005 <li>Everything from Debian Squeeze
10006 <ul>
10007   <li>Desktop environment KDE 4.4 => the new KDE desktop in
10008          combination with some new artwork
10009   <li>Web browser Iceweasel 3.5
10010   <li>OpenOffice.org 3.2
10011   <li>Educational toolbox GCompris 9.3
10012   <li>Music creator Rosegarden 10.04.2
10013   <li>Image editor Gimp 2.6.10
10014   <li>Virtual universe Celestia 1.6.0
10015   <li>Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.10.4
10016   <li>3D modeler Blender 2.49.2 (new application)
10017   <li>Video editor Kdenlive 0.7.7 (new application)
10018 </ul></li>
10019 <li>Now using Kerberos for password checking (migration not finished).
10020     Enabled for:
10021 <ul>
10022   <li>PAM
10023   <li>LDAP
10024   <li>IMAP
10025   <li>SMTP (sender verification)
10026 </ul>
10027 </li>
10028 <li>New experimental roaming workstation profile for laptops.</li>
10029 <li>Show welcome page to users when they first log in. The URL is
10030     fetched from LDAP.</li>
10031 <li>New LXDE desktop option, in addition to KDE (default) and Gnome.</li>
10032 <li>General cleanup (not finished)</li>
10033 </ul>
10034 <p>The following features are not working as they should</p>
10035
10036 <ul>
10037 <li>No web based administration tool for creating users and groups. The
10038     scripts ldap-createuser-krb and ldap-add-user-to-group can be used
10039     for testing.</li>
10040 <li>DVD installs are missing debian-installer images for the PXE boot,
10041     and do not set up the PXE menu on eth0 because of this. LTSP
10042     clients should still boot from eth1 on thin client servers.</li>
10043 <li>The restructured KDE menu is not implemented.</li>
10044 <li>The LDAP server setup need to be reviewed for security.</li>
10045 <li>The LDAP directory structure need to be reworked.</li>
10046 <li>Different sets of packages are installed when using the DVD and the
10047     netinst CD. More packages are installed using the netinst CD.</li>
10048 <li>The jackd package fail to install. This is believed to be caused by
10049     some ongoing transition, and hopefully should be solved soon. The
10050     jackd1 package can be installed manually for those that need it.</li>
10051 <li>Some packages lack translations. See
10052     http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Squeeze for updated status,
10053     and help out with translations.</li>
10054 </ul>
10055
10056 <p>To download this multiarch netinstall release you can use</p>
10057
10058 <ul>
10059 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
10060 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</a></li>
10061 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10062 </ul>
10063 <p>To download this multiarch dvd release you can use</p>
10064
10065 <ul>
10066 <li><a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
10067 <li><a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</a></li>
10068 <li>rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/squeeze-alpha/debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10069 </ul>
10070
10071 <p>There is no source DVD available yet. It will be prepared when we
10072 get closer to the final release.</p>
10073
10074 <p>The MD5SUM of these images are</p>
10075
10076 <ul>
10077 <li>3dbf45d59f42a53518b6e3c9ec3b5eb6 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10078 <li>22f2cbfce281d1c6e478be452638675d debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10079 </ul>
10080
10081 <p>The SHA1SUM of these images are</p>
10082 <ul>
10083 <li>c53d1b69b40cf37cd27aefaf33f6f6a3821bedf0 debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-CD.iso</li>
10084 <li>2ec29d7db676d59d32197b05c277ffe16348376c debian-edu-6.0.0+edua0-DVD.iso</li>
10085 </ul>
10086 <p>How to report bugs:
10087 http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugsInBugzilla</p>
10088
10089 <p>Please direct replies to debian-edu@lists.debian.org</p>
10090 </blockquote>
10091
10092       </div>
10093       <div class="tags">
10094
10095
10096         Tags: <a href="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>.
10097
10098
10099       </div>
10100     </div>
10101     <div class="padding"></div>
10102
10103     <div class="entry">
10104       <div class="title">
10105         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/One_step_closer_to_single_signon_in_Debian_Edu.html">One step closer to single signon in Debian Edu</a>
10106       </div>
10107       <div class="date">
10108         25th July 2010
10109       </div>
10110       <div class="body">
10111         <p>The last few months me and the other Debian Edu developers have
10112 been working hard to get the Debian/Squeeze based version of Debian
10113 Edu/Skolelinux into shape.  This future version will use Kerberos for
10114 authentication, and services are slowly migrated to single signon,
10115 getting rid of password questions one at the time.</p>
10116
10117 <p>It will also feature a roaming workstation profile with local home
10118 directory, for laptops that are only some times on the Skolelinux
10119 network, and for this profile a shortcut is created in Gnome and KDE
10120 to gain access to the users home directory on the file server.  This
10121 shortcut uses SMB at the moment, and yesterday I had time to test if
10122 SMB mounting had started working in KDE after we added the cifs-utils
10123 package.  I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.</p>
10124
10125 <p>Thanks to the recent changes to our samba configuration to get it
10126 to use Kerberos for authentication, there were no question about user
10127 password when mounting the SMB volume.  A simple click on the shortcut
10128 in the KDE menu, and a window with the home directory popped
10129 up. :)</p>
10130
10131 <p>One step closer to a single signon solution out of the box in
10132 Debian Edu.  We already had PAM, LDAP, IMAP and SMTP in place, and now
10133 also Samba.  Next step is Cups and hopefully also NFS.</p>
10134
10135 <p>We had planned a alpha0 release of Debian Edu for today, but thanks
10136 to the autobuilder administrators for some architectures being slow to
10137 sign packages, we are still missing the fixed LTSP package we need for
10138 the release.  It was uploaded three days ago with urgency=high, and if
10139 it had entered testing yesterday we would have been able to test it in
10140 time for a alpha0 release today.  As the binaries for ia64 and powerpc
10141 still not uploaded to the Debian archive, we need to delay the alpha
10142 release another day.</p>
10143
10144 <p>If you want to help out with implementing Kerberos for Debian Edu,
10145 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10146
10147       </div>
10148       <div class="tags">
10149
10150
10151         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
10152
10153
10154       </div>
10155     </div>
10156     <div class="padding"></div>
10157
10158     <div class="entry">
10159       <div class="title">
10160         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenStreetmap_one_step_closer_to_having_routing_on_its_front_page.html">OpenStreetmap one step closer to having routing on its front page</a>
10161       </div>
10162       <div class="date">
10163         18th July 2010
10164       </div>
10165       <div class="body">
10166         <p>Thanks to
10167 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Opengeodata/~3/wUTCzDZk3lc/project-of-the-week-which-way-home">todays
10168 opengeodata blog entry</a>, I just discovered that the
10169 OpenStreetmap.org site have gotten
10170 <a href="http://nroets.dev.openstreetmap.org/demo/index.html?layers=B000FTFTT">support
10171 for calculating routes</a>.  The support is still experimental and
10172 only available from the development server, until more experience is
10173 gathered on the user interface and any scalability issues.</p>
10174
10175 <p>Earlier, the routing I knew about using the OpenStreetmap.org data
10176 was provided by <a href="http://maps.cloudmade.com/">Cloudmade</a>,
10177 but having it on the main page is required to make everyone aware of
10178 the issue.  I've had people reject Openstreetmap.org as a viable
10179 alternative for them because the front page lacked routing support,
10180 and I hope their needs will be catered for when routing show up on the
10181 www.openstreetmap.org front page.</p>
10182
10183       </div>
10184       <div class="tags">
10185
10186
10187         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
10188
10189
10190       </div>
10191     </div>
10192     <div class="padding"></div>
10193
10194     <div class="entry">
10195       <div class="title">
10196         <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>
10197       </div>
10198       <div class="date">
10199         17th July 2010
10200       </div>
10201       <div class="body">
10202         <p>This is a
10203 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">followup</a>
10204 on my
10205 <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
10206 work</a> on
10207 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">merging
10208 all</a> the computer related LDAP objects in Debian Edu.</p>
10209
10210 <p>As a step to try to see if it possible to merge the DNS and DHCP
10211 LDAP objects, I have had a look at how the packages pdns-backend-ldap
10212 and dhcp3-server-ldap in Debian use the LDAP server.  The two
10213 implementations are quite different in how they use LDAP.</p>
10214
10215 To get this information, I started slapd with debugging enabled and
10216 dumped the debug output to a file to get the LDAP searches performed
10217 on a Debian Edu main-server.  Here is a summary.
10218
10219 <p><strong>powerdns</strong></p>
10220
10221 <a href="http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/PowerDNS_LDAP_Backend">Clues
10222 on how to</a> set up PowerDNS to use a LDAP backend is available on
10223 the web.
10224
10225 <p>PowerDNS have two modes of operation using LDAP as its backend.
10226 One "strict" mode where the forward and reverse DNS lookups are done
10227 using the same LDAP objects, and a "tree" mode where the forward and
10228 reverse entries are in two different subtrees in LDAP with a structure
10229 based on the DNS names, as in tjener.intern and
10230 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa.</p>
10231
10232 <p>In tree mode, the server is set up to use a LDAP subtree as its
10233 base, and uses a "base" scoped search for the DNS name by adding
10234 "dc=tjener,dc=intern," to the base with a filter for
10235 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" for the forward entry and
10236 "dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa," with a filter for
10237 "(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)" for the reverse entry.  For
10238 forward entries, it is looking for attributes named dnsttl, arecord,
10239 nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord,
10240 txtrecord, rprecord, afsdbrecord, keyrecord, aaaarecord, locrecord,
10241 srvrecord, naptrrecord, kxrecord, certrecord, dsrecord, sshfprecord,
10242 ipseckeyrecord, rrsigrecord, nsecrecord, dnskeyrecord, dhcidrecord,
10243 spfrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entries it is looking for
10244 the attributes dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord,
10245 ptrrecord, hinforecord, mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord,
10246 locrecord, srvrecord, naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  The equivalent
10247 ldapsearch commands could look like this:</p>
10248
10249 <blockquote><pre>
10250 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10251   -b dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10252   -s base -x '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10253   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10254   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10255   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10256   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10257
10258 ldapsearch -h ldap \
10259   -b dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no \
10260   -s base -x '(associateddomain=2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa)'
10261   dnsttl, arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord soarecord ptrrecord \
10262   hinforecord mxrecord txtrecord rprecord aaaarecord locrecord \
10263   srvrecord naptrrecord modifytimestamp
10264 </pre></blockquote>
10265
10266 <p>In Debian Edu/Lenny, the PowerDNS tree mode is used with
10267 ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no as the base, and these are two
10268 example LDAP objects used there.  In addition to these objects, the
10269 parent objects all th way up to ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10270 also exist.</p>
10271
10272 <blockquote><pre>
10273 dn: dc=tjener,dc=intern,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10274 objectclass: top
10275 objectclass: dnsdomain
10276 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10277 dc: tjener
10278 arecord: 10.0.2.2
10279 associateddomain: tjener.intern
10280
10281 dn: dc=2,dc=2,dc=0,dc=10,dc=in-addr,dc=arpa,ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10282 objectclass: top
10283 objectclass: dnsdomain2
10284 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10285 dc: 2
10286 ptrrecord: tjener.intern
10287 associateddomain: 2.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa
10288 </pre></blockquote>
10289
10290 <p>In strict mode, the server behaves differently.  When looking for
10291 forward DNS entries, it is doing a "subtree" scoped search with the
10292 same base as in the tree mode for a object with filter
10293 "(associateddomain=tjener.intern)" and requests the attributes dnsttl,
10294 arecord, nsrecord, cnamerecord, soarecord, ptrrecord, hinforecord,
10295 mxrecord, txtrecord, rprecord, aaaarecord, locrecord, srvrecord,
10296 naptrrecord and modifytimestamp.  For reverse entires it also do a
10297 subtree scoped search but this time the filter is "(arecord=10.0.2.2)"
10298 and the requested attributes are associateddomain, dnsttl and
10299 modifytimestamp.  In short, in strict mode the objects with ptrrecord
10300 go away, and the arecord attribute in the forward object is used
10301 instead.</p>
10302
10303 <p>The forward and reverse searches can be simulated using ldapsearch
10304 like this:</p>
10305
10306 <blockquote><pre>
10307 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10308   '(associateddomain=tjener.intern)' dNSTTL aRecord nSRecord \
10309   cNAMERecord sOARecord pTRRecord hInfoRecord mXRecord tXTRecord \
10310   rPRecord aFSDBRecord KeyRecord aAAARecord lOCRecord sRVRecord \
10311   nAPTRRecord kXRecord certRecord dSRecord sSHFPRecord iPSecKeyRecord \
10312   rRSIGRecord nSECRecord dNSKeyRecord dHCIDRecord sPFRecord modifyTimestamp
10313
10314 ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=hosts,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no -s sub -x \
10315   '(arecord=10.0.2.2)' associateddomain dnsttl modifytimestamp
10316 </pre></blockquote>
10317
10318 <p>In addition to the forward and reverse searches , there is also a
10319 search for SOA records, which behave similar to the forward and
10320 reverse lookups.</p>
10321
10322 <p>A thing to note with the PowerDNS behaviour is that it do not
10323 specify any objectclass names, and instead look for the attributes it
10324 need to generate a DNS reply.  This make it able to work with any
10325 objectclass that provide the needed attributes.</p>
10326
10327 <p>The attributes are normally provided in the cosine (RFC 1274) and
10328 dnsdomain2 schemas.  The latter is used for reverse entries like
10329 ptrrecord and recent DNS additions like aaaarecord and srvrecord.</p>
10330
10331 <p>In Debian Edu, we have created DNS objects using the object classes
10332 dcobject (for dc), dnsdomain or dnsdomain2 (structural, for the DNS
10333 attributes) and domainrelatedobject (for associatedDomain).  The use
10334 of structural object classes make it impossible to combine these
10335 classes with the object classes used by DHCP.</p>
10336
10337 <p>There are other schemas that could be used too, for example the
10338 dnszone structural object class used by Gosa and bind-sdb for the DNS
10339 attributes combined with the domainrelatedobject object class, but in
10340 this case some unused attributes would have to be included as well
10341 (zonename and relativedomainname).</p>
10342
10343 <p>My proposal for Debian Edu would be to switch PowerDNS to strict
10344 mode and not use any of the existing objectclasses (dnsdomain,
10345 dnsdomain2 and dnszone) when one want to combine the DNS information
10346 with DHCP information, and instead create a auxiliary object class
10347 defined something like this (using the attributes defined for
10348 dnsdomain and dnsdomain2 or dnszone):</p>
10349
10350 <blockquote><pre>
10351 objectclass ( some-oid NAME 'dnsDomainAux'
10352     SUP top
10353     AUXILIARY
10354     MAY ( ARecord $ MDRecord $ MXRecord $ NSRecord $ SOARecord $ CNAMERecord $
10355           DNSTTL $ DNSClass $ PTRRecord $ HINFORecord $ MINFORecord $
10356           TXTRecord $ SIGRecord $ KEYRecord $ AAAARecord $ LOCRecord $
10357           NXTRecord $ SRVRecord $ NAPTRRecord $ KXRecord $ CERTRecord $
10358           A6Record $ DNAMERecord
10359     ))
10360 </pre></blockquote>
10361
10362 <p>This will allow any object to become a DNS entry when combined with
10363 the domainrelatedobject object class, and allow any entity to include
10364 all the attributes PowerDNS wants.  I've sent an email to the PowerDNS
10365 developers asking for their view on this schema and if they are
10366 interested in providing such schema with PowerDNS, and I hope my
10367 message will be accepted into their mailing list soon.</p>
10368
10369 <p><strong>ISC dhcp</strong></p>
10370
10371 <p>The DHCP server searches for specific objectclass and requests all
10372 the object attributes, and then uses the attributes it want.  This
10373 make it harder to figure out exactly what attributes are used, but
10374 thanks to the working example in Debian Edu I can at least get an idea
10375 what is needed without having to read the source code.</p>
10376
10377 <p>In the DHCP server configuration, the LDAP base to use and the
10378 search filter to use to locate the correct dhcpServer entity is
10379 stored.  These are the relevant entries from
10380 /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:</p>
10381
10382 <blockquote><pre>
10383 ldap-base-dn "dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no";
10384 ldap-dhcp-server-cn "dhcp";
10385 </pre></blockquote>
10386
10387 <p>The DHCP server uses this information to nest all the DHCP
10388 configuration it need.  The cn "dhcp" is located using the given LDAP
10389 base and the filter "(&(objectClass=dhcpServer)(cn=dhcp))".  The
10390 search result is this entry:</p>
10391
10392 <blockquote><pre>
10393 dn: cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10394 cn: dhcp
10395 objectClass: top
10396 objectClass: dhcpServer
10397 dhcpServiceDN: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10398 </pre></blockquote>
10399
10400 <p>The content of the dhcpServiceDN attribute is next used to locate the
10401 subtree with DHCP configuration.  The DHCP configuration subtree base
10402 is located using a base scope search with base "cn=DHCP
10403 Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" and filter
10404 "(&(objectClass=dhcpService)(|(dhcpPrimaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)(dhcpSecondaryDN=cn=dhcp,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no)))".
10405 The search result is this entry:</p>
10406
10407 <blockquote><pre>
10408 dn: cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10409 cn: DHCP Config
10410 objectClass: top
10411 objectClass: dhcpService
10412 objectClass: dhcpOptions
10413 dhcpPrimaryDN: cn=dhcp, dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10414 dhcpStatements: ddns-update-style none
10415 dhcpStatements: authoritative
10416 dhcpOption: smtp-server code 69 = array of ip-address
10417 dhcpOption: www-server code 72 = array of ip-address
10418 dhcpOption: wpad-url code 252 = text
10419 </pre></blockquote>
10420
10421 <p>Next, the entire subtree is processed, one level at the time.  When
10422 all the DHCP configuration is loaded, it is ready to receive requests.
10423 The subtree in Debian Edu contain objects with object classes
10424 top/dhcpService/dhcpOptions, top/dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions,
10425 top/dhcpSubnet, top/dhcpGroup and top/dhcpHost.  These provide options
10426 and information about netmasks, dynamic range etc.  Leaving out the
10427 details here because it is not relevant for the focus of my
10428 investigation, which is to see if it is possible to merge dns and dhcp
10429 related computer objects.</p>
10430
10431 <p>When a DHCP request come in, LDAP is searched for the MAC address
10432 of the client (00:00:00:00:00:00 in this example), using a subtree
10433 scoped search with "cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no" as
10434 the base and "(&(objectClass=dhcpHost)(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet
10435 00:00:00:00:00:00))" as the filter.  This is what a host object look
10436 like:</p>
10437
10438 <blockquote><pre>
10439 dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10440 cn: hostname
10441 objectClass: top
10442 objectClass: dhcpHost
10443 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10444 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname
10445 </pre></blockquote>
10446
10447 <p>There is less flexiblity in the way LDAP searches are done here.
10448 The object classes need to have fixed names, and the configuration
10449 need to be stored in a fairly specific LDAP structure.  On the
10450 positive side, the invidiual dhcpHost entires can be anywhere without
10451 the DN pointed to by the dhcpServer entries.  The latter should make
10452 it possible to group all host entries in a subtree next to the
10453 configuration entries, and this subtree can also be shared with the
10454 DNS server if the schema proposed above is combined with the dhcpHost
10455 structural object class.
10456
10457 <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>
10458
10459 <p>The PowerDNS implementation seem to be very flexible when it come
10460 to which LDAP schemas to use.  While its "tree" mode is rigid when it
10461 come to the the LDAP structure, the "strict" mode is very flexible,
10462 allowing DNS objects to be stored anywhere under the base cn specified
10463 in the configuration.</p>
10464
10465 <p>The DHCP implementation on the other hand is very inflexible, both
10466 regarding which LDAP schemas to use and which LDAP structure to use.
10467 I guess one could implement ones own schema, as long as the
10468 objectclasses and attributes have the names used, but this do not
10469 really help when the DHCP subtree need to have a fairly fixed
10470 structure.</p>
10471
10472 <p>Based on the observed behaviour, I suspect a LDAP structure like
10473 this might work for Debian Edu:</p>
10474
10475 <blockquote><pre>
10476 ou=services
10477   cn=machine-info (dhcpService) - dhcpServiceDN points here
10478     cn=dhcp (dhcpServer)
10479     cn=dhcp-internal (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10480       cn=10.0.2.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10481         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10482     cn=dhcp-thinclients (dhcpSharedNetwork/dhcpOptions)
10483       cn=192.168.0.0 (dhcpSubnet)
10484         cn=group1 (dhcpGroup/dhcpOptions)
10485     ou=machines - PowerDNS base points here
10486       cn=hostname (dhcpHost/domainrelatedobject/dnsDomainAux)
10487 </pre></blockquote>
10488
10489 <P>This is not tested yet.  If the DHCP server require the dhcpHost
10490 entries to be in the dhcpGroup subtrees, the entries can be stored
10491 there instead of a common machines subtree, and the PowerDNS base
10492 would have to be moved one level up to the machine-info subtree.</p>
10493
10494 <p>The combined object under the machines subtree would look something
10495 like this:</p>
10496
10497 <blockquote><pre>
10498 dn: dc=hostname,ou=machines,cn=machine-info,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10499 dc: hostname
10500 objectClass: top
10501 objectClass: dhcpHost
10502 objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10503 objectclass: dnsDomainAux
10504 associateddomain: hostname.intern
10505 arecord: 10.11.12.13
10506 dhcpHWAddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10507 dhcpStatements: fixed-address hostname.intern
10508 </pre></blockquote>
10509
10510 </p>One could even add the LTSP configuration associated with a given
10511 machine, as long as the required attributes are available in a
10512 auxiliary object class.</p>
10513
10514       </div>
10515       <div class="tags">
10516
10517
10518         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/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>.
10519
10520
10521       </div>
10522     </div>
10523     <div class="padding"></div>
10524
10525     <div class="entry">
10526       <div class="title">
10527         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Combining_PowerDNS_and_ISC_DHCP_LDAP_objects.html">Combining PowerDNS and ISC DHCP LDAP objects</a>
10528       </div>
10529       <div class="date">
10530         14th July 2010
10531       </div>
10532       <div class="body">
10533         <p>For a while now, I have wanted to find a way to change the DNS and
10534 DHCP services in Debian Edu to use the same LDAP objects for a given
10535 computer, to avoid the possibility of having a inconsistent state for
10536 a computer in LDAP (as in DHCP but no DNS entry or the other way
10537 around) and make it easier to add computers to LDAP.</p>
10538
10539 <p>I've looked at how powerdns and dhcpd is using LDAP, and using this
10540 information finally found a solution that seem to work.</p>
10541
10542 <p>The old setup required three LDAP objects for a given computer.
10543 One forward DNS entry, one reverse DNS entry and one DHCP entry.  If
10544 we switch powerdns to use its strict LDAP method (ldap-method=strict
10545 in pdns-debian-edu.conf), the forward and reverse DNS entries are
10546 merged into one while making it impossible to transfer the reverse map
10547 to a slave DNS server.</p>
10548
10549 <p>If we also replace the object class used to get the DNS related
10550 attributes to one allowing these attributes to be combined with the
10551 dhcphost object class, we can merge the DNS and DHCP entries into one.
10552 I've written such object class in the dnsdomainaux.schema file (need
10553 proper OIDs, but that is a minor issue), and tested the setup.  It
10554 seem to work.</p>
10555
10556 <p>With this test setup in place, we can get away with one LDAP object
10557 for both DNS and DHCP, and even the LTSP configuration I suggested in
10558 an earlier email.  The combined LDAP object will look something like
10559 this:</p>
10560
10561 <blockquote><pre>
10562   dn: cn=hostname,cn=group1,cn=THINCLIENTS,cn=DHCP Config,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
10563   cn: hostname
10564   objectClass: dhcphost
10565   objectclass: domainrelatedobject
10566   objectclass: dnsdomainaux
10567   associateddomain: hostname.intern
10568   arecord: 10.11.12.13
10569   dhcphwaddress: ethernet 00:00:00:00:00:00
10570   dhcpstatements: fixed-address hostname
10571   ldapconfigsound: Y
10572 </pre></blockquote>
10573
10574 <p>The DNS server uses the associateddomain and arecord entries, while
10575 the DHCP server uses the dhcphwaddress and dhcpstatements entries
10576 before asking DNS to resolve the fixed-adddress.  LTSP will use
10577 dhcphwaddress or associateddomain and the ldapconfig* attributes.</p>
10578
10579 <p>I am not yet sure if I can get the DHCP server to look for its
10580 dhcphost in a different location, to allow us to put the objects
10581 outside the "DHCP Config" subtree, but hope to figure out a way to do
10582 that.  If I can't figure out a way to do that, we can still get rid of
10583 the hosts subtree and move all its content into the DHCP Config tree
10584 (which probably should be renamed to be more related to the new
10585 content.  I suspect cn=dnsdhcp,ou=services or something like that
10586 might be a good place to put it.</p>
10587
10588 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10589 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10590
10591       </div>
10592       <div class="tags">
10593
10594
10595         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>.
10596
10597
10598       </div>
10599     </div>
10600     <div class="padding"></div>
10601
10602     <div class="entry">
10603       <div class="title">
10604         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Idea_for_storing_LTSP_configuration_in_LDAP.html">Idea for storing LTSP configuration in LDAP</a>
10605       </div>
10606       <div class="date">
10607         11th July 2010
10608       </div>
10609       <div class="body">
10610         <p>Vagrant mentioned on IRC today that ltsp_config now support
10611 sourcing files from /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ on the thin
10612 clients, and that this can be used to fetch configuration from LDAP if
10613 Debian Edu choose to store configuration there.</p>
10614
10615 <p>Armed with this information, I got inspired and wrote a test module
10616 to get configuration from LDAP.  The idea is to look up the MAC
10617 address of the client in LDAP, and look for attributes on the form
10618 ltspconfigsetting=value, and use this to export SETTING=value to the
10619 LTSP clients.</p>
10620
10621 <p>The goal is to be able to store the LTSP configuration attributes
10622 in a "computer" LDAP object used by both DNS and DHCP, and thus
10623 allowing us to store all information about a computer in one place.</p>
10624
10625 <p>This is a untested draft implementation, and I welcome feedback on
10626 this approach.  A real LDAP schema for the ltspClientAux objectclass
10627 need to be written.  Comments, suggestions, etc?</p>
10628
10629 <blockquote><pre>
10630 # Store in /opt/ltsp/$arch/usr/share/ltsp/ltsp_config.d/ldap-config
10631 #
10632 # Fetch LTSP client settings from LDAP based on MAC address
10633 #
10634 # Uses ethernet address as stored in the dhcpHost objectclass using
10635 # the dhcpHWAddress attribute or ethernet address stored in the
10636 # ieee802Device objectclass with the macAddress attribute.
10637 #
10638 # This module is written to be schema agnostic, and only depend on the
10639 # existence of attribute names.
10640 #
10641 # The LTSP configuration variables are saved directly using a
10642 # ltspConfig prefix and uppercasing the rest of the attribute name.
10643 # To set the SERVER variable, set the ltspConfigServer attribute.
10644 #
10645 # Some LDAP schema should be created with all the relevant
10646 # configuration settings.  Something like this should work:
10647 #
10648 # objectclass ( 1.1.2.2 NAME 'ltspClientAux'
10649 #     SUP top
10650 #     AUXILIARY
10651 #     MAY ( ltspConfigServer $ ltsConfigSound $ ... )
10652
10653 LDAPSERVER=$(debian-edu-ldapserver)
10654 if [ "$LDAPSERVER" ] ; then
10655     LDAPBASE=$(debian-edu-ldapserver -b)
10656     for MAC in $(LANG=C ifconfig |grep -i hwaddr| awk '{print $5}'|sort -u) ; do
10657         filter="(|(dhcpHWAddress=ethernet $MAC)(macAddress=$MAC))"
10658         ldapsearch -h "$LDAPSERVER" -b "$LDAPBASE" -v -x "$filter" | \
10659             grep '^ltspConfig' | while read attr value ; do
10660             # Remove prefix and convert to upper case
10661             attr=$(echo $attr | sed 's/^ltspConfig//i' | tr a-z A-Z)
10662             # bass value on to clients
10663             eval "$attr=$value; export $attr"
10664         done
10665     done
10666 fi
10667 </pre></blockquote>
10668
10669 <p>I'm not sure this shell construction will work, because I suspect
10670 the while block might end up in a subshell causing the variables set
10671 there to not show up in ltsp-config, but if that is the case I am sure
10672 the code can be restructured to make sure the variables are passed on.
10673 I expect that can be solved with some testing. :)</p>
10674
10675 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
10676 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
10677
10678 <p>Update 2010-07-17: I am aware of another effort to store LTSP
10679 configuration in LDAP that was created around year 2000 by
10680 <a href="http://www.pcxperience.com/thinclient/documentation/ldap.html">PC
10681 Xperience, Inc., 2000</a>.  I found its
10682 <a href="http://people.redhat.com/alikins/ltsp/ldap/">files</a> on a
10683 personal home page over at redhat.com.</p>
10684
10685       </div>
10686       <div class="tags">
10687
10688
10689         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>.
10690
10691
10692       </div>
10693     </div>
10694     <div class="padding"></div>
10695
10696     <div class="entry">
10697       <div class="title">
10698         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/jXplorer__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">jXplorer, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
10699       </div>
10700       <div class="date">
10701          9th July 2010
10702       </div>
10703       <div class="body">
10704         <p>Since
10705 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">my
10706 last post</a> about available LDAP tools in Debian, I was told about a
10707 LDAP GUI that is even better than luma.  The java application
10708 <a href="http://jxplorer.org/">jXplorer</a> is claimed to be capable of
10709 moving LDAP objects and subtrees using drag-and-drop, and can
10710 authenticate using Kerberos.  I have only tested the Kerberos
10711 authentication, but do not have a LDAP setup allowing me to rewrite
10712 LDAP with my test user yet.  It is
10713 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/jxplorer.html">available in
10714 Debian</a> testing and unstable at the moment.  The only problem I
10715 have with it is how it handle errors.  If something go wrong, its
10716 non-intuitive behaviour require me to go through some query work list
10717 and remove the failing query.  Nothing big, but very annoying.</p>
10718
10719       </div>
10720       <div class="tags">
10721
10722
10723         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>.
10724
10725
10726       </div>
10727     </div>
10728     <div class="padding"></div>
10729
10730     <div class="entry">
10731       <div class="title">
10732         <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>
10733       </div>
10734       <div class="date">
10735          3rd July 2010
10736       </div>
10737       <div class="body">
10738         <p>Here is a short update on my <a
10739 href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">my
10740 Debian Lenny->Squeeze upgrade testing</a>.  Here is a summary of the
10741 difference for Gnome when it is upgraded by apt-get and aptitude.  I'm
10742 not reporting the status for KDE, because the upgrade crashes when
10743 aptitude try because of missing conflicts
10744 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> and
10745 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585716">#585716</a>).</p>
10746
10747 <p>At the end of the upgrade test script, dpkg -l is executed to get a
10748 complete list of the installed packages.  Based on this I see these
10749 differences when I did a test run today.  As usual, I do not really
10750 know what the correct set of packages would be, but thought it best to
10751 publish the difference.</p>
10752
10753 <p>Installed using apt-get, missing with aptitude</p>
10754
10755 <blockquote><p>
10756   at-spi cpp-4.3 finger gnome-spell gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
10757   libatspi1.0-0 libcupsys2 libeel2-data libgail-common libgdl-1-common
10758   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-common libgnomevfs2-bin
10759   libgtksourceview-common libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa
10760   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libservlet2.4-java libxalan2-java
10761   libxerces2-java openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
10762   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gtkhtml2
10763   python-gtkmozembed svgalibg1 xserver-xephyr zip
10764 </p></blockquote>
10765
10766 <p>Installed using apt-get, removed with aptitude</p>
10767
10768 <blockquote><p>
10769   bluez-utils dhcdbd djvulibre-desktop epiphany-gecko
10770   gnome-app-install gnome-mount gnome-vfs-obexftp gnome-volume-manager
10771   libao2 libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libbind9-50
10772   libbluetooth2 libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcurl3
10773   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedata-cal1.2-6 libedataserver1.2-9
10774   libeel2-2.20 libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libexchange-storage1.2-3
10775   libfaad0 libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libggz2 libggzcore9
10776   libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0 libgnome-desktop-2
10777   libgnome-pilot2 libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomeprint2.2-0
10778   libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
10779   libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6 libhesiod0 libicu38 libisccc50
10780   libisccfg50 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 liblwres50 libmagick++10
10781   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off libnautilus-burn4
10782   libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2 libosp5
10783   libparted1.8-10 libpisock9 libpisync1 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3
10784   libpt-1.10.10 libraw1394-8 libsensors3 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8
10785   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1
10786   libtotem-plparser10 libtrackerclient0 libvoikko1 libxalan2-java-gcj
10787   libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6 libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3
10788   mysql-common swfdec-gnome totem-gstreamer wodim
10789 </p></blockquote>
10790
10791 <p>Installed using aptitude, missing with apt-get</p>
10792
10793 <blockquote><p>
10794   gnome gnome-desktop-environment hamster-applet python-gnomeapplet
10795   python-gnomekeyring python-wnck rhythmbox-plugins xorg
10796   xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
10797   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
10798   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-video-all
10799   xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark xserver-xorg-video-ati
10800   xserver-xorg-video-chips xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
10801   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
10802   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
10803   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-mach64
10804   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
10805   xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-nv
10806   xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
10807   xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd xserver-xorg-video-rendition
10808   xserver-xorg-video-s3 xserver-xorg-video-s3virge
10809   xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
10810   xserver-xorg-video-sis xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
10811   xserver-xorg-video-tdfx xserver-xorg-video-tga
10812   xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-tseng
10813   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
10814   xserver-xorg-video-voodoo
10815 </p></blockquote>
10816
10817 <p>Installed using aptitude, removed with apt-get</p>
10818
10819 <blockquote><p>
10820   deskbar-applet xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core
10821   xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-intel
10822   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
10823 </p></blockquote>
10824
10825 <p>I was told on IRC that the xorg-xserver package was
10826 <a href="http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-xorg/xserver/xorg-server.git;a=commit;h=9c8080d06c457932d3bfec021c69ac000aa60120">changed
10827 in git</a> today to try to get apt-get to not remove xorg completely.
10828 No idea when it hits Squeeze, but when it does I hope it will reduce
10829 the difference somewhat.
10830
10831       </div>
10832       <div class="tags">
10833
10834
10835         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>.
10836
10837
10838       </div>
10839     </div>
10840     <div class="padding"></div>
10841
10842     <div class="entry">
10843       <div class="title">
10844         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Caching_password__user_and_group_on_a_roaming_Debian_laptop.html">Caching password, user and group on a roaming Debian laptop</a>
10845       </div>
10846       <div class="date">
10847          1st July 2010
10848       </div>
10849       <div class="body">
10850         <p>For a laptop, centralized user directories and password checking is
10851 a bit troubling.  Laptops are typically used also when not connected
10852 to the network, and it is vital for a user to be able to log in or
10853 unlock the screen saver also when a central server is unavailable.
10854 This is possible by caching passwords and directory information (user
10855 and group attributes) locally, and the packages to do so are available
10856 in Debian.  Here follow two recipes to set this up in Debian/Squeeze.
10857 It is also possible to set up in Debian/Lenny, but require more manual
10858 setup there because pam-auth-update is missing in Lenny.</p>
10859
10860 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nscd + libpam-ccreds + libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
10861
10862 This is the traditional method with a twist.  The password caching is
10863 provided by libpam-ccreds (version 10-4 or later is needed on
10864 Squeeze), and the directory caching is done by nscd.  The directory
10865 lookup and password checking is done using LDAP.  If one want to use
10866 Kerberos for password checking the libpam-ldapd package can be
10867 replaced with libpam-krb5 or libpam-heimdal.  If one is happy having a
10868 local home directory with the path listed in LDAP, one can use the
10869 pam_mkhomedir module from pam-modules to make this happen instead of
10870 using libpam-mklocaluser.  A setup for pam-auth-update to enable
10871 pam_mkhomedir will have to be written until a fix for
10872 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/568577">bug #568577</a> is in the
10873 archive.  Because I believe it is a bad idea to have local home
10874 directories using misleading paths like /site/server/partition/, I
10875 prefer to create a local user with the home directory in /home/.  This
10876 is done using the libpam-mklocaluser package.</p>
10877
10878 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured</p>
10879
10880 <blockquote><pre>
10881 libnss-ldapd libpam-ldapd nscd libpam-ccreds libpam-mklocaluser
10882 </pre></blockquote>
10883
10884 <p>The ldapd packages will ask for LDAP connection information, and
10885 one have to fill in the values that fits ones own site.  Make sure the
10886 PAM part uses encrypted connections, to make sure the password is not
10887 sent in clear text to the LDAP server.  I've been unable to get TLS
10888 certificate checking for a self signed certificate working, which make
10889 LDAP authentication unsafe for Debian Edu (nslcd is not checking if it
10890 is talking to the correct LDAP server), and very much welcome feedback
10891 on how to get this working.</p>
10892
10893 <p>Because nscd do not have a default configuration fit for offline
10894 caching until <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">bug #485282</a>
10895 is fixed, this configuration should be used instead of the one
10896 currently in /etc/nscd.conf.  The changes are in the fields
10897 reload-count and positive-time-to-live, and is based on the
10898 instructions I found in the
10899 <a href="http://www.flyn.org/laptopldap/">LDAP for Mobile Laptops</a>
10900 instructions by Flyn Computing.</p>
10901
10902 <blockquote><pre>
10903         debug-level             0
10904         reload-count            unlimited
10905         paranoia                no
10906
10907         enable-cache            passwd          yes
10908         positive-time-to-live   passwd          2592000
10909         negative-time-to-live   passwd          20
10910         suggested-size          passwd          211
10911         check-files             passwd          yes
10912         persistent              passwd          yes
10913         shared                  passwd          yes
10914         max-db-size             passwd          33554432
10915         auto-propagate          passwd          yes
10916
10917         enable-cache            group           yes
10918         positive-time-to-live   group           2592000
10919         negative-time-to-live   group           20
10920         suggested-size          group           211
10921         check-files             group           yes
10922         persistent              group           yes
10923         shared                  group           yes
10924         max-db-size             group           33554432
10925         auto-propagate          group           yes
10926
10927         enable-cache            hosts           no
10928         positive-time-to-live   hosts           2592000
10929         negative-time-to-live   hosts           20
10930         suggested-size          hosts           211
10931         check-files             hosts           yes
10932         persistent              hosts           yes
10933         shared                  hosts           yes
10934         max-db-size             hosts           33554432
10935
10936         enable-cache            services        yes
10937         positive-time-to-live   services        2592000
10938         negative-time-to-live   services        20
10939         suggested-size          services        211
10940         check-files             services        yes
10941         persistent              services        yes
10942         shared                  services        yes
10943         max-db-size             services        33554432
10944 </pre></blockquote>
10945
10946 <p>While we wait for a mechanism to update /etc/nsswitch.conf
10947 automatically like the one provided in
10948 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/496915">bug #496915</a>, the file
10949 content need to be manually replaced to ensure LDAP is used as the
10950 directory service on the machine.  /etc/nsswitch.conf should normally
10951 look like this:</p>
10952
10953 <blockquote><pre>
10954 passwd:         files ldap
10955 group:          files ldap
10956 shadow:         files ldap
10957 hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
10958 networks:       files
10959 protocols:      files
10960 services:       files
10961 ethers:         files
10962 rpc:            files
10963 netgroup:       files ldap
10964 </pre></blockquote>
10965
10966 <p>The important parts are that ldap is listed last for passwd, group,
10967 shadow and netgroup.</p>
10968
10969 <p>With these changes in place, any user in LDAP will be able to log
10970 in locally on the machine using for example kdm, get a local home
10971 directory created and have the password as well as user and group
10972 attributes cached.
10973
10974 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + nss-updatedb + libpam-ccreds +
10975   libpam-mklocaluser/pam_mkhomedir</h2>
10976
10977 <p>Because nscd have had its share of problems, and seem to have
10978 problems doing proper caching, I've seen suggestions and recipes to
10979 use nss-updatedb to copy parts of the LDAP database locally when the
10980 LDAP database is available.  I have not tested such setup, because I
10981 discovered sssd.</p>
10982
10983 <h2>LDAP/Kerberos + sssd + libpam-mklocaluser</h2>
10984
10985 <p>A more flexible and robust setup than the nscd combination
10986 mentioned earlier that has shown up recently, is the
10987 <a href="https://fedorahosted.org/sssd/">sssd</a> package from Redhat.
10988 It is part of the <a href="http://www.freeipa.org/">FreeIPA</A> project
10989 to provide a Active Directory like directory service for Linux
10990 machines.  The sssd system combines the caching of passwords and user
10991 information into one package, and remove the need for nscd and
10992 libpam-ccreds.  It support LDAP and Kerberos, but not NIS.  Version
10993 1.2 do not support netgroups, but it is said that it will support this
10994 in version 1.5 expected to show up later in 2010.  Because the
10995 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd package</a>
10996 was missing in Debian, I ended up co-maintaining it with Werner, and
10997 version 1.2 is now in testing.
10998
10999 <p>These packages need to be installed and configured to get the
11000 roaming setup I want</p>
11001
11002 <blockquote><pre>
11003 libpam-sss libnss-sss libpam-mklocaluser
11004 </pre></blockquote>
11005
11006 The complete setup of sssd is done by editing/creating
11007 <tt>/etc/sssd/sssd.conf</tt>.
11008
11009 <blockquote><pre>
11010 [sssd]
11011 config_file_version = 2
11012 reconnection_retries = 3
11013 sbus_timeout = 30
11014 services = nss, pam
11015 domains = INTERN
11016
11017 [nss]
11018 filter_groups = root
11019 filter_users = root
11020 reconnection_retries = 3
11021
11022 [pam]
11023 reconnection_retries = 3
11024
11025 [domain/INTERN]
11026 enumerate = false
11027 cache_credentials = true
11028
11029 id_provider = ldap
11030 auth_provider = ldap
11031 chpass_provider = ldap
11032
11033 ldap_uri = ldap://ldap
11034 ldap_search_base = dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
11035 ldap_tls_reqcert = never
11036 ldap_tls_cacert = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
11037 </pre></blockquote>
11038
11039 <p>I got the same problem here with certificate checking.  Had to set
11040 "ldap_tls_reqcert = never" to get it working.</p>
11041
11042 <p>With the libnss-sss package in testing at the moment, the
11043 nsswitch.conf file is update automatically, so there is no need to
11044 modify it manually.</p>
11045
11046 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11047 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11048
11049       </div>
11050       <div class="tags">
11051
11052
11053         Tags: <a href="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>.
11054
11055
11056       </div>
11057     </div>
11058     <div class="padding"></div>
11059
11060     <div class="entry">
11061       <div class="title">
11062         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/LUMA__a_very_nice_LDAP_GUI.html">LUMA, a very nice LDAP GUI</a>
11063       </div>
11064       <div class="date">
11065         28th June 2010
11066       </div>
11067       <div class="body">
11068         <p>The last few days I have been looking into the status of the LDAP
11069 directory in Debian Edu, and in the process I started to miss a GUI
11070 tool to browse the LDAP tree.  The only one I was able to find in
11071 Debian/Squeeze and Lenny is
11072 <a href="http://luma.sourceforge.net/">LUMA</a>, which has proved to
11073 be a great tool to get a overview of the current LDAP directory
11074 populated by default in Skolelinux.  Thanks to it, I have been able to
11075 find empty and obsolete subtrees, misplaced objects and duplicate
11076 objects.  It will be installed by default in Debian/Squeeze.  If you
11077 are working with LDAP, give it a go. :)</p>
11078
11079 <p>I did notice one problem with it I have not had time to report to
11080 the BTS yet.  There is no .desktop file in the package, so the tool do
11081 not show up in the Gnome and KDE menus, but only deep down in in the
11082 Debian submenu in KDE.  I hope that can be fixed before Squeeze is
11083 released.</p>
11084
11085 <p>I have not yet been able to get it to modify the tree yet.  I would
11086 like to move objects and remove subtrees directly in the GUI, but have
11087 not found a way to do that with LUMA yet.  So in the mean time, I use
11088 <a href="http://www.lichteblau.com/ldapvi/">ldapvi</a> for that.</p>
11089
11090 <p>If you have tips on other GUI tools for LDAP that might be useful
11091 in Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11092
11093 <p>Update 2010-06-29: Ross Reedstrom tipped us about the
11094 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/gq.html">gq</a> package as a
11095 useful GUI alternative.  It seem like a good tool, but is unmaintained
11096 in Debian and got a RC bug keeping it out of Squeeze.  Unless that
11097 changes, it will not be an option for Debian Edu based on Squeeze.</p>
11098
11099       </div>
11100       <div class="tags">
11101
11102
11103         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>.
11104
11105
11106       </div>
11107     </div>
11108     <div class="padding"></div>
11109
11110     <div class="entry">
11111       <div class="title">
11112         <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>
11113       </div>
11114       <div class="date">
11115         24th June 2010
11116       </div>
11117       <div class="body">
11118         <p>A while back, I
11119 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Time_for_new__LDAP_schemas_replacing_RFC_2307_.html">complained
11120 about the fact</a> that it is not possible with the provided schemas
11121 for storing DNS and DHCP information in LDAP to combine the two sets
11122 of information into one LDAP object representing a computer.</p>
11123
11124 <p>In the mean time, I discovered that a simple fix would be to make
11125 the dhcpHost object class auxiliary, to allow it to be combined with
11126 the dNSDomain object class, and thus forming one object for one
11127 computer when storing both DHCP and DNS information in LDAP.</p>
11128
11129 <p>If I understand this correctly, it is not safe to do this change
11130 without also changing the assigned number for the object class, and I
11131 do not know enough about LDAP schema design to do that properly for
11132 Debian Edu.</p>
11133
11134 <p>Anyway, for future reference, this is how I believe we could change
11135 the
11136 <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-ldap-schema-00">DHCP
11137 schema</a> to solve at least part of the problem with the LDAP schemas
11138 available today from IETF.</p>
11139
11140 <pre>
11141 --- dhcp.schema    (revision 65192)
11142 +++ dhcp.schema    (working copy)
11143 @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@
11144  objectclass ( 2.16.840.1.113719.1.203.6.6
11145         NAME 'dhcpHost'
11146         DESC 'This represents information about a particular client'
11147 -       SUP top
11148 +       SUP top AUXILIARY
11149         MUST cn
11150         MAY  (dhcpLeaseDN $ dhcpHWAddress $ dhcpOptionsDN $ dhcpStatements $ dhcpComments $ dhcpOption)
11151         X-NDS_CONTAINMENT ('dhcpService' 'dhcpSubnet' 'dhcpGroup') )
11152 </pre>
11153
11154 <p>I very much welcome clues on how to do this properly for Debian
11155 Edu/Squeeze.  We provide the DHCP schema in our debian-edu-config
11156 package, and should thus be free to rewrite it as we see fit.</p>
11157
11158 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11159 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11160
11161       </div>
11162       <div class="tags">
11163
11164
11165         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>.
11166
11167
11168       </div>
11169     </div>
11170     <div class="padding"></div>
11171
11172     <div class="entry">
11173       <div class="title">
11174         <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>
11175       </div>
11176       <div class="date">
11177         16th June 2010
11178       </div>
11179       <div class="body">
11180         <p>A few times I have had the need to simulate the way tasksel
11181 installs packages during the normal debian-installer run.  Until now,
11182 I have ended up letting tasksel do the work, with the annoying problem
11183 of not getting any feedback at all when something fails (like a
11184 conffile question from dpkg or a download that fails), using code like
11185 this:
11186
11187 <blockquote><pre>
11188 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11189 tasksel --new-install
11190 </pre></blockquote>
11191
11192 This would invoke tasksel, let its automatic task selection pick the
11193 tasks to install, and continue to install the requested tasks without
11194 any output what so ever.
11195
11196 Recently I revisited this problem while working on the automatic
11197 package upgrade testing, because tasksel would some times hang without
11198 any useful feedback, and I want to see what is going on when it
11199 happen.  Then it occured to me, I can parse the output from tasksel
11200 when asked to run in test mode, and use that aptitude command line
11201 printed by tasksel then to simulate the tasksel run.  I ended up using
11202 code like this:
11203
11204 <blockquote><pre>
11205 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11206 cmd="$(in_target tasksel -t --new-install | sed 's/debconf-apt-progress -- //')"
11207 $cmd
11208 </pre></blockquote>
11209
11210 <p>The content of $cmd is typically something like "<tt>aptitude -q
11211 --without-recommends -o APT::Install-Recommends=no -y install
11212 ~t^desktop$ ~t^gnome-desktop$ ~t^laptop$ ~pstandard ~prequired
11213 ~pimportant</tt>", which will install the gnome desktop task, the
11214 laptop task and all packages with priority standard , required and
11215 important, just like tasksel would have done it during
11216 installation.</p>
11217
11218 <p>A better approach is probably to extend tasksel to be able to
11219 install packages without using debconf-apt-progress, for use cases
11220 like this.</p>
11221
11222       </div>
11223       <div class="tags">
11224
11225
11226         Tags: <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>.
11227
11228
11229       </div>
11230     </div>
11231     <div class="padding"></div>
11232
11233     <div class="entry">
11234       <div class="title">
11235         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html">Officeshots taking shape</a>
11236       </div>
11237       <div class="date">
11238         13th June 2010
11239       </div>
11240       <div class="body">
11241         <p>For those of us caring about document exchange and
11242 interoperability, <a href="http://www.officeshots.org/">OfficeShots</a>
11243 is a great service.  It is to ODF documents what
11244 <a href="http://browsershots.org/">BrowserShots</a> is for web
11245 pages.</p>
11246
11247 <p>A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
11248 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
11249 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
11250 interested in supporting the project.  I helped him to navigate his
11251 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
11252 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
11253 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot.  The machine is
11254 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
11255 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
11256 see how the project is doing.</p>
11257
11258 <p>Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
11259 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
11260 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
11261 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
11262 Windows.  This is great.</p>
11263
11264       </div>
11265       <div class="tags">
11266
11267
11268         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
11269
11270
11271       </div>
11272     </div>
11273     <div class="padding"></div>
11274
11275     <div class="entry">
11276       <div class="title">
11277         <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>
11278       </div>
11279       <div class="date">
11280         13th June 2010
11281       </div>
11282       <div class="body">
11283         <p>My
11284 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">testing
11285 of Debian upgrades</a> from Lenny to Squeeze continues, and I've
11286 finally made the upgrade logs available from
11287 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/debian-upgrade-testing/</a>.
11288 I am now testing dist-upgrade of Gnome and KDE in a chroot using both
11289 apt and aptitude, and found their differences interesting.  This time
11290 I will only focus on their removal plans.</p>
11291
11292 <p>After installing a Gnome desktop and the laptop task, apt-get wants
11293 to remove 72 packages when dist-upgrading from Lenny to Squeeze.  The
11294 surprising part is that it want to remove xorg and all
11295 xserver-xorg-video* drivers.  Clearly not a good choice, but I am not
11296 sure why.  When asking aptitude to do the same, it want to remove 129
11297 packages, but most of them are library packages I suspect are no
11298 longer needed.  Both of them want to remove bluetooth packages, which
11299 I do not know.  Perhaps these bluetooth packages are obsolete?</p>
11300
11301 <p>For KDE, apt-get want to remove 82 packages, among them kdebase
11302 which seem like a bad idea and xorg the same way as with Gnome. Asking
11303 aptitude for the same, it wants to remove 192 packages, none which are
11304 too surprising.</p>
11305
11306 <p>I guess the removal of xorg during upgrades should be investigated
11307 and avoided, and perhaps others as well.  Here are the complete list
11308 of planned removals.  The complete logs is available from the URL
11309 above.  Note if you want to repeat these tests, that the upgrade test
11310 for kde+apt-get hung in the tasksel setup because of dpkg asking
11311 conffile questions.  No idea why.  I worked around it by using
11312 '<tt>echo >> /proc/<em>pidofdpkg</em>/fd/0</tt>' to tell dpkg to
11313 continue.</p>
11314
11315 <p><b>apt-get gnome 72</b>
11316 <br>bluez-gnome cupsddk-drivers deskbar-applet gnome
11317   gnome-desktop-environment gnome-network-admin gtkhtml3.14
11318   iceweasel-gnome-support libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libgdl-1-0
11319   libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libmetacity0 libslab0 libxcb-xlib0
11320   nautilus-cd-burner python-gnome2-desktop python-gnome2-extras
11321   serpentine swfdec-mozilla update-manager xorg xserver-xorg
11322   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11323   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11324   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11325   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11326   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11327   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11328   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11329   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11330   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11331   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11332   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11333   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11334   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11335   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11336   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11337   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11338   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11339   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11340   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11341   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11342   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11343   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9
11344   xulrunner-1.9-gnome-support</p>
11345
11346 <p><b>aptitude gnome 129</b>
11347
11348 <br>bluez-gnome bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers dhcdbd
11349   djvulibre-desktop finger gnome-app-install gnome-mount
11350   gnome-network-admin gnome-spell gnome-vfs-obexftp
11351   gnome-volume-manager gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gtkhtml3.14 libao2
11352   libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 libavahi-core5 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11353   libcamel1.2-11 libcdio7 libcucul0 libcupsys2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
11354   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdvdread3 libedataserver1.2-9 libeel2-2.20
11355   libeel2-data libepc-1.0-1 libepc-ui-1.0-1 libfaad0 libgail-common
11356   libgd2-noxpm libgda3-3 libgda3-common libgdl-1-0 libgdl-1-common
11357   libggz2 libggzcore9 libggzmod4 libgksu1.2-0 libgksuui1.0-1 libgmyth0
11358   libgnomecups1.0-1 libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgnomeprint2.2-0
11359   libgnomeprint2.2-data libgnomeprintui2.2-0 libgnomeprintui2.2-common
11360   libgnomevfs2-bin libgpod3 libgraphviz4 libgtkhtml2-0
11361   libgtksourceview-common libgtksourceview1.0-0 libgucharmap6
11362   libhesiod0 libicu38 libiw29 libkpathsea4 libltdl3 libmagick++10
11363   libmagick10 libmalaga7 libmetacity0 libmtp7 libmysqlclient15off
11364   libnautilus-burn4 libneon27 libnm-glib0 libnm-util0 libopal-2.2
11365   libosp5 libparted1.8-10 libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler3 libpt-1.10.10
11366   libpt-1.10.10-plugins-alsa libpt-1.10.10-plugins-v4l libraw1394-8
11367   libsensors3 libslab0 libsmbios2 libsoup2.2-8 libssh2-1
11368   libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libswfdec-0.6-90 libtalloc1 libtotem-plparser10
11369   libtrackerclient0 libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0
11370   libxerces2-java libxerces2-java-gcj libxklavier12 libxtrap6
11371   libxxf86misc1 libzephyr3 mysql-common nautilus-cd-burner
11372   openoffice.org-writer2latex openssl-blacklist p7zip
11373   python-4suite-xml python-eggtrayicon python-gnome2-desktop
11374   python-gnome2-extras python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed
11375   python-numeric python-sexy serpentine svgalibg1 swfdec-gnome
11376   swfdec-mozilla totem-gstreamer update-manager wodim
11377   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11378   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11379   zip</p>
11380
11381 <p><b>apt-get kde 82</b>
11382
11383 <br>cupsddk-drivers karm kaudiocreator kcoloredit kcontrol kde kde-core
11384   kdeaddons kdeartwork kdebase kdebase-bin kdebase-bin-kde3
11385   kdebase-kio-plugins kdesktop kdeutils khelpcenter kicker
11386   kicker-applets knewsticker kolourpaint konq-plugins konqueror korn
11387   kpersonalizer kscreensaver ksplash libavcodec51 libdatrie0 libkiten1
11388   libxcb-xlib0 quanta superkaramba texlive-base-bin xorg xserver-xorg
11389   xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev
11390   xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
11391   xserver-xorg-input-synaptics xserver-xorg-input-wacom
11392   xserver-xorg-video-all xserver-xorg-video-apm xserver-xorg-video-ark
11393   xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-chips
11394   xserver-xorg-video-cirrus xserver-xorg-video-cyrix
11395   xserver-xorg-video-dummy xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
11396   xserver-xorg-video-glint xserver-xorg-video-i128
11397   xserver-xorg-video-i740 xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11398   xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
11399   xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
11400   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-nv
11401   xserver-xorg-video-openchrome xserver-xorg-video-r128
11402   xserver-xorg-video-radeon xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd
11403   xserver-xorg-video-rendition xserver-xorg-video-s3
11404   xserver-xorg-video-s3virge xserver-xorg-video-savage
11405   xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion xserver-xorg-video-sis
11406   xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
11407   xserver-xorg-video-tga xserver-xorg-video-trident
11408   xserver-xorg-video-tseng xserver-xorg-video-v4l
11409   xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vga
11410   xserver-xorg-video-vmware xserver-xorg-video-voodoo xulrunner-1.9</p>
11411
11412 <p><b>aptitude kde 192</b>
11413 <br>bluez-utils cpp-4.3 cupsddk-drivers cvs dcoprss dhcdbd
11414   djvulibre-desktop dosfstools eyesapplet fifteenapplet finger gettext
11415   ghostscript-x imlib-base imlib11 indi kandy karm kasteroids
11416   kaudiocreator kbackgammon kbstate kcoloredit kcontrol kcron kdat
11417   kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdeartwork-misc kdeartwork-theme-window
11418   kdebase-bin-kde3 kdebase-kio-plugins kdeedu-data
11419   kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdelirc kdemultimedia-kappfinder-data
11420   kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins
11421   kdepim-kfile-plugins kdepim-kio-plugins kdeprint kdesktop kdessh
11422   kdict kdnssd kdvi kedit keduca kenolaba kfax kfaxview kfouleggs
11423   kghostview khelpcenter khexedit kiconedit kitchensync klatin
11424   klickety kmailcvt kmenuedit kmid kmilo kmoon kmrml kodo kolourpaint
11425   kooka korn kpager kpdf kpercentage kpf kpilot kpoker kpovmodeler
11426   krec kregexpeditor ksayit ksim ksirc ksirtet ksmiletris ksmserver
11427   ksnake ksokoban ksplash ksvg ksysv ktip ktnef kuickshow kverbos
11428   kview kviewshell kvoctrain kwifimanager kwin kwin4 kworldclock
11429   kxsldbg libakode2 libao2 libarts1-akode libarts1-audiofile
11430   libarts1-mpeglib libarts1-xine libavahi-compat-libdnssd1
11431   libavahi-core5 libavc1394-0 libavcodec51 libbluetooth2
11432   libboost-python1.34.1 libcucul0 libcurl3 libcvsservice0 libdatrie0
11433   libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdvdread3 libfaad0 libfreebob0
11434   libgail-common libgd2-noxpm libgraphviz4 libgsmme1c2a libgtkhtml2-0
11435   libicu38 libiec61883-0 libindex0 libiw29 libk3b3 libkcal2b libkcddb1
11436   libkdeedu3 libkdepim1a libkgantt0 libkiten1 libkleopatra1 libkmime2
11437   libkpathsea4 libkpimexchange1 libkpimidentities1 libkscan1
11438   libksieve0 libktnef1 liblockdev1 libltdl3 libmagick10 libmimelib1c2a
11439   libmozjs1d libmpcdec3 libneon27 libnm-util0 libopensync0 libpisock9
11440   libpoppler-glib3 libpoppler-qt2 libpoppler3 libraw1394-8 libsmbios2
11441   libssh2-1 libsuitesparse-3.1.0 libtalloc1 libtiff-tools
11442   libxalan2-java libxalan2-java-gcj libxcb-xlib0 libxerces2-java
11443   libxerces2-java-gcj libxtrap6 mpeglib networkstatus
11444   openoffice.org-writer2latex pmount poster psutils quanta quanta-data
11445   superkaramba svgalibg1 tex-common texlive-base texlive-base-bin
11446   texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-fonts-recommended
11447   xserver-xorg-video-cyrix xserver-xorg-video-imstt
11448   xserver-xorg-video-nsc xserver-xorg-video-v4l xserver-xorg-video-vga
11449   xulrunner-1.9</p>
11450
11451
11452       </div>
11453       <div class="tags">
11454
11455
11456         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>.
11457
11458
11459       </div>
11460     </div>
11461     <div class="padding"></div>
11462
11463     <div class="entry">
11464       <div class="title">
11465         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">Automatic upgrade testing from Lenny to Squeeze</a>
11466       </div>
11467       <div class="date">
11468         11th June 2010
11469       </div>
11470       <div class="body">
11471         <p>The last few days I have done some upgrade testing in Debian, to
11472 see if the upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze will go smoothly.  A few bugs
11473 have been discovered and reported in the process
11474 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/585410">#585410</a> in nagios3-cgi,
11475 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584879">#584879</a> already fixed in
11476 enscript and <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/584861">#584861</a> in
11477 kdebase-workspace-data), and to get a more regular testing going on, I
11478 am working on a script to automate the test.</p>
11479
11480 <p>The idea is to create a Lenny chroot and use tasksel to install a
11481 Gnome or KDE desktop installation inside the chroot before upgrading
11482 it.  To ensure no services are started in the chroot, a policy-rc.d
11483 script is inserted.  To make sure tasksel believe it is to install a
11484 desktop on a laptop, the tasksel tests are replaced in the chroot
11485 (only acceptable because this is a throw-away chroot).</p>
11486
11487 <p>A naive upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze using aptitude dist-upgrade
11488 currently always fail because udev refuses to upgrade with the kernel
11489 in Lenny, so to avoid that problem the file /etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11490 is created.  The bug report
11491 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566000">#566000</a> make me suspect
11492 this problem do not trigger in a chroot, but I touch the file anyway
11493 to make sure the upgrade go well.  Testing on virtual and real
11494 hardware have failed me because of udev so far, and creating this file
11495 do the trick in such settings anyway.  This is a
11496 <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/debian-26/failed-dist-upgrade-due-to-udev-config_sysfs_deprecated-nonsense-804130/">known
11497 issue</a> and the current udev behaviour is intended by the udev
11498 maintainer because he lack the resources to rewrite udev to keep
11499 working with old kernels or something like that.  I really wish the
11500 udev upstream would keep udev backwards compatible, to avoid such
11501 upgrade problem, but given that they fail to do so, I guess
11502 documenting the way out of this mess is the best option we got for
11503 Debian Squeeze.</p>
11504
11505 <p>Anyway, back to the task at hand, testing upgrades.  This test
11506 script, which I call <tt>upgrade-test</tt> for now, is doing the
11507 trick:</p>
11508
11509 <blockquote><pre>
11510 #!/bin/sh
11511 set -ex
11512
11513 if [ "$1" ] ; then
11514     desktop=$1
11515 else
11516     desktop=gnome
11517 fi
11518
11519 from=lenny
11520 to=squeeze
11521
11522 exec &lt; /dev/null
11523 unset LANG
11524 mirror=http://ftp.skolelinux.org/debian
11525 tmpdir=chroot-$from-upgrade-$to-$desktop
11526 fuser -mv .
11527 debootstrap $from $tmpdir $mirror
11528 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11529 cat > $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d &lt;&lt;EOF
11530 #!/bin/sh
11531 exit 101
11532 EOF
11533 chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
11534 exit_cleanup() {
11535     umount $tmpdir/proc
11536 }
11537 mount -t proc proc $tmpdir/proc
11538 # Make sure proc is unmounted also on failure
11539 trap exit_cleanup EXIT INT
11540
11541 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y install debconf-utils
11542
11543 # Make sure tasksel autoselection trigger.  It need the test scripts
11544 # to return the correct answers.
11545 echo tasksel tasksel/desktop multiselect $desktop | \
11546     chroot $tmpdir debconf-set-selections
11547
11548 # Include the desktop and laptop task
11549 for test in desktop laptop ; do
11550     echo > $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test &lt;&lt;EOF
11551 #!/bin/sh
11552 exit 2
11553 EOF
11554     chmod a+rx $tmpdir/usr/lib/tasksel/tests/$test
11555 done
11556
11557 DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
11558 DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
11559 export DEBIAN_FRONTEND DEBIAN_PRIORITY
11560 chroot $tmpdir tasksel --new-install
11561
11562 echo deb $mirror $to main > $tmpdir/etc/apt/sources.list
11563 chroot $tmpdir aptitude update
11564 touch $tmpdir/etc/udev/kernel-upgrade
11565 chroot $tmpdir aptitude -y dist-upgrade
11566 fuser -mv
11567 </pre></blockquote>
11568
11569 <p>I suspect it would be useful to test upgrades with both apt-get and
11570 with aptitude, but I have not had time to look at how they behave
11571 differently so far.  I hope to get a cron job running to do the test
11572 regularly and post the result on the web.  The Gnome upgrade currently
11573 work, while the KDE upgrade fail because of the bug in
11574 kdebase-workspace-data</p>
11575
11576 <p>I am not quite sure what kind of extract from the huge upgrade logs
11577 (KDE 167 KiB, Gnome 516 KiB) it make sense to include in this blog
11578 post, so I will refrain from trying.  I can report that for Gnome,
11579 aptitude report 760 packages upgraded, 448 newly installed, 129 to
11580 remove and 1 not upgraded and 1024MB need to be downloaded while for
11581 KDE the same numbers are 702 packages upgraded, 507 newly installed,
11582 193 to remove and 0 not upgraded and 1117MB need to be downloaded</p>
11583
11584 <p>I am very happy to notice that the Gnome desktop + laptop upgrade
11585 is able to migrate to dependency based boot sequencing and parallel
11586 booting without a hitch.  Was unsure if there were still bugs with
11587 packages failing to clean up their obsolete init.d script during
11588 upgrades, and no such problem seem to affect the Gnome desktop+laptop
11589 packages.</p>
11590
11591       </div>
11592       <div class="tags">
11593
11594
11595         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>.
11596
11597
11598       </div>
11599     </div>
11600     <div class="padding"></div>
11601
11602     <div class="entry">
11603       <div class="title">
11604         <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>
11605       </div>
11606       <div class="date">
11607          6th June 2010
11608       </div>
11609       <div class="body">
11610         <p>If Debian is to migrate to upstart on Linux, I expect some init.d
11611 scripts to migrate (some of) their operations to upstart job while
11612 keeping the init.d for hurd and kfreebsd.  The packages with such
11613 needs will need a way to get their init.d scripts to behave
11614 differently when used with sysvinit and with upstart.  Because of
11615 this, I had a look at the environment variables set when a init.d
11616 script is running under upstart, and when it is not.</p>
11617
11618 <p>With upstart, I notice these environment variables are set when a
11619 script is started from rcS.d/ (ignoring some irrelevant ones like
11620 COLUMNS):</p>
11621
11622 <blockquote><pre>
11623 DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2
11624 previous=N
11625 PREVLEVEL=
11626 RUNLEVEL=
11627 runlevel=S
11628 UPSTART_EVENTS=startup
11629 UPSTART_INSTANCE=
11630 UPSTART_JOB=rc-sysinit
11631 </pre></blockquote>
11632
11633 <p>With sysvinit, these environment variables are set for the same
11634 script.</p>
11635
11636 <blockquote><pre>
11637 INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.88
11638 previous=N
11639 PREVLEVEL=N
11640 RUNLEVEL=S
11641 runlevel=S
11642 </pre></blockquote>
11643
11644 <p>The RUNLEVEL and PREVLEVEL environment variables passed on from
11645 sysvinit are not set by upstart.  Not sure if it is intentional or not
11646 to not be compatible with sysvinit in this regard.</p>
11647
11648 <p>For scripts needing to behave differently when upstart is used,
11649 looking for the UPSTART_JOB environment variable seem to be a good
11650 choice.</p>
11651
11652       </div>
11653       <div class="tags">
11654
11655
11656         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>.
11657
11658
11659       </div>
11660     </div>
11661     <div class="padding"></div>
11662
11663     <div class="entry">
11664       <div class="title">
11665         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html">A manual for standards wars...</a>
11666       </div>
11667       <div class="date">
11668          6th June 2010
11669       </div>
11670       <div class="body">
11671         <p>Via the
11672 <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html">blog
11673 of Rob Weir</a> I came across the very interesting essay named
11674 <a href="http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf">The Art of
11675 Standards Wars</a> (PDF 25 pages).  I recommend it for everyone
11676 following the standards wars of today.</p>
11677
11678       </div>
11679       <div class="tags">
11680
11681
11682         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>.
11683
11684
11685       </div>
11686     </div>
11687     <div class="padding"></div>
11688
11689     <div class="entry">
11690       <div class="title">
11691         <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>
11692       </div>
11693       <div class="date">
11694          3rd June 2010
11695       </div>
11696       <div class="body">
11697         <p>When using sitesummary at a site to track machines, it is possible
11698 to get a list of the machine types in use thanks to the DMI
11699 information extracted from each machine.  The script to do so is
11700 included in the sitesummary package, and here is example output from
11701 the Skolelinux build servers:</p>
11702
11703 <blockquote><pre>
11704 maintainer:~# /usr/lib/sitesummary/hardware-model-summary
11705   vendor                    count
11706   Dell Computer Corporation     1
11707     PowerEdge 1750              1
11708   IBM                           1
11709     eserver xSeries 345 -[8670M1X]-     1
11710   Intel                         2
11711   [no-dmi-info]                 3
11712 maintainer:~#
11713 </pre></blockquote>
11714
11715 <p>The quality of the report depend on the quality of the DMI tables
11716 provided in each machine.  Here there are Intel machines without model
11717 information listed with Intel as vendor and no model, and virtual Xen
11718 machines listed as [no-dmi-info].  One can add -l as a command line
11719 option to list the individual machines.</p>
11720
11721 <p>A larger list is
11722 <a href="http://narvikskolen.no/sitesummary/">available from the the
11723 city of Narvik</a>, which uses Skolelinux on all their shools and also
11724 provide the basic sitesummary report publicly.  In their report there
11725 are ~1400 machines. I know they use both Ubuntu and Skolelinux on
11726 their machines, and as sitesummary is available in both distributions,
11727 it is trivial to get all of them to report to the same central
11728 collector.</p>
11729
11730       </div>
11731       <div class="tags">
11732
11733
11734         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>.
11735
11736
11737       </div>
11738     </div>
11739     <div class="padding"></div>
11740
11741     <div class="entry">
11742       <div class="title">
11743         <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>
11744       </div>
11745       <div class="date">
11746          1st June 2010
11747       </div>
11748       <div class="body">
11749         <p>It is strange to watch how a bug in Debian causing KDM to fail to
11750 start at boot when an NVidia video card is used is handled.  The
11751 problem seem to be that the nvidia X.org driver uses a long time to
11752 initialize, and this duration is longer than kdm is configured to
11753 wait.</p>
11754
11755 <p>I came across two bugs related to this issue,
11756 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">#583312</a> initially filed
11757 against initscripts and passed on to nvidia-glx when it became obvious
11758 that the nvidia drivers were involved, and
11759 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/524751">#524751</a> initially filed against
11760 kdm and passed on to src:nvidia-graphics-drivers for unknown reasons.</p>
11761
11762 <p>To me, it seem that no-one is interested in actually solving the
11763 problem nvidia video card owners experience and make sure the Debian
11764 distribution work out of the box for these users.  The nvidia driver
11765 maintainers expect kdm to be set up to wait longer, while kdm expect
11766 the nvidia driver maintainers to fix the driver to start faster, and
11767 while they wait for each other I guess the users end up switching to a
11768 distribution that work for them.  I have no idea what the solution is,
11769 but I am pretty sure that waiting for each other is not it.</p>
11770
11771 <p>I wonder why we end up handling bugs this way.</p>
11772
11773       </div>
11774       <div class="tags">
11775
11776
11777         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>.
11778
11779
11780       </div>
11781     </div>
11782     <div class="padding"></div>
11783
11784     <div class="entry">
11785       <div class="title">
11786         <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>
11787       </div>
11788       <div class="date">
11789         27th May 2010
11790       </div>
11791       <div class="body">
11792         <p>A few days ago, parallel booting was enabled in Debian/testing.
11793 The feature seem to hold up pretty well, but three fairly serious
11794 issues are known and should be solved:
11795
11796 <p><ul>
11797
11798 <li>The wicd package seen to
11799 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/508289">break NFS mounting</a> and
11800 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/581586">network setup</a> when
11801 parallel booting is enabled.  No idea why, but the wicd maintainer
11802 seem to be on the case.</li>
11803
11804 <li>The nvidia X driver seem to
11805 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/583312">have a race condition</a>
11806 triggered more easily when parallel booting is in effect.  The
11807 maintainer is on the case.</li>
11808
11809 <li>The sysv-rc package fail to properly enable dependency based boot
11810 sequencing (the shutdown is broken) when old file-rc users
11811 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/575080">try to switch back</a> to
11812 sysv-rc.  One way to solve it would be for file-rc to create
11813 /etc/init.d/.legacy-bootordering, and another is to try to make
11814 sysv-rc more robust.  Will investigate some more and probably upload a
11815 workaround in sysv-rc to help those trying to move from file-rc to
11816 sysv-rc get a working shutdown.</li>
11817
11818 </ul></p>
11819
11820 <p>All in all not many surprising issues, and all of them seem
11821 solvable before Squeeze is released.  In addition to these there are
11822 some packages with bugs in their dependencies and run level settings,
11823 which I expect will be fixed in a reasonable time span.</p>
11824
11825 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
11826 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
11827 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
11828 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
11829
11830 <p>Update: Correct bug number to file-rc issue.</p>
11831
11832       </div>
11833       <div class="tags">
11834
11835
11836         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>.
11837
11838
11839       </div>
11840     </div>
11841     <div class="padding"></div>
11842
11843     <div class="entry">
11844       <div class="title">
11845         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_flexible_firmware_handling_in_debian_installer.html">More flexible firmware handling in debian-installer</a>
11846       </div>
11847       <div class="date">
11848         22nd May 2010
11849       </div>
11850       <div class="body">
11851         <p>After a long break from debian-installer development, I finally
11852 found time today to return to the project.  Having to spend less time
11853 working dependency based boot in debian, as it is almost complete now,
11854 definitely helped freeing some time.</p>
11855
11856 <p>A while back, I ran into a problem while working on Debian Edu.  We
11857 include some firmware packages on the Debian Edu CDs, those needed to
11858 get disk and network controllers working.  Without having these
11859 firmware packages available during installation, it is impossible to
11860 install Debian Edu on the given machine, and because our target group
11861 are non-technical people, asking them to provide firmware packages on
11862 an external medium is a support pain.  Initially, I expected it to be
11863 enough to include the firmware packages on the CD to get
11864 debian-installer to find and use them.  This proved to be wrong.
11865 Next, I hoped it was enough to symlink the relevant firmware packages
11866 to some useful location on the CD (tried /cdrom/ and
11867 /cdrom/firmware/).  This also proved to not work, and at this point I
11868 found time to look at the debian-installer code to figure out what was
11869 going to work.</p>
11870
11871 <p>The firmware loading code is in the hw-detect package, and a closer
11872 look revealed that it would only look for firmware packages outside
11873 the installation media, so the CD was never checked for firmware
11874 packages.  It would only check USB sticks, floppies and other
11875 "external" media devices.  Today I changed it to also look in the
11876 /cdrom/firmware/ directory on the mounted CD or DVD, which should
11877 solve the problem I ran into with Debian edu.  I also changed it to
11878 look in /firmware/, to make sure the installer also find firmware
11879 provided in the initrd when booting the installer via PXE, to allow us
11880 to provide the same feature in the PXE setup included in Debian
11881 Edu.</p>
11882
11883 <p>To make sure firmware deb packages with a license questions are not
11884 activated without asking if the license is accepted, I extended
11885 hw-detect to look for preinst scripts in the firmware packages, and
11886 run these before activating the firmware during installation.  The
11887 license question is asked using debconf in the preinst, so this should
11888 solve the issue for the firmware packages I have looked at so far.</p>
11889
11890 <p>If you want to discuss the details of these features, please
11891 contact us on debian-boot@lists.debian.org.</p>
11892
11893       </div>
11894       <div class="tags">
11895
11896
11897         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>.
11898
11899
11900       </div>
11901     </div>
11902     <div class="padding"></div>
11903
11904     <div class="entry">
11905       <div class="title">
11906         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pieces_of_the_roaming_laptop_puzzle_in_Debian.html">Pieces of the roaming laptop puzzle in Debian</a>
11907       </div>
11908       <div class="date">
11909         19th May 2010
11910       </div>
11911       <div class="body">
11912         <p>Today, the last piece of the puzzle for roaming laptops in Debian
11913 Edu finally entered the Debian archive.  Today, the new
11914 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-mklocaluser.html">libpam-mklocaluser</a>
11915 package was accepted.  Two days ago, two other pieces was accepted
11916 into unstable.  The
11917 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/pam-python.html">pam-python</a>
11918 package needed by libpam-mklocaluser, and the
11919 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/s/sssd.html">sssd</a> package
11920 passed NEW on Monday.  In addition, the
11921 <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/libp/libpam-ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
11922 package we need is in experimental (version 10-4) since Saturday, and
11923 hopefully will be moved to unstable soon.</p>
11924
11925 <p>This collection of packages allow for two different setups for
11926 roaming laptops.  The traditional setup would be using libpam-ccreds,
11927 nscd and libpam-mklocaluser with LDAP or Kerberos authentication,
11928 which should work out of the box if the configuration changes proposed
11929 for nscd in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/485282">BTS report
11930 #485282</a> is implemented.  The alternative setup is to use sssd with
11931 libpam-mklocaluser to connect to LDAP or Kerberos and let sssd take
11932 care of the caching of passwords and group information.</p>
11933
11934 <p>I have so far been unable to get sssd to work with the LDAP server
11935 at the University, but suspect the issue is some SSL/GnuTLS related
11936 problem with the server certificate.  I plan to update the Debian
11937 package to version 1.2, which is scheduled for next week, and hope to
11938 find time to make sure the next release will include both the
11939 Debian/Ubuntu specific patches.  Upstream is friendly and responsive,
11940 and I am sure we will find a good solution.</p>
11941
11942 <p>The idea is to set up the roaming laptops to authenticate using
11943 LDAP or Kerberos and create a local user with home directory in /home/
11944 when a usre in LDAP logs in via KDM or GDM for the first time, and
11945 cache the password for offline checking, as well as caching group
11946 memberhips and other relevant LDAP information.  The
11947 libpam-mklocaluser package was created to make sure the local home
11948 directory is in /home/, instead of /site/server/directory/ which would
11949 be the home directory if pam_mkhomedir was used.  To avoid confusion
11950 with support requests and configuration, we do not want local laptops
11951 to have users in a path that is used for the same users home directory
11952 on the home directory servers.</p>
11953
11954 <p>One annoying problem with gdm is that it do not show the PAM
11955 message passed to the user from libpam-mklocaluser when the local user
11956 is created.  Instead gdm simply reject the login with some generic
11957 message.  The message is shown in kdm, ssh and login, so I guess it is
11958 a bug in gdm.  Have not investigated if there is some other message
11959 type that can be used instead to get gdm to also show the message.</p>
11960
11961 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
11962 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
11963
11964       </div>
11965       <div class="tags">
11966
11967
11968         Tags: <a href="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>.
11969
11970
11971       </div>
11972     </div>
11973     <div class="padding"></div>
11974
11975     <div class="entry">
11976       <div class="title">
11977         <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>
11978       </div>
11979       <div class="date">
11980         14th May 2010
11981       </div>
11982       <div class="body">
11983         <p>Since this evening, parallel booting is the default in
11984 Debian/unstable for machines using dependency based boot sequencing.
11985 Apparently the testing of concurrent booting has been wider than
11986 expected, if I am to believe the
11987 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
11988 on debian-devel@</a>, and I concluded a few days ago to move forward
11989 with the feature this weekend, to give us some time to detect any
11990 remaining problems before Squeeze is frozen.  If serious problems are
11991 detected, it is simple to change the default back to sequential boot.
11992 The upload of the new sysvinit package also activate a new upstream
11993 version.</p>
11994
11995 More information about
11996 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
11997 based boot sequencing</a> is available from the Debian wiki.  It is
11998 currently possible to disable parallel booting when one run into
11999 problems caused by it, by adding this line to /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12000
12001 <blockquote><pre>
12002 CONCURRENCY=none
12003 </pre></blockquote>
12004
12005 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12006 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12007 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12008 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12009
12010       </div>
12011       <div class="tags">
12012
12013
12014         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>.
12015
12016
12017       </div>
12018     </div>
12019     <div class="padding"></div>
12020
12021     <div class="entry">
12022       <div class="title">
12023         <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>
12024       </div>
12025       <div class="date">
12026         14th May 2010
12027       </div>
12028       <div class="body">
12029         <p>In the recent Debian Edu versions, the
12030 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">sitesummary
12031 system</a> is used to keep track of the machines in the school
12032 network.  Each machine will automatically report its status to the
12033 central server after boot and once per night.  The network setup is
12034 also reported, and using this information it is possible to get the
12035 MAC address of all network interfaces in the machines.  This is useful
12036 to update the DHCP configuration.</p>
12037
12038 <p>To give some idea how to use sitesummary, here is a one-liner to
12039 ist all MAC addresses of all machines reporting to sitesummary.  Run
12040 this on the collector host:</p>
12041
12042 <blockquote><pre>
12043 perl -MSiteSummary -e 'for_all_hosts(sub { print join(" ", get_macaddresses(shift)), "\n"; });'
12044 </pre></blockquote>
12045
12046 <p>This will list all MAC addresses assosiated with all machine, one
12047 line per machine and with space between the MAC addresses.</p>
12048
12049 <p>To allow system administrators easier job at adding static DHCP
12050 addresses for hosts, it would be possible to extend this to fetch
12051 machine information from sitesummary and update the DHCP and DNS
12052 tables in LDAP using this information.  Such tool is unfortunately not
12053 written yet.</p>
12054
12055       </div>
12056       <div class="tags">
12057
12058
12059         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>.
12060
12061
12062       </div>
12063     </div>
12064     <div class="padding"></div>
12065
12066     <div class="entry">
12067       <div class="title">
12068         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/systemd__an_interesting_alternative_to_upstart.html">systemd, an interesting alternative to upstart</a>
12069       </div>
12070       <div class="date">
12071         13th May 2010
12072       </div>
12073       <div class="body">
12074         <p>The last few days a new boot system called
12075 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd">systemd</a>
12076 has been
12077 <a href="http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html">introduced</a>
12078
12079 to the free software world.  I have not yet had time to play around
12080 with it, but it seem to be a very interesting alternative to
12081 <a href="http://upstart.ubuntu.com/">upstart</a>, and might prove to be
12082 a good alternative for Debian when we are able to switch to an event
12083 based boot system.  Tollef is
12084 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/580814">in the process</a> of getting
12085 systemd into Debian, and I look forward to seeing how well it work.  I
12086 like the fact that systemd handles init.d scripts with dependency
12087 information natively, allowing them to run in parallel where upstart
12088 at the moment do not.</p>
12089
12090 <p>Unfortunately do systemd have the same problem as upstart regarding
12091 platform support.  It only work on recent Linux kernels, and also need
12092 some new kernel features enabled to function properly.  This means
12093 kFreeBSD and Hurd ports of Debian will need a port or a different boot
12094 system.  Not sure how that will be handled if systemd proves to be the
12095 way forward.</p>
12096
12097 <p>In the mean time, based on the
12098 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/05/msg00122.html">input
12099 on debian-devel@</a> regarding parallel booting in Debian, I have
12100 decided to enable full parallel booting as the default in Debian as
12101 soon as possible (probably this weekend or early next week), to see if
12102 there are any remaining serious bugs in the init.d dependencies.  A
12103 new version of the sysvinit package implementing this change is
12104 already in experimental.  If all go well, Squeeze will be released
12105 with parallel booting enabled by default.</p>
12106
12107       </div>
12108       <div class="tags">
12109
12110
12111         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>.
12112
12113
12114       </div>
12115     </div>
12116     <div class="padding"></div>
12117
12118     <div class="entry">
12119       <div class="title">
12120         <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>
12121       </div>
12122       <div class="date">
12123          6th May 2010
12124       </div>
12125       <div class="body">
12126         <p>These days, the init.d script dependencies in Squeeze are quite
12127 complete, so complete that it is actually possible to run all the
12128 init.d scripts in parallell based on these dependencies.  If you want
12129 to test your Squeeze system, make sure
12130 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12131 based boot sequencing</a> is enabled, and add this line to
12132 /etc/default/rcS:</p>
12133
12134 <blockquote><pre>
12135 CONCURRENCY=makefile
12136 </pre></blockquote>
12137
12138 <p>That is it.  It will cause sysv-rc to use the startpar tool to run
12139 scripts in parallel using the dependency information stored in
12140 /etc/init.d/.depend.boot, /etc/init.d/.depend.start and
12141 /etc/init.d/.depend.stop to order the scripts.  Startpar is configured
12142 to try to start the kdm and gdm scripts as early as possible, and will
12143 start the facilities required by kdm or gdm as early as possible to
12144 make this happen.</p>
12145
12146 <p>Give it a try, and see if you like the result.  If some services
12147 fail to start properly, it is most likely because they have incomplete
12148 init.d script dependencies in their startup script (or some of their
12149 dependent scripts have incomplete dependencies).  Report bugs and get
12150 the package maintainers to fix it. :)</p>
12151
12152 <p>Running scripts in parallel could be the default in Debian when we
12153 manage to get the init.d script dependencies complete and correct.  I
12154 expect we will get there in Squeeze+1, if we get manage to test and
12155 fix the remaining issues.</p>
12156
12157 <p>If you report any problems with dependencies in init.d scripts to
12158 the BTS, please usertag the report to get it to show up at
12159 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=initscripts-ng-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org">the
12160 list of usertagged bugs related to this</a>.</p>
12161
12162       </div>
12163       <div class="tags">
12164
12165
12166         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>.
12167
12168
12169       </div>
12170     </div>
12171     <div class="padding"></div>
12172
12173     <div class="entry">
12174       <div class="title">
12175         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forcing_new_users_to_change_their_password_on_first_login.html">Forcing new users to change their password on first login</a>
12176       </div>
12177       <div class="date">
12178          2nd May 2010
12179       </div>
12180       <div class="body">
12181         <p>One interesting feature in Active Directory, is the ability to
12182 create a new user with an expired password, and thus force the user to
12183 change the password on the first login attempt.</p>
12184
12185 <p>I'm not quite sure how to do that with the LDAP setup in Debian
12186 Edu, but did some initial testing with a local account.  The account
12187 and password aging information is available in /etc/shadow, but
12188 unfortunately, it is not possible to specify an expiration time for
12189 passwords, only a maximum age for passwords.</p>
12190
12191 <p>A freshly created account (using adduser test) will have these
12192 settings in /etc/shadow:</p>
12193
12194 <blockquote><pre>
12195 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
12196 Last password change                                    : May 02, 2010
12197 Password expires                                        : never
12198 Password inactive                                       : never
12199 Account expires                                         : never
12200 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
12201 Maximum number of days between password change          : 99999
12202 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
12203 root@tjener:~#
12204 </pre></blockquote>
12205
12206 <p>The only way I could come up with to create a user with an expired
12207 account, is to change the date of the last password change to the
12208 lowest value possible (January 1th 1970), and the maximum password age
12209 to the difference in days between that date and today.  To make it
12210 simple, I went for 30 years (30 * 365 = 10950) and January 2th (to
12211 avoid testing if 0 is a valid value).</p>
12212
12213 <p>After using these commands to set it up, it seem to work as
12214 intended:</p>
12215
12216 <blockquote><pre>
12217 root@tjener:~# chage -d 1 test; chage -M 10950 test
12218 root@tjener:~# chage -l test
12219 Last password change                                    : Jan 02, 1970
12220 Password expires                                        : never
12221 Password inactive                                       : never
12222 Account expires                                         : never
12223 Minimum number of days between password change          : 0
12224 Maximum number of days between password change          : 10950
12225 Number of days of warning before password expires       : 7
12226 root@tjener:~#
12227 </pre></blockquote>
12228
12229 <p>So far I have tested this with ssh and console, and kdm (in
12230 Squeeze) login, and all ask for a new password before login in the
12231 user (with ssh, I was thrown out and had to log in again).</p>
12232
12233 <p>Perhaps we should set up something similar for Debian Edu, to make
12234 sure only the user itself have the account password?</p>
12235
12236 <p>If you want to comment on or help out with implementing this for
12237 Debian Edu, please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12238
12239 <p>Update 2010-05-02 17:20: Paul Tötterman tells me on IRC that the
12240 shadow(8) page in Debian/testing now state that setting the date of
12241 last password change to zero (0) will force the password to be changed
12242 on the first login.  This was not mentioned in the manual in Lenny, so
12243 I did not notice this in my initial testing.  I have tested it on
12244 Squeeze, and '<tt>chage -d 0 username</tt>' do work there.  I have not
12245 tested it on Lenny yet.</p>
12246
12247 <p>Update 2010-05-02-19:05: Jim Paris tells me via email that an
12248 equivalent command to expire a password is '<tt>passwd -e
12249 username</tt>', which insert zero into the date of the last password
12250 change.</p>
12251
12252       </div>
12253       <div class="tags">
12254
12255
12256         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>.
12257
12258
12259       </div>
12260     </div>
12261     <div class="padding"></div>
12262
12263     <div class="entry">
12264       <div class="title">
12265         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Thoughts_on_roaming_laptop_setup_for_Debian_Edu.html">Thoughts on roaming laptop setup for Debian Edu</a>
12266       </div>
12267       <div class="date">
12268         28th April 2010
12269       </div>
12270       <div class="body">
12271         <p>For some years now, I have wondered how we should handle laptops in
12272 Debian Edu.  The Debian Edu infrastructure is mostly designed to
12273 handle stationary computers, and less suited for computers that come
12274 and go.</p>
12275
12276 <p>Now I finally believe I have an sensible idea on how to adjust
12277 Debian Edu for laptops, by introducing a new profile for them, for
12278 example called Roaming Workstations.  Here are my thought on this.
12279 The setup would consist of the following:</p>
12280
12281 <ul>
12282
12283  <li>During installation, the user name of the owner / primary user of
12284    the laptop is requested and a local home directory is set up for
12285    the user, with uid and gid information fetched from the LDAP
12286    server.  This allow the user to work also when offline.  The
12287    central home directory can be available in a subdirectory on
12288    request, for example mounted via CIFS.  It could be mounted
12289    automatically when a user log in while on the Debian Edu network,
12290    and unmounted when the machine is taken away (network down,
12291    hibernate, etc), it can be set up to do automatic mounting on
12292    request (using autofs), or perhaps some GUI button on the desktop
12293    can be used to access it when needed.  Perhaps it is enough to use
12294    the fish protocol in KDE?</li>
12295
12296  <li>Password checking is set up to use LDAP or Kerberos
12297    authentication when the machine is on the Debian Edu network, and
12298    to cache the password for offline checking when the machine unable
12299    to reach the LDAP or Kerberos server.  This can be done using
12300    <a href="http://www.padl.com/OSS/pam_ccreds.html">libpam-ccreds</a>
12301    or the Fedora developed
12302    <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SSSD">System
12303    Security Services Daemon</a> packages.</li>
12304
12305  <li>File synchronisation with the central home directory is set up
12306    using a shared directory in both the local and the central home
12307    directory, using unison.</li>
12308
12309  <li>Printing should be set up to print to all printers broadcasting
12310    their existence on the local network, and should then work out of
12311    the box with CUPS.  For sites needing accurate printer quotas, some
12312    system with Kerberos authentication or printing via ssh could be
12313    implemented.</li>
12314
12315  <li>For users that should have local root access to their laptop,
12316    sudo should be used to allow this to the local user.</li>
12317
12318  <li>It would be nice if user and group information from LDAP is
12319    cached on the client, but given that there are entries for the
12320    local user and primary group in /etc/, it should not be needed.</li>
12321
12322 </ul>
12323
12324 <p>I believe all the pieces to implement this are in Debian/testing at
12325 the moment.  If we work quickly, we should be able to get this ready
12326 in time for the Squeeze release to freeze.  Some of the pieces need
12327 tweaking, like libpam-ccreds should get support for pam-auth-update
12328 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/566718">#566718</a>) and nslcd (or
12329 perhaps debian-edu-config) should get some integration code to stop
12330 its daemon when the LDAP server is unavailable to avoid long timeouts
12331 when disconnected from the net.  If we get Kerberos enabled, we need
12332 to make sure we avoid long timeouts there too.</p>
12333
12334 <p>If you want to help out with implementing this for Debian Edu,
12335 please contact us on debian-edu@lists.debian.org.</p>
12336
12337       </div>
12338       <div class="tags">
12339
12340
12341         Tags: <a href="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>.
12342
12343
12344       </div>
12345     </div>
12346     <div class="padding"></div>
12347
12348     <div class="entry">
12349       <div class="title">
12350         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Great_book___Content__Selected_Essays_on_Technology__Creativity__Copyright__and_the_Future_of_the_Future_.html">Great book: "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future"</a>
12351       </div>
12352       <div class="date">
12353         19th April 2010
12354       </div>
12355       <div class="body">
12356         <p>The last few weeks i have had the pleasure of reading a
12357 thought-provoking collection of essays by Cory Doctorow, on topics
12358 touching copyright, virtual worlds, the future of man when the
12359 conscience mind can be duplicated into a computer and many more. The
12360 book titled "Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity,
12361 Copyright, and the Future of the Future" is available with few
12362 restrictions on the web, for example from
12363 <a href="http://craphound.com/content/">his own site</a>. I read the
12364 epub-version from
12365 <a href="http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2883">feedbooks</a> using
12366 <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">fbreader</a> and my N810. I
12367 strongly recommend this book.</p>
12368
12369       </div>
12370       <div class="tags">
12371
12372
12373         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12374
12375
12376       </div>
12377     </div>
12378     <div class="padding"></div>
12379
12380     <div class="entry">
12381       <div class="title">
12382         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kerberos_for_Debian_Edu_Squeeze_.html">Kerberos for Debian Edu/Squeeze?</a>
12383       </div>
12384       <div class="date">
12385         14th April 2010
12386       </div>
12387       <div class="body">
12388         <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20100413-kerberos/">Yesterdays
12389 NUUG presentation</a> about Kerberos was inspiring, and reminded me
12390 about the need to start using Kerberos in Skolelinux.  Setting up a
12391 Kerberos server seem to be straight forward, and if we get this in
12392 place a long time before the Squeeze version of Debian freezes, we
12393 have a chance to migrate Skolelinux away from NFSv3 for the home
12394 directories, and over to an architecture where the infrastructure do
12395 not have to trust IP addresses and machines, and instead can trust
12396 users and cryptographic keys instead.</p>
12397
12398 <p>A challenge will be integration and administration.  Is there a
12399 Kerberos implementation for Debian where one can control the
12400 administration access in Kerberos using LDAP groups?  With it, the
12401 school administration will have to maintain access control using flat
12402 files on the main server, which give a huge potential for errors.</p>
12403
12404 <p>A related question I would like to know is how well Kerberos and
12405 pam-ccreds (offline password check) work together.  Anyone know?</p>
12406
12407 <p>Next step will be to use Kerberos for access control in Lwat and
12408 Nagios.  I have no idea how much work that will be to implement.  We
12409 would also need to document how to integrate with Windows AD, as such
12410 shared network will require two Kerberos realms that need to cooperate
12411 to work properly.</p>
12412
12413 <p>I believe a good start would be to start using Kerberos on the
12414 skolelinux.no machines, and this way get ourselves experience with
12415 configuration and integration.  A natural starting point would be
12416 setting up ldap.skolelinux.no as the Kerberos server, and migrate the
12417 rest of the machines from PAM via LDAP to PAM via Kerberos one at the
12418 time.</p>
12419
12420 <p>If you would like to contribute to get this working in Skolelinux,
12421 I recommend you to see the video recording from yesterdays NUUG
12422 presentation, and start using Kerberos at home.  The video show show
12423 up in a few days.</p>
12424
12425       </div>
12426       <div class="tags">
12427
12428
12429         Tags: <a href="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>.
12430
12431
12432       </div>
12433     </div>
12434     <div class="padding"></div>
12435
12436     <div class="entry">
12437       <div class="title">
12438         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/After_6_years_of_waiting__the_Xreset_d_feature_is_implemented.html">After 6 years of waiting, the Xreset.d feature is implemented</a>
12439       </div>
12440       <div class="date">
12441          6th March 2010
12442       </div>
12443       <div class="body">
12444         <p>6 years ago, as part of the Debian Edu development I am involved
12445 in, I asked for a hook in the kdm and gdm setup to run scripts as root
12446 when the user log out.  A bug was submitted against the xfree86-common
12447 package in 2004 (<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/230422">#230422</a>),
12448 and revisited every time Debian Edu was working on a new release.
12449 Today, this finally paid off.</p>
12450
12451 <p>The framework for this feature was today commited to the git
12452 repositry for the xorg package, and the git repository for xdm has
12453 been updated to use this framework.  Next on my agenda is to make sure
12454 kdm and gdm also add code to use this framework.</p>
12455
12456 <p>In Debian Edu, we want to ability to run commands as root when the
12457 user log out, to get rid of runaway processes and do general cleanup
12458 after a user.  With this framework in place, we finally can do that in
12459 a generic way that work with all display managers using this
12460 framework.  My goal is to get all display managers in Debian use it,
12461 similar to how they use the Xsession.d framework today.<p>
12462
12463       </div>
12464       <div class="tags">
12465
12466
12467         Tags: <a href="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>.
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/Debian_Edu___Skolelinux_based_on_Lenny_released__work_continues.html">Debian Edu / Skolelinux based on Lenny released, work continues</a>
12477       </div>
12478       <div class="date">
12479         11th February 2010
12480       </div>
12481       <div class="body">
12482         <p>On Tuesday, the Debian/Lenny based version of
12483 <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Skolelinux</a> was finally
12484 shipped.  This was a major leap forward for the project, and I am very
12485 pleased that we finally got the release wrapped up.  Work on the first
12486 point release starts imediately, as we plan to get that one out a
12487 month after the major release, to include all fixes for bugs we found
12488 and fixed too late in the release process to include last Tuesday.</p>
12489
12490 <p>Perhaps it even is time for some partying?</p>
12491
12492 <p>After this first point release, my plan is to focus again on the
12493 next major release, based on Squeeze.  We will try to get as many of
12494 the fixes we need into the official Debian packages before the freeze,
12495 and have just a few weeks or months to make it happen.</p>
12496
12497       </div>
12498       <div class="tags">
12499
12500
12501         Tags: <a href="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>.
12502
12503
12504       </div>
12505     </div>
12506     <div class="padding"></div>
12507
12508     <div class="entry">
12509       <div class="title">
12510         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_Munin_and_Nagios_configuration.html">Automatic Munin and Nagios configuration</a>
12511       </div>
12512       <div class="date">
12513         27th January 2010
12514       </div>
12515       <div class="body">
12516         <p>One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
12517 Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
12518 days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
12519 Nagios.  The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
12520 analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
12521 further.</p>
12522
12523 <p>When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
12524 configured as a Munin and Nagios server.  In addition, it is
12525 configured to be a server for the
12526 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/SiteSummary">SiteSummary
12527 system</a> I have written for use in Debian Edu.  The SiteSummary
12528 system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
12529 work.  In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
12530 information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
12531 computer submitting information to this collector.  This allow for
12532 automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
12533 which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
12534 packages got etc.  This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
12535 and Nagios configuration.</p>
12536
12537 <p>All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
12538 munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
12539 client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
12540 up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.</p>
12541
12542 <p>All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
12543 automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
12544 services detected).  In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
12545 the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
12546 sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
12547 raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
12548 the machine.</p>
12549
12550 <p>The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
12551 based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
12552 with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
12553 keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.</p>
12554
12555 <p>The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
12556 is to set the password used to get access via HTTP.  The system
12557 administrator need to run "<tt>htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
12558 nagiosadmin</tt>" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
12559 it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages.  After that,
12560 everything is taken care of.</p>
12561
12562       </div>
12563       <div class="tags">
12564
12565
12566         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary</a>.
12567
12568
12569       </div>
12570     </div>
12571     <div class="padding"></div>
12572
12573     <div class="entry">
12574       <div class="title">
12575         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html">Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</a>
12576       </div>
12577       <div class="date">
12578         12th August 2009
12579       </div>
12580       <div class="body">
12581         <p>Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
12582 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
12583 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage.  I searched using
12584 'filetype:odt' and equvalent terms, and got these results:</P>
12585
12586 <table>
12587 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12588 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:282000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
12589 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:75600</td> <td>pptx:183000</td></tr>
12590 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:145000</td></tr>
12591 </table>
12592
12593 <p>Next, I added a 'site:no' limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
12594 got these numbers:</p>
12595
12596 <table>
12597 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12598 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480 </td> <td>docx:4460</td></tr>
12599 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:299   </td> <td>pptx:741</td></tr>
12600 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:187       </td> <td>xlsx:372</td></tr>
12601 </table>
12602
12603 <p>I wonder how these numbers change over time.</p>
12604
12605 <p>I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
12606 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
12607 they are conduced in another country.  Because of this, I did the same
12608 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
12609 search done from a machine here in Norway.</p>
12610
12611
12612 <table>
12613 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12614 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:129000</td> <td>docx:308000</td></tr>
12615 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:44200</td> <td>pptx:93900</td></tr>
12616 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:26500     </td> <td>xlsx:82400</td></tr>
12617 </table>
12618
12619 <p>And with 'site:no':
12620
12621 <table>
12622 <tr><th>Type</th><th>ODF</th><th>MS Office</th></tr>
12623 <tr><td>Tekst</td> <td>odt:2480</td> <td>docx:3410</td></tr>
12624 <tr><td>Presentasjon</td> <td>odp:175</td> <td>pptx:604</td></tr>
12625 <tr><td>Regneark</td> <td>ods:186       </td> <td>xlsx:296</td></tr>
12626 </table>
12627
12628 <p>Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
12629 numbers.</p>
12630
12631       </div>
12632       <div class="tags">
12633
12634
12635         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
12636
12637
12638       </div>
12639     </div>
12640     <div class="padding"></div>
12641
12642     <div class="entry">
12643       <div class="title">
12644         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html">ISO still hope to fix OOXML</a>
12645       </div>
12646       <div class="date">
12647          8th August 2009
12648       </div>
12649       <div class="body">
12650         <p>According to <a
12651 href="http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html">a
12652 blog post from Torsten Werner</a>, the current defect report for ISO
12653 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages.  His interesting point is that the
12654 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
12655 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
12656 can be fixed in ISO.  Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
12657 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
12658 close to solving the problems.  I was part of the Norwegian committee
12659 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
12660 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.</p>
12661
12662 <p>These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
12663 with the future ahead of it.  We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
12664 seminar this autumn.</p>
12665
12666       </div>
12667       <div class="tags">
12668
12669
12670         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
12671
12672
12673       </div>
12674     </div>
12675     <div class="padding"></div>
12676
12677     <div class="entry">
12678       <div class="title">
12679         <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>
12680       </div>
12681       <div class="date">
12682         27th July 2009
12683       </div>
12684       <div class="body">
12685         <p>Since this evening, with the upload of sysvinit version 2.87dsf-2,
12686 and the upload of insserv version 1.12.0-10 yesterday, Debian unstable
12687 have been migrated to using dependency based boot sequencing.  This
12688 conclude work me and others have been doing for the last three days.
12689 It feels great to see this finally part of the default Debian
12690 installation.  Now we just need to weed out the last few problems that
12691 are bound to show up, to get everything ready for Squeeze.</p>
12692
12693 <p>The next step is migrating /sbin/init from sysvinit to upstart, and
12694 fixing the more fundamental problem of handing the event based
12695 non-predictable kernel in the early boot.</p>
12696
12697       </div>
12698       <div class="tags">
12699
12700
12701         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>.
12702
12703
12704       </div>
12705     </div>
12706     <div class="padding"></div>
12707
12708     <div class="entry">
12709       <div class="title">
12710         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Taking_over_sysvinit_development.html">Taking over sysvinit development</a>
12711       </div>
12712       <div class="date">
12713         22nd July 2009
12714       </div>
12715       <div class="body">
12716         <p>After several years of frustration with the lack of activity from
12717 the existing sysvinit upstream developer, I decided a few weeks ago to
12718 take over the package and become the new upstream.  The number of
12719 patches to track for the Debian package was becoming a burden, and the
12720 lack of synchronization between the distribution made it hard to keep
12721 the package up to date.</p>
12722
12723 <p>On the new sysvinit team is the SuSe maintainer Dr. Werner Fink,
12724 and my Debian co-maintainer Kel Modderman.  About 10 days ago, I made
12725 a new upstream tarball with version number 2.87dsf (for Debian, SuSe
12726 and Fedora), based on the patches currently in use in these
12727 distributions.  We Debian maintainers plan to move to this tarball as
12728 the new upstream as soon as we find time to do the merge.  Since the
12729 new tarball was created, we agreed with Werner at SuSe to make a new
12730 upstream project at <a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/">Savannah</a>, and continue
12731 development there.  The project is registered and currently waiting
12732 for approval by the Savannah administrators, and as soon as it is
12733 approved, we will import the old versions from svn and continue
12734 working on the future release.</p>
12735
12736 <p>It is a bit ironic that this is done now, when some of the involved
12737 distributions are moving to upstart as a syvinit replacement.</p>
12738
12739       </div>
12740       <div class="tags">
12741
12742
12743         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>.
12744
12745
12746       </div>
12747     </div>
12748     <div class="padding"></div>
12749
12750     <div class="entry">
12751       <div class="title">
12752         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_boots_quicker_and_quicker.html">Debian boots quicker and quicker</a>
12753       </div>
12754       <div class="date">
12755         24th June 2009
12756       </div>
12757       <div class="body">
12758         <p>I spent Monday and tuesday this week in London with a lot of the
12759 people involved in the boot system on Debian and Ubuntu, to see if we
12760 could find more ways to speed up the boot system.  This was an Ubuntu
12761 funded
12762 <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FoundationsTeam/BootPerformance/DebianUbuntuSprint">developer
12763 gathering</a>. It was quite productive.  We also discussed the future
12764 of boot systems, and ways to handle the increasing number of boot
12765 issues introduced by the Linux kernel becoming more and more
12766 asynchronous and event base.  The Ubuntu approach using udev and
12767 upstart might be a good way forward.  Time will show.</p>
12768
12769 <p>Anyway, there are a few ways at the moment to speed up the boot
12770 process in Debian.  All of these should be applied to get a quick
12771 boot:</p>
12772
12773 <ul>
12774
12775 <li>Use dash as /bin/sh.</li>
12776
12777 <li>Disable the init.d/hwclock*.sh scripts and make sure the hardware
12778    clock is in UTC.</li>
12779
12780 <li>Install and activate the insserv package to enable
12781    <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot">dependency
12782    based boot sequencing</a>, and enable concurrent booting.</li>
12783
12784 </ul>
12785
12786 These points are based on the Google summer of code work done by
12787 <a href="http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bootsystem/">Carlos
12788 Villegas</a>.
12789
12790 <p>Support for makefile-style concurrency during boot was uploaded to
12791 unstable yesterday.  When we tested it, we were able to cut 6 seconds
12792 from the boot sequence.  It depend on very correct dependency
12793 declaration in all init.d scripts, so I expect us to find edge cases
12794 where the dependences in some scripts are slightly wrong when we start
12795 using this.</p>
12796
12797 <p>On our IRC channel for this effort, #pkg-sysvinit, a new idea was
12798 introduced by Raphael Geissert today, one that could affect the
12799 startup speed as well.  Instead of starting some scripts concurrently
12800 from rcS.d/ and another set of scripts from rc2.d/, it would be
12801 possible to run a of them in the same process.  A quick way to test
12802 this would be to enable insserv and run 'mv /etc/rc2.d/S* /etc/rcS.d/;
12803 insserv'.  Will need to test if that work. :)</p>
12804
12805       </div>
12806       <div class="tags">
12807
12808
12809         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>.
12810
12811
12812       </div>
12813     </div>
12814     <div class="padding"></div>
12815
12816     <div class="entry">
12817       <div class="title">
12818         <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>
12819       </div>
12820       <div class="date">
12821          2nd May 2009
12822       </div>
12823       <div class="body">
12824         <p>There are two software projects that have had huge influence on the
12825 quality of free software, and I wanted to mention both in case someone
12826 do not yet know them.</p>
12827
12828 <p>The first one is <a href="http://valgrind.org/">valgrind</a>, a
12829 tool to detect and expose errors in the memory handling of programs.
12830 It is easy to use, all one need to do is to run 'valgrind program',
12831 and it will report any problems on stdout.  It is even better if the
12832 program include debug information.  With debug information, it is able
12833 to report the source file name and line number where the problem
12834 occurs.  It can report things like 'reading past memory block in file
12835 X line N, the memory block was allocated in file Y, line M', and
12836 'using uninitialised value in control logic'.  This tool has made it
12837 trivial to investigate reproducible crash bugs in programs, and have
12838 reduced the number of this kind of bugs in free software a lot.
12839
12840 <p>The second one is
12841 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverity">Coverity</a> which is
12842 a source code checker.  It is able to process the source of a program
12843 and find problems in the logic without running the program.  It
12844 started out as the Stanford Checker and became well known when it was
12845 used to find bugs in the Linux kernel.  It is now a commercial tool
12846 and the company behind it is running
12847 <a href="http://www.scan.coverity.com/">a community service</a> for the
12848 free software community, where a lot of free software projects get
12849 their source checked for free.  Several thousand defects have been
12850 found and fixed so far.  It can find errors like 'lock L taken in file
12851 X line N is never released if exiting in line M', or 'the code in file
12852 Y lines O to P can never be executed'.  The projects included in the
12853 community service project have managed to get rid of a lot of
12854 reliability problems thanks to Coverity.</p>
12855
12856 <p>I believe tools like this, that are able to automatically find
12857 errors in the source, are vital to improve the quality of software and
12858 make sure we can get rid of the crashing and failing software we are
12859 surrounded by today.</p>
12860
12861       </div>
12862       <div class="tags">
12863
12864
12865         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
12866
12867
12868       </div>
12869     </div>
12870     <div class="padding"></div>
12871
12872     <div class="entry">
12873       <div class="title">
12874         <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>
12875       </div>
12876       <div class="date">
12877         28th April 2009
12878       </div>
12879       <div class="body">
12880         <p>Julien Blache
12881 <a href="http://blog.technologeek.org/2009/04/12/214">claim that no
12882 patch is better than a useless patch</a>.  I completely disagree, as a
12883 patch allow one to discuss a concrete and proposed solution, and also
12884 prove that the issue at hand is important enough for someone to spent
12885 time on fixing it.  No patch do not provide any of these positive
12886 properties.</p>
12887
12888       </div>
12889       <div class="tags">
12890
12891
12892         Tags: <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>.
12893
12894
12895       </div>
12896     </div>
12897     <div class="padding"></div>
12898
12899     <div class="entry">
12900       <div class="title">
12901         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Recording_video_from_cron_using_VLC.html">Recording video from cron using VLC</a>
12902       </div>
12903       <div class="date">
12904          5th April 2009
12905       </div>
12906       <div class="body">
12907         <p>One think I have wanted to figure out for a along time is how to
12908 run vlc from cron to do recording of video streams on the net.  The
12909 task is trivial with mplayer, but I do not really trust the security
12910 of mplayer (it crashes too often on strange input), and thus prefer
12911 vlc.  I finally found a way to do it today.  I spent an hour or so
12912 searching the web for recipes and reading the documentation.  The
12913 hardest part was to get rid of the GUI window, but after finding the
12914 dummy interface, the command line finally presented itself:</p>
12915
12916 <blockquote><pre>URL=http://www.ping.uio.no/video/rms-oslo_2009.ogg
12917 SAVEFILE=rms.ogg
12918 DISPLAY= vlc -q $URL \
12919   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
12920   --intf=dummy</pre></blockquote>
12921
12922 <p>The command stream the URL and store it in the SAVEFILE by
12923 duplicating the output stream to "nodisplay" and the file, using the
12924 dummy interface.  The dummy interface and the nodisplay output make
12925 sure no X interface is needed.</p>
12926
12927 <p>The cron job then need to start this job with the appropriate URL
12928 and file name to save, sleep for the duration wanted, and then kill
12929 the vlc process with SIGTERM.  Here is a complete script
12930 <tt>vlc-record</tt> to use from <tt>at</tt> or <tt>cron</tt>:</p>
12931
12932 <blockquote><pre>#!/bin/sh
12933 set -e
12934 URL="$1"
12935 SAVEFILE="$2"
12936 DURATION="$3"
12937 DISPLAY= vlc -q "$URL" \
12938   --sout="#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,url='$SAVEFILE'},dst=nodisplay}" \
12939   --intf=dummy < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &
12940 pid=$!
12941 sleep $DURATION
12942 kill $pid
12943 wait $pid</pre></blockquote>
12944
12945       </div>
12946       <div class="tags">
12947
12948
12949         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
12950
12951
12952       </div>
12953     </div>
12954     <div class="padding"></div>
12955
12956     <div class="entry">
12957       <div class="title">
12958         <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>
12959       </div>
12960       <div class="date">
12961         30th March 2009
12962       </div>
12963       <div class="body">
12964         <p>Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
12965 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure.  It is the
12966 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
12967 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
12968 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
12969 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
12970 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
12971 application.</p>
12972
12973 <p>This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
12974 independently of the server applications.  One can even allow users to
12975 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
12976 protocol and format.  In the normal case, only one client application
12977 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
12978 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
12979 blocked from doing so.</p>
12980
12981 <p>It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
12982 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
12983 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
12984 requirements change.</p>
12985
12986 <p>I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
12987 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
12988 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.</p>
12989
12990       </div>
12991       <div class="tags">
12992
12993
12994         Tags: <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>.
12995
12996
12997       </div>
12998     </div>
12999     <div class="padding"></div>
13000
13001     <div class="entry">
13002       <div class="title">
13003         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Returning_from_Skolelinux_developer_gathering.html">Returning from Skolelinux developer gathering</a>
13004       </div>
13005       <div class="date">
13006         29th March 2009
13007       </div>
13008       <div class="body">
13009         <p>I'm sitting on the train going home from this weekends Debian
13010 Edu/Skolelinux development gathering.  I got a bit done tuning the
13011 desktop, and looked into the dynamic service location protocol
13012 implementation avahi.  It look like it could be useful for us.  Almost
13013 30 people participated, and I believe it was a great environment to
13014 get to know the Skolelinux system.  Walter Bender, involved in the
13015 development of the Sugar educational platform, presented his stuff and
13016 also helped me improve my OLPC installation.  He also showed me that
13017 his Turtle Art application can be used in standalone mode, and we
13018 agreed that I would help getting it packaged for Debian.  As a
13019 standalone application it would be great for Debian Edu.  We also
13020 tried to get the video conferencing working with two OLPCs, but that
13021 proved to be too hard for us.  The application seem to need more work
13022 before it is ready for me.  I look forward to getting home and relax
13023 now. :)</p>
13024
13025       </div>
13026       <div class="tags">
13027
13028
13029         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>.
13030
13031
13032       </div>
13033     </div>
13034     <div class="padding"></div>
13035
13036     <div class="entry">
13037       <div class="title">
13038         <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>
13039       </div>
13040       <div class="date">
13041         29th March 2009
13042       </div>
13043       <div class="body">
13044         <p>The state of standardized LDAP schemas on Linux is far from
13045 optimal.  There is RFC 2307 documenting one way to store NIS maps in
13046 LDAP, and a modified version of this normally called RFC 2307bis, with
13047 some modifications to be compatible with Active Directory.  The RFC
13048 specification handle the content of a lot of system databases, but do
13049 not handle DNS zones and DHCP configuration.</p>
13050
13051 <p>In <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux</a>,
13052 we would like to store information about users, SMB clients/hosts,
13053 filegroups, netgroups (users and hosts), DHCP and DNS configuration,
13054 and LTSP configuration in LDAP.  These objects have a lot in common,
13055 but with the current LDAP schemas it is not possible to have one
13056 object per entity.  For example, one need to have at least three LDAP
13057 objects for a given computer, one with the SMB related stuff, one with
13058 DNS information and another with DHCP information.  The schemas
13059 provided for DNS and DHCP are impossible to combine into one LDAP
13060 object.  In addition, it is impossible to implement quick queries for
13061 netgroup membership, because of the way NIS triples are implemented.
13062 It just do not scale.  I believe it is time for a few RFC
13063 specifications to cleam up this mess.</p>
13064
13065 <p>I would like to have one LDAP object representing each computer in
13066 the network, and this object can then keep the SMB (ie host key), DHCP
13067 (mac address/name) and DNS (name/IP address) settings in one place.
13068 It need to be efficently stored to make sure it scale well.</p>
13069
13070 <p>I would also like to have a quick way to map from a user or
13071 computer and to the net group this user or computer is a member.</p>
13072
13073 <p>Active Directory have done a better job than unix heads like myself
13074 in this regard, and the unix side need to catch up.  Time to start a
13075 new IETF work group?</p>
13076
13077       </div>
13078       <div class="tags">
13079
13080
13081         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>.
13082
13083
13084       </div>
13085     </div>
13086     <div class="padding"></div>
13087
13088     <div class="entry">
13089       <div class="title">
13090         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">Checking server hardware support status for Dell, HP and IBM servers</a>
13091       </div>
13092       <div class="date">
13093         28th February 2009
13094       </div>
13095       <div class="body">
13096         <p>At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount
13097 of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support
13098 contract expire for each server.  We have a machine (and service)
13099 register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the
13100 machine room location and contact information for the system owner for
13101 each machine.  To make it easier for us to track support contract
13102 status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to
13103 include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag
13104 machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such
13105 machines.  I extended a perl script already being used to import
13106 information about machines into the register, to also do some screen
13107 scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines
13108 are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status
13109 for the relevant machines.  This make the support status information
13110 easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer
13111 owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract.
13112 The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the
13113 registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find
13114 them.  27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us
13115 using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract
13116 last, to have test machines and a platform for less important
13117 services.  After all, the machines without a contract are working fine
13118 at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of
13119 them break down.  When that happen, we can either fix it using spare
13120 parts from other machines or move the service to another old
13121 machine.</p>
13122
13123 <p>I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally
13124 written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten
13125 Werner Forsbring.  The HP scraping was written by me after reading a
13126 nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM
13127 scraping was written by me based on the Dell code.  I know the HTML
13128 parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to
13129 introduce more dependencies.  This is the current incarnation:</p>
13130
13131 <pre>
13132 use LWP::Simple;
13133 use POSIX;
13134 use WWW::Mechanize;
13135 use Date::Parse;
13136 [...]
13137 sub get_support_info {
13138     my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
13139     my $str;
13140
13141     if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
13142         # fetch website from Dell support
13143         my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&amp;cs=nodhs1&amp;l=no&amp;s=dhs&amp;ServiceTag=$serial";
13144         my $webpage = get($url);
13145         return undef unless ($webpage);
13146
13147         my $daysleft = -1;
13148         my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
13149         foreach my $line (@lines) {
13150             next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
13151             $line =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
13152             $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
13153
13154             my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
13155             @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
13156             my $lastend = "";
13157             while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
13158                 my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
13159
13160                 my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13161                                             localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13162                 my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13163                                           localtime(str2time($endstr)));
13164                 $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
13165                 @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
13166                 $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
13167             }
13168             my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13169             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13170                 if ($lastend lt $today);
13171         }
13172     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
13173         my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
13174         my $url =
13175             'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
13176         $mech->get($url);
13177         my $fields = {
13178             'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
13179             'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
13180             'country' => 'NO',
13181             'productNumber' => $productnumber,
13182             'serialNumber1' => $serial,
13183         };
13184         $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
13185                             fields      => $fields );
13186         # Next step is screen scraping
13187         my $content = $mech->content();
13188
13189         $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
13190         $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13191         $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13192         $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13193
13194         my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13195
13196         while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
13197             my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
13198                 m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
13199             $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
13200             my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13201                                         localtime(str2time($startstr)));
13202             my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
13203                                       localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
13204
13205             $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
13206
13207             tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13208                 if ($end lt $today);
13209         }
13210     } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
13211         # This code ignore extended support contracts.
13212         my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
13213         if ($producttype &amp;&amp; $serial) {
13214             my $content =
13215                 get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&amp;brandind=5000008&amp;Submit=Submit&amp;type=$producttype&amp;serial=$serial");
13216             if ($content) {
13217                 $content =~ s/&lt;[^>]+?>/;/gm;
13218                 $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
13219                 $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
13220                 $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
13221
13222                 $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
13223                 my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
13224
13225                 $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
13226
13227                 my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
13228                 tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
13229                     if ($end lt $today);
13230             }
13231         }
13232     }
13233     return $str;
13234 }
13235 </pre>
13236
13237 <p>Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake
13238 serial numbers.  The information passed in as arguments are fetched
13239 from dmidecode.</p>
13240
13241 <pre>
13242 print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
13243                        "447707-B21");
13244 print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
13245 print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
13246                        "1234567");
13247 </pre>
13248
13249 <p>I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for
13250 everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)</p>
13251
13252 <p>Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support
13253 contracts, so it is useless in that case.  The original Dell code do
13254 not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to
13255 do so.</p>
13256
13257       </div>
13258       <div class="tags">
13259
13260
13261         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13262
13263
13264       </div>
13265     </div>
13266     <div class="padding"></div>
13267
13268     <div class="entry">
13269       <div class="title">
13270         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_bar_codes_at_a_computing_center.html">Using bar codes at a computing center</a>
13271       </div>
13272       <div class="date">
13273         20th February 2009
13274       </div>
13275       <div class="body">
13276         <p>At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers
13277 in our computing center.  This give us a challenge in tracking the
13278 location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and
13279 removed.  Some times the location register is not updated when a
13280 computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for
13281 the "missing" computer.</p>
13282
13283 <p>In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project
13284 <a href="http://www.libdmtx.org/">libdmtx</a> to write and read bar
13285 code blocks as defined in the
13286 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Matrix">The Data Matrix
13287 Standard</a>.  This is bar codes that can be read with a normal
13288 digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar
13289 codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture.  The bar code standard
13290 allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag.  There is another project
13291 with <a href="http://www.terryburton.co.uk/barcodewriter/">a bar code
13292 writer written in postscript</a> capable of creating such bar codes,
13293 but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar
13294 codes.</p>
13295
13296 <p>It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the
13297 machines in our computing center.  If both racks and computers are
13298 tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its
13299 computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack.
13300 If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all
13301 locations, and can detect movements and removals.</p>
13302
13303 <p>I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a
13304 random rack and tagged all the machines with their names.  Next, I
13305 took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program
13306 these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read.  This worked
13307 fairly well.  If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the
13308 side, all tags in the image could be read.  Because of limited space
13309 between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire
13310 rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering
13311 about half the rack.  I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread
13312 to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.</p>
13313
13314 <p>My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look
13315 at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for
13316 easier automatic tracking of computers.</p>
13317
13318       </div>
13319       <div class="tags">
13320
13321
13322         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.
13323
13324
13325       </div>
13326     </div>
13327     <div class="padding"></div>
13328
13329     <div class="entry">
13330       <div class="title">
13331         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/When_web_browser_developers_make_a_video_player___.html">When web browser developers make a video player...</a>
13332       </div>
13333       <div class="date">
13334         17th January 2009
13335       </div>
13336       <div class="body">
13337         <p>As part of the work we do in <a href="http://www.nuug.no">NUUG</a>
13338 to publish video recordings of our monthly presentations, we provide a
13339 page with embedded video for easy access to the recording.  Putting a
13340 good set of HTML tags together to get working embedded video in all
13341 browsers and across all operating systems is not easy.  I hope this
13342 will become easier when the &lt;video&gt; tag is implemented in all
13343 browsers, but I am not sure.  We provide the recordings in several
13344 formats, MPEG1, Ogg Theora, H.264 and Quicktime, and want the
13345 browser/media plugin to pick one it support and use it to play the
13346 recording, using whatever embed mechanism the browser understand.
13347 There is at least four different tags to use for this, the new HTML5
13348 &lt;video&gt; tag, the &lt;object&gt; tag, the &lt;embed&gt; tag and
13349 the &lt;applet&gt; tag.  All of these take a lot of options, and
13350 finding the best options is a major challenge.</p>
13351
13352 <p>I just tested the experimental Opera browser available from <a
13353 href="http://labs.opera.com">labs.opera.com</a>, to see how it handled
13354 a &lt;video&gt; tag with a few video sources and no extra attributes.
13355 I was not very impressed.  The browser start by fetching a picture
13356 from the video stream.  Not sure if it is the first frame, but it is
13357 definitely very early in the recording.  So far, so good. Next,
13358 instead of streaming the 76 MiB video file, it start to download all
13359 of it, but do not start to play the video.  This mean I have to wait
13360 for several minutes for the downloading to finish.  When the download
13361 is done, the playing of the video do not start!  Waiting for the
13362 download, but I do not get to see the video?  Some testing later, I
13363 discover that I have to add the controls="true" attribute to be able
13364 to get a play button to pres to start the video.  Adding
13365 autoplay="true" did not help.  I sure hope this is a misfeature of the
13366 test version of Opera, and that future implementations of the
13367 &lt;video&gt; tag will stream recordings by default, or at least start
13368 playing when the download is done.</p>
13369
13370 <p>The test page I used (since changed to add more attributes) is
13371 <a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20090113-foredrag-om-foredrag/">available
13372 from the nuug site</a>.  Will have to test it with the new Firefox
13373 too.</p>
13374
13375 <p>In the test process, I discovered a missing feature.  I was unable
13376 to find a way to get the URL of the playing video out of Opera, so I
13377 am not quite sure it picked the Ogg Theora version of the video.  I
13378 sure hope it was using the announced Ogg Theora support. :)</p>
13379
13380       </div>
13381       <div class="tags">
13382
13383
13384         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web</a>.
13385
13386
13387       </div>
13388     </div>
13389     <div class="padding"></div>
13390
13391     <div class="entry">
13392       <div class="title">
13393         <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Software_video_mixer_on_a_USB_stick.html">Software video mixer on a USB stick</a>
13394       </div>
13395       <div class="date">
13396         28th December 2008
13397       </div>
13398       <div class="body">
13399         <p>The <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group</a> is
13400 recording our montly presentation on video, and recently we have
13401 worked on improving the quality of the recordings by mixing the slides
13402 directly with the video stream.  For this, we use the
13403 <a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/">dvswitch</a> package from
13404 the Debian video team.  As this require quite one computer per video
13405 source, and NUUG do not have enough laptops available, we need to
13406 borrow laptops.  And to avoid having to install extra software on
13407 these borrwed laptops, I have wrapped up all the programs needed on a
13408 bootable USB stick.  The software required is dvswitch with assosiated
13409 source, sink and mixer applications and
13410 <a href="http://www.kinodv.org/">dvgrab</a>.  To allow this setup to
13411 work without any configuration, I've patched dvswitch to use
13412 <a href="http://www.avahi.org/">avahi</a> to connect the various parts
13413 together.  And to allow us to use laptops without firewire plugs, I
13414 upgraded dvgrab to the one from Debian/unstable to get one that work
13415 with USB sources.  We have not yet tested this setup in a production
13416 setup, but I hope it will work properly, and allow us to set up a
13417 video mixer in a very short time frame.  We will need it for
13418 <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go Open 2009</a>.</p>
13419
13420 <p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/pub/video/bin/usbstick-dvswitch.img.gz">The
13421 USB image</a> is for a 1 GB memory stick, but can be used on any
13422 larger stick as well.</p>
13423
13424       </div>
13425       <div class="tags">
13426
13427
13428         Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video</a>.
13429
13430
13431       </div>
13432     </div>
13433     <div class="padding"></div>
13434
13435     <div class="entry">
13436       <div class="title">
13437         <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>
13438       </div>
13439       <div class="date">
13440          7th December 2008
13441       </div>
13442       <div class="body">
13443         <p>This weekend we had a small developer gathering for Debian Edu in
13444 Oslo.  Most of Saturday was used for the general assemly for the
13445 member organization, but the rest of the weekend I used to tune the
13446 LTSP installation.  LTSP now work out of the box on the 10-network.
13447 Acer Aspire One proved to be a very nice thin client, with both
13448 screen, mouse and keybard in a small box.  Was working on getting the
13449 diskless workstation setup configured out of the box, but did not
13450 finish it before the weekend was up.</p>
13451
13452 <p>Did not find time to look at the 4 VGA cards in one box we got from
13453 the Brazilian group, so that will have to wait for the next
13454 development gathering.  Would love to have the Debian Edu installer
13455 automatically detect and configure a multiseat setup when it find one
13456 of these cards.</p>
13457
13458       </div>
13459       <div class="tags">
13460
13461
13462         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>.
13463
13464
13465       </div>
13466     </div>
13467     <div class="padding"></div>
13468
13469     <div class="entry">
13470       <div class="title">
13471         <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>
13472       </div>
13473       <div class="date">
13474         25th November 2008
13475       </div>
13476       <div class="body">
13477         <p>Recently I have spent some time evaluating the multimedia browser
13478 plugins available in Debian Lenny, to see which one we should use by
13479 default in Debian Edu.  We need an embedded video playing plugin with
13480 control buttons to pause or stop the video, and capable of streaming
13481 all the multimedia content available on the web.  The test results and
13482 notes are available on
13483 <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">the
13484 Debian wiki</a>.  I was surprised how few of the plugins are able to
13485 fill this need.  My personal video player favorite, VLC, has a really
13486 bad plugin which fail on a lot of the test pages.  A lot of the MIME
13487 types I would expect to work with any free software player (like
13488 video/ogg), just do not work.  And simple formats like the
13489 audio/x-mplegurl format (m3u playlists), just isn't supported by the
13490 totem and vlc plugins.  I hope the situation will improve soon.  No
13491 wonder sites use the proprietary Adobe flash to play video.</p>
13492
13493 <p>For Lenny, we seem to end up with the mplayer plugin.  It seem to
13494 be the only one fitting our needs. :/</p>
13495
13496       </div>
13497       <div class="tags">
13498
13499
13500         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>.
13501
13502
13503       </div>
13504     </div>
13505     <div class="padding"></div>
13506
13507     <p style="text-align: right;"><a href="english.rss"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/xml.gif" alt="RSS Feed" width="36" height="14" /></a></p>
13508     <div id="sidebar">
13509
13510
13511
13512 <h2>Archive</h2>
13513 <ul>
13514
13515 <li>2013
13516 <ul>
13517
13518 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2013/01/">January (11)</a></li>
13519
13520 </ul></li>
13521
13522 <li>2012
13523 <ul>
13524
13525 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/01/">January (7)</a></li>
13526
13527 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/02/">February (10)</a></li>
13528
13529 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/03/">March (17)</a></li>
13530
13531 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/04/">April (12)</a></li>
13532
13533 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/05/">May (12)</a></li>
13534
13535 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/06/">June (20)</a></li>
13536
13537 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/07/">July (17)</a></li>
13538
13539 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13540
13541 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/09/">September (9)</a></li>
13542
13543 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/10/">October (17)</a></li>
13544
13545 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/11/">November (10)</a></li>
13546
13547 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2012/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13548
13549 </ul></li>
13550
13551 <li>2011
13552 <ul>
13553
13554 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/01/">January (16)</a></li>
13555
13556 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/02/">February (6)</a></li>
13557
13558 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/03/">March (6)</a></li>
13559
13560 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/04/">April (7)</a></li>
13561
13562 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/05/">May (3)</a></li>
13563
13564 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/06/">June (2)</a></li>
13565
13566 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/07/">July (7)</a></li>
13567
13568 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/08/">August (6)</a></li>
13569
13570 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/09/">September (4)</a></li>
13571
13572 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13573
13574 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13575
13576 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2011/12/">December (1)</a></li>
13577
13578 </ul></li>
13579
13580 <li>2010
13581 <ul>
13582
13583 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/01/">January (2)</a></li>
13584
13585 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/02/">February (1)</a></li>
13586
13587 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/03/">March (3)</a></li>
13588
13589 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/04/">April (3)</a></li>
13590
13591 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13592
13593 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/06/">June (14)</a></li>
13594
13595 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/07/">July (12)</a></li>
13596
13597 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/08/">August (13)</a></li>
13598
13599 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/09/">September (7)</a></li>
13600
13601 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/10/">October (9)</a></li>
13602
13603 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/11/">November (13)</a></li>
13604
13605 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2010/12/">December (12)</a></li>
13606
13607 </ul></li>
13608
13609 <li>2009
13610 <ul>
13611
13612 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/01/">January (8)</a></li>
13613
13614 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/02/">February (8)</a></li>
13615
13616 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/03/">March (12)</a></li>
13617
13618 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/04/">April (10)</a></li>
13619
13620 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/05/">May (9)</a></li>
13621
13622 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/06/">June (3)</a></li>
13623
13624 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/07/">July (4)</a></li>
13625
13626 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/08/">August (3)</a></li>
13627
13628 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/09/">September (1)</a></li>
13629
13630 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/10/">October (2)</a></li>
13631
13632 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/11/">November (3)</a></li>
13633
13634 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2009/12/">December (3)</a></li>
13635
13636 </ul></li>
13637
13638 <li>2008
13639 <ul>
13640
13641 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/11/">November (5)</a></li>
13642
13643 <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/archive/2008/12/">December (7)</a></li>
13644
13645 </ul></li>
13646
13647 </ul>
13648
13649
13650
13651 <h2>Tags</h2>
13652 <ul>
13653
13654  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/3d-printer">3d-printer (13)</a></li>
13655
13656  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/amiga">amiga (1)</a></li>
13657
13658  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/aros">aros (1)</a></li>
13659
13660  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bankid">bankid (4)</a></li>
13661
13662  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bitcoin">bitcoin (5)</a></li>
13663
13664  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem (12)</a></li>
13665
13666  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bsa">bsa (2)</a></li>
13667
13668  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian (69)</a></li>
13669
13670  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu (118)</a></li>
13671
13672  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/digistan">digistan (9)</a></li>
13673
13674  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/docbook">docbook (7)</a></li>
13675
13676  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/drivstoffpriser">drivstoffpriser (4)</a></li>
13677
13678  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english (175)</a></li>
13679
13680  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fiksgatami">fiksgatami (21)</a></li>
13681
13682  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/fildeling">fildeling (12)</a></li>
13683
13684  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/freeculture">freeculture (10)</a></li>
13685
13686  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/frikanalen">frikanalen (9)</a></li>
13687
13688  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju (32)</a></li>
13689
13690  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram">isenkram (5)</a></li>
13691
13692  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/kart">kart (17)</a></li>
13693
13694  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ldap">ldap (8)</a></li>
13695
13696  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/lenker">lenker (6)</a></li>
13697
13698  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ltsp">ltsp (1)</a></li>
13699
13700  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/multimedia">multimedia (25)</a></li>
13701
13702  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk (219)</a></li>
13703
13704  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug (148)</a></li>
13705
13706  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/offentlig innsyn">offentlig innsyn (6)</a></li>
13707
13708  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/open311">open311 (2)</a></li>
13709
13710  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/opphavsrett">opphavsrett (41)</a></li>
13711
13712  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/personvern">personvern (61)</a></li>
13713
13714  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/raid">raid (1)</a></li>
13715
13716  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/reprap">reprap (11)</a></li>
13717
13718  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rfid">rfid (2)</a></li>
13719
13720  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/robot">robot (6)</a></li>
13721
13722  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/rss">rss (1)</a></li>
13723
13724  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/ruter">ruter (4)</a></li>
13725
13726  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/scraperwiki">scraperwiki (2)</a></li>
13727
13728  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sikkerhet">sikkerhet (28)</a></li>
13729
13730  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sitesummary">sitesummary (4)</a></li>
13731
13732  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/skepsis">skepsis (4)</a></li>
13733
13734  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard (39)</a></li>
13735
13736  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stavekontroll">stavekontroll (3)</a></li>
13737
13738  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/stortinget">stortinget (5)</a></li>
13739
13740  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/surveillance">surveillance (12)</a></li>
13741
13742  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/sysadmin">sysadmin (1)</a></li>
13743
13744  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/valg">valg (7)</a></li>
13745
13746  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/video">video (35)</a></li>
13747
13748  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/vitenskap">vitenskap (4)</a></li>
13749
13750  <li><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/web">web (26)</a></li>
13751
13752 </ul>
13753
13754
13755     </div>
13756     <p style="text-align: right">
13757  Created by <a href="http://steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle">Chronicle v4.4</a>
13758 </p>
13759
13760   </body>
13761 </html>